anime Thallo • Now • 100%

BLAME! Review: A Wholly Worthwhile Disappointment

First off, thanks for the few posters who recommended BLAME! I was immediately drawn to the art style and vibe, and despite my critiques below, I enjoyed my time with it. The following review is spoiler free. If you want my quick thoughts, yes I recommend it. ::: spoiler synopsis BLAME! is a science fiction manga by Tsutomu Nihei that follows the protagonist, Killy, in his journey through the "megastructure" to find humans who are carrying "net terminal genes." The megastructure is a decaying city that sprawls in every direction, and most of the facilities have been long abandoned, only sparsely populated by humans and other strange creatures. In outside informational material, the megastructure is said to be the size of Saturn, but for the purposes of the narrative, it might as well be infinite. It is ever expanding, as autonomous drones known as builders continue to build it outward. BLAME! is one of those narratives where the setting itself is a character, having a distinct personality and providing obstacles to those who try to traverse it. In this case, the megastructure is cold, uncaring, hostile, and alien. ::: ::: spoiler vibe, art, aesthetic Easily, the most striking and engrossing thing about the manga is its style and atmosphere. The influences are quite clear. I'm reminded of Tarkovsky's Stalker in which abandoned spaces are imbued with a seemingly magical quality. I also think of House of Leaves with its infinitely expanding cold, dark hallways. I think that the most obvious influence, though, is the artwork of H.R. Geiger, as the dark merging of industrial mechanics and biology could have been ripped directly from his art books. If shonen is meant to be a breezy read, then BLAME! is like wading through tar in comparison. It's easy to get lost on the profuse amount of black ink on the page. You can feel the atmosphere on your skin, and sometimes you can start to sink into it. It is the darkest manga I've ever read. Not in its themes or narrative, but, like, its actual amount of black ink on the page. The manga is DARK. So much so that the master edition of the manga released a decade after the original had to lighten up the panels for clearer reading.  Despite this, the level of detail in the environments is staggering. Nihei shows a range of artistic styles, from loose sketchy lines, to sleek geometric designs, both in the environment and characters. Whatever style he's using on the page, you're always sure to feel lost and small within the vast empty spaces of the megastructure (which are, somehow paradoxically, claustrophobic). Many pages of each entry are simply dedicated to showing empty rooms as Killy traverses them, and it reinforces Nihei's commitment to creating a living, breathing space. If you like wire-ridden concrete hallways, sleek high-tech hangars, or biological nightmares, then there's something in the megastructure for you to marvel at.  Unfortunately, this aesthetic variety does not extend to the human characters. Most of the characters wear all black and have few identifying facial features, although sometimes their armor is quite cool, sometimes blending in neo-medieval themes. I also feel that Nihei has a weaker grasp on the human form (or he's simply less interested in rendering it), as a lot of his figure work is loose and inconsistent. Whether this is an artistic choice, I leave up to you, but I personally find it detracts from the experience.  The villains, however, show personality in spades. While most enemies share a theme (white mask with black bodies covered in machinery and wires), there is an incredible variety that he shows within those confines. Enemy designs range from humanoids to building sized beasts. During the entire run, each new enemy is kept fresh and interesting. The loose rendering applied to humans are not present in the sharp, geometric bodies of the antagonists. If you decide to read BLAME!, I have to imagine it will be for the reasons listed above. ::: ::: spoiler pacing and criticism I believe that the earlier portions of BLAME!, with their emphasis on a slow, brooding tone and world building, are the strongest. It takes on a similar structure to a Mad Max movie insofar as Killy often stumbles into other people's problems (as opposed to his own direct issue), and the drama comes from how he interacts with these people of the week before moving on. Unfortunately, being a serialized manga, BLAME! falls into a typical format pretty quickly. Each entry follows a pretty typical structure. There will be environmental panels, Killy will talk to someone and information will be given, they are attacked (suddenly, unprompted, and seemingly at random), Killy will shoot the antagonist, and then Killy will generally fall through a hole in the floor or wall to reach another part of the megastructure where the cycle can start anew. There's nothing wrong with having a swiftly paced manga with action scenes in every installment, although, in my opinion, this one is at its strongest when it is in a rare slow moment. The real issue, which I find hugely detrimental to the series as a whole, falls down to two things: 1. The action sequences in BLAME! are not well communicated or interesting. 