DALL’AUTORE DI CAPOLAVORI SCI-FI QUALI BLAME! E KNIGHTS OF SIDONIA, TSUTOMU NIHEI. In seguito alla caduta del dispositivo per il controllo del clima, la temperatura nella Regione Composita dello Slab Settentrionale inizia rapidamente a calare. In un ambiente sempre più ostile, Titania e Kesha si muovono per cercare di far tornare Etherow alla normalità…
Tsutomu Nihei (弐瓶 勉 Nihei Tsutomu, born 1971) is a Japanese manga artist. His cyberpunk-influenced artwork has gained a strong cult following. He has a relatively large community of fans in Germany where his manga Blame!, NOiSE and Biomega were published by Ehapa. Blame! was also published in France and Spain by Glénat, in the US by Tokyopop and in Italy by Panini Comics.
At first he studied architecture and later it is shown up in his manga works with drawing huge structures. This became one of his general theme that makes his manga unique. His works are usually in black and white. He is also an avid fan of the video game series Halo, as he mentions in his commentary section in the Halo Graphic Novel.
Thought I'd get used to the art style after 5 volumes but honestly it just lacks substance. The story is alright but the fact I can barely make out what shapes the wispy lines are trying to form makes it hard to tell what's even going on on the page; I find myself squinting even with my contacts in.
3.5 Every time a volume starts with color illustrations, I'm struck by how much the art loses by being purely black and white. The color really adds to the art and makes it feels just better overall. I know a full-color manga isn't really feasible, but I think it would be amazing if they released a full-color edition of this series at some point. This volume introduced a new major contender, The Church. The people who make up the Church are very bizarre, and I'd say they're more like a cult. (cough cough) Is it really a weird sci-fi epic if there isn't some type of weird religion jammed into somewhere? This volume does suffer from the "Way too much talking, not enough doing" like previous volumes. But it's not as bad as it was in volume one.
The good guys are on the run. This includes the regular people that I couldn't care less for. They have their own thing that is basically made up of running away from explosions and death. Totally boring stuff that reinforces in my mind the idea that manga often overextends its plot with useless chapters. A church is introduced, a trio of frames, a giant naked clone. Basically, the plot gets too complex to be enjoyable.
I liked this a lot more than the previous volumes. We're now doing a little more exploring of the world. Incapacitating the main character has brought out some more interesting worldbuilding and now there's multiple factions in play. The introduction of a zealous church is also very cool. There's less action in this volume but I think the story benefits from that.
Amazing!!!! Keisha has to carry on the fight against the empire by herself for now. Meanwhile her brother has gone crazy and is leading a cult of infected followers and makimg new androids. Also the empire has created something wild to fight those who oppose them, and its really sexy.
I feel like this series could have been really good but it reads like an abridged version. Everything happens so fast you don’t even remember or care about character names. It had some great plot twists and it’s been worth reading but it just feels like the meat of the story was looked over.