My Cultural Diet

In 2017, Netflix released a long-awaited animated adaptation of Blame!, Tsutomu Nihei’s cyberpunk manga masterpiece. Although it’s certainly well-done, Netflix’s Blame! never quite conveys the sheer scale and weirdness of Nihei’s manga (read my review). But nearly 15 years before Netflix’s movie, the Group TAC studio and director Shintaro Inokawa released a 6-episode ONA (original net animation) that, while disjointed and of relatively low quality, actually did a halfway decent job of capturing just how strange and alienating Nihei’s transhumanist world would be. Apparently, the ONA was originally intended as a teaser or promo for a feature film — hence the rough animation quality — but Nihei was unable to get the funding, leaving the ONA as a standalone artifact. Each episode clocks in at just five minutes, and are largely dialog-free, instead relying on surreal post-apocalyptic imagery and an eerie soundtrack filled with mournful horns and ominous atmospherics. Furthermore, the episodes unfold randomly, depicting scenes and stories from the manga in nonlinear fashion. This approach would be close to unwatchable for a feature, but for a 30-minute series, it works — though I suspect that only Blame! diehards will actually enjoy it. On a related note, I continue to hold out hope that we’ll get a sequel to 2017’s Blame! that’s even bigger and stranger than its predecessor.

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