#blameposting

this was only possible because its great. its fantastic.

very little dialogue, the landscapes are allowed to talk for themselves. i dont think you need much information on the characters in it or the logic of the universe, to feel something about it.

in fact, i think its GOOD youre working with very little as a reader. you dont quite know why characters have the motives they do and you dont know much about their lives at all. the manga keeps showing you nothing but destruction, this is the standard, nothing lasts. you can make moral judgements about whether the outcome of a battle is harmful or beneficial. but you have to accept things will keep happening. and the world is very vast, so the grief is endless and not something you could ever grasp. so you are forced to focus on the fates of small populations, to not fall into a nihilist crisis. practically every single small population killy, the protagonist, comes in contact with, experiences doom or radical change while he walks by them. does he attract it? is all of this his fault? it doesnt really matter because it is not his fault that he is walking by in the first place.

a human could never endure all this, the artificial endless enviroment was build on the basis of existing human design, and so elements of it (metal sheets, concrete, windows, doors...) are recognizable to humans. but it was not build by or for them.

it basically reminds me of the dead internet theory, only that it is a physical world. despite it being a very brutal and bloody series, the real horror to my human mind comes from the fact that it is an incomprehensible immortal AI generated wasteland.

i know the series has a (partially translated) lore book and a prequel, NOiSE, which i started but could not finish. its not that it was bad. the state of not knowing anything about blame!'s world is just such a defining important quality of the work to me, that i did not want to get further into it. as stupid as that sounds. weirdly, i just think the story works better if, as a reader, you accept your position. although it might be different for you!

so yeah anyway that sounds very depressing but i HIGHLY recommend the manga, both for the experience and its beauty. it looks a bit wonky at first but watching the art evolve is extremely fun. incredibly worth the read.