Manga Review: Blame! Volume 3

Manga review of Blame! volume 3 by Tsutomu Nihei. Translated by Stephen Paul. Adapted by Brandon Montclare. Originally published in Japan by Kodansha. Published in US by Tokyopop, $9.99, Rated OT 16+.

Killy and Cibo have finally come upon a structure left over from a time when humans could still communicate with the Netsphere. It is not part of the city so the Authority holds no sway there, which means their runaway Safeguard mechanisms don't either. Surprisingly, the name of the structure is Toha Heavy Industries. Hmmm...any connection to the Toa Heavy Industries in Biomega? Is this book taking place in the same world as that series, but in the future? It's unknown at this point. Maybe it will become clearer as I continue reading Blame. The humans that live outside of it say they are descended from "The Planters", the people that used to work inside of Toha, but none of them know how to read and they have no idea how to get inside it. Of course there's lot of battles with the Safeguard in this volume as well.

My patience is starting to wear a little thin with this series. After 3 volumes, Nihei's messy artwork hasn't gotten any better. With so much emphasis on action, the artist finds himself woefully lacking in being able to illustrate it. Over and over again, I have to reexamine panels to figure out what is going on. Sometimes I am successful. Sometimes I just give up and move on. It doesn't help that during the fights, so much of the art is very black and dark which just adds to the visual confusion of already poorly constructed panels. And then there's the "gun thing". Killy's graviton emitter pistol is so powerful that it sends him sprawling through the air every time he fires. Nihei always draws him in the same nondescript poorly posed manner every time it happens, so much so that the whole firing of the weapon has become a unintentional example of comic relief. While there is a bit more scattered peices of plot in this volume, on the whole it's a bit scatter shot, just like the art. The worst thing about this book is that there is a giant monster fight straight out of a Godzilla movie. At that point, my eyes began to roll back into my head, especially since one of the monsters is a straight up rip-off of H.R. Giger's Alien designs. In fact, a lot of the designs seem ripped off from Giger and Akira. I am losing faith in this book. We'll see if find it in volume 4 or the series continues it's slow crawl to complete dumbness. I like the "vibe" of the book but it just seems so derivative and lamebrained at certain points.

My Grade: C-