Blade Runner: Black Lotus review: Adult Swim anime proves itself worthy

It is fair to say that cyberpunk as a genre owes an incalculable debt. Blade Runner feels like an understatement. Before either William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Bruce Sterling’s Mirrorshades anthology, or even the novel by Bruce Bethke from which the genre would go on to derive its very name, Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Are Androids attracted to Electric Sheep?This was the basis for much of the cyberpunk visual language to this day.

This visual language was to be used as a guide for animators and filmmakers. Blade Runner’s indelible cultural footprint was seen and felt through innumerable references throughout some of the most popular works of Japanese animation. From iconic films like 1995’s Ghost in the Shell and 2001’s MetropolisTo lesser-known but equally influential works such as Mobile Police PatlaborOriginal video animation (OVA) 1987 Bubblegum Crisis, the popularity and maturation of anime as globally recognized artform and the aesthetic precedent of Ridley Scott’s Blade RunnerThey are intrinsically linked to each other. The idea of an anime not only inspired, but explicitly set in the universe of the 1982 sci-fi noir then was never truly a question of “if,” but rather only a matter of “when.”

Nearly four decades after Scott’s film first premiered in theaters, and only four years following the release of Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 follow-up, the inevitability of a Blade Runner anime has finally been realized. Shinji Aramaki directs a 13-episode animated series CG.Appleseed) and Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex Blade Runner: Black LotusIt may not have been the anime fans had imagined or expected when it was revealed back in 2018, however, it is still worthy.

Set in the year 2032 — 13 years after the events of Blade Runner and 17 years before the 2017’s Blade Runner 2049 — Black LotusElle is a story about a young girl who wakes up in a deserted building with a lotus tattoo and no memories of her journey. Elle is mercilessly pursued by gunmen for sport and finds that she’s unable to cause any damage to those who chase her. Elle doesn’t immediately get it, but she is able to understand her situation. Blade Runner fans will recognize why Elle cannot fight back: she is in fact a “replicant,” a synthetic android created to impersonate and serve humans who, after the events of Blade Runner,They were not permitted to do harm to human beings even in self defense. And yet, something unexpectedly is triggered deep inside of Elle’s programming, allowing her the ability and strength to overpower and kill her would-be executioner before fleeing aboard an self-driving delivery truck bound for Los Angeles in search of refuge and answers to her own mysterious nature.

Image: Crunchyroll Adult Swim/Crunchyroll

Aramaki and Kamiya have produced the first and second episodes of the anime. Blade Runner: Black Lotus already boast a marked improvement over the directors’ previous series Ghost in the Shell – SAC_2045In terms of visuals, and in action. The atmospheric composition of select scenes, like Elle illuminated in the green fluorescent glow of an automated delivery truck’s headlights or the climatic courtyard fight at the end of second episode wherein Elle brandishes a katana while lit in ethereal neon red, are particularly striking, as are the numerous easter eggs and iconic locations seen throughout Elle’s introduction to the city. The episode features a number of returning characters. Blade Runner: Black Lotus, the most prominent one seen in the series’ initial two episodes is Doc Badger, the pawn shop owner portrayed by Barkhad Abdi in 2017’s Blade Runner 2049Elle is assisted by a friend named ‘Elie’, in order to find her way through the unfamiliar and strange world. The structure of the first two episodes, which jumps forward and back between Elle’s awakening in the desert and several days after her arrival in Los Angeles, may be a bit confusing for some audiences, but this temporary confusion is ultimately in service of placing the viewer in the perspective of Elle herself as she sifts through the stimuli of the world around her. But Elle’s journey of personal discovery renders her not all that dissimilar from Officer K in Blade Runner 2049Deckard, or any other version of the original Blade Runner; protagonists searching for charity and purpose in their own existence, all while parsing the question of what constitutes as “real” in their own lives. This is the plot of the first episodes. Blade Runner: Black Lotus takes a bit to ramp up as it establishes Elle’s quest for answers as well the state of the world itself, but eventually settles into an engrossing sci-fi neo-noir revenge story as the series progresses. Kamiyama, Aramaki, and Kamiyama both know what Blade Runner means to them. And Blade Runner: Black Lotus homes in on those attributes through a replicant’s search for meaning — and revenge — rendered through an interpretation of an alternate-future Los Angeles in the midst of becoming the dark, post-anthropocene metropolis glimpsed in Blade Runner 2049

It is an anime. Blade Runner: Black LotusYou will be able to draw pointed parallels with other people, but also to Blade Runner Blade Runner 2049But to Cowboy Bebop director Shinichirō Watanabe’s anime short Blade Runner Black Out 2022The short set a high bar for any other type of writing. This set an unsurpassed standard for all other forms of writing. Blade Runner-affiliated anime that would succeed it, amassing an impressive roster of collaborators to work on the film that basically boiled down to a who’s who list of anime luminaries including the likes of Shūkō Murase (Mobile Suit Gundam:), Hiroyuki Okiura (Jin-Roh, The Wolf Brigade), Shinya Ohira (Ping PongAnd even in the future Black LotusAramaki, director. Although it is somewhat unfair to compare, the effort required to convene the same team of animators many years later and produce the 13-episode anime in a coordinated manner would be almost impossible. It feels almost like an incredible feat of engineering. Blade Runner Black Out 2022Even possible.

Being honest, Blade Runner: Black Lotus doesn’t look nearly as impressive as The Blackout 2022. There’s nothing here that compares to Shinya Ohira’s impressionistic interpretation of the battlefields of Calantha, or the climactic shootout between a pair of replicants against Tyrell security forces animated by Okiura and Bahi JD. And while that undoubtedly will come as a disappointment to some viewers, it nonetheless makes an argument for its own existence as the series progresses on the strength of an aesthetic that combines photo realistic environments with bold stylistic lighting choices and composition, its engrossing action and gorgeous establishing shots, and its appropriately subdued and eerie synth score that feels evocative of Vangelis’ iconic work on the 1982 original. The one exception of this last point being the anime’s use of EDM pop tracks like Alessia Cara’s “Feel You Now” or Daya’s “Evil” which play over the series’ opening and closing titles, and while these music choices themselves might prove irksome to die-hard Blade RunnerPurists will find their placement in the episode bookends makes them less offensive attempts to expand the range of episodes. They are ambitious, but it is not the best. Blade Runner Black Lotus amounts to a worthy addition to the Blade Runner series that’s as much of an entertaining individual story on its own as it is a prequel further embellishing the groundwork for the world glimpsed in Blade Runner 2049

Although it is tempting to dismiss the series on first glance, they are actually both Blade RunnerEven new fans might be shocked by the revelations. Blade Runner: Black Lotusoffers. Like the humanoid duplicatents who can make appearances deceitful.