2. Killy is not a good action hero. Let's start with 1. Don't get me wrong. The action sequences have scale. There is always a beautifully designed enemy, and they often take place across multiple environments. There is no doubt that there is a level of spectacle to BLAME! that is hard to find elsewhere. However, it is, to me, often impossible to parse out the actual events of any action sequence. This is not JUST because the manga is dark (although...), but rather because the implied action between panels is, to me, not well communicated. Panels often bounce around from character to character, you might get two pages of explosions, falling through new terrain, and then suddenly the sequence is over. I know where sequences start and end, but whatever happens in between, I'm at a complete loss. I'm not alone in this thought, as it's a pretty typical problem people have with it. Something I haven't seen discussed, though, is Killy's role as the action star of BLAME! While I think the manga would be better if it weren't action focused at all, there is an action sequence in nearly every installment, and Killy is at the center of 98% of them (his name is Killy, for god's sake!). So how does he stack up?  Killy uses a gun called a gravitational beam emitter, a lost technology that works as his trump card in every situation. It is the size of a handgun, but it has the ability to disintegrate nearly anything in a single shot, including those building sized beasts I described earlier. It has no ammo or cooldown period. It has no adverse effect on Killy when firing it (the wiki says otherwise, but I don't think it's narratively important). To be frank, it's OP, and it's the solution to pretty much every problem. To compound this fact, Killy doesn't use it in an interesting way. There's no gun kata that he performs, no stylish matrix-like choreography, no special unique ammo, no hidden upgrades that he unlocks over time, etc. He simply raises his arm, points the gun, and pulls the trigger over and over (and over). I can't remember a time when he used it in a clever way (perhaps pointing it at an environmental setpiece to solve an encounter), instead opting to point and shoot. I mean, it's realistic to say the least, but it's not enthralling, particularly across 50+ installments. One might argue that BLAME! shouldn't be judged by the standards of action/battle manga, but I'm not sure what else to call a manga that has action/battle sequences in 90% of the installments, far more than even your typical shonen (even in vagabond, Musashi spends 30 or so chapters farming without a sword in sight!) The unfortunate result of this is that BLAME!'s juice starts to run dry about halfway through. Over time, the environment becomes familiar to the reader, and the mystic veneer it had begins to fade (and most of it starts to explode for one reason or another). Without particularly strong characters (they're serviceable), captivating action, a strong storyline (it's fine), or a mystical environment, there's really just nothing there to keep you hooked. The world building, the entire hook of the manga, becomes sparser as more attention is paid to progressing the main storyline. To be honest, by the end, I was just rushing through so I could move onto something else. When I got there, I found it had an archetypical ending that I generally find to be very underwhelming. This was no exception. ::: ::: spoiler conclusion Regardless of my (objectively correct) moaning, BLAME! is an incredibly unique vision that deserves to be experienced. My descriptions of the megastructure pale in comparison to actually experiencing it, and there are FAR stranger and more interesting things found in it than I have mentioned here. The world building is masterful, and every encounter with a new settlement provides something new. It has that classic balance of cold hopelessness contrasted with humans doing their best to live in a dead world. Even if I forget the characters and storyline, I'm going to remember the megastructure for a long time, and that alone makes it worth reading. Now, on to Land of the Lustrous... :::

chapotraphouse Thallo • Now • 100%

How long are we going to deal with everyone using Elon as a stand-in for "super entrepreneur brain genius" in everyday conversation?

I'm so sick of hearing about this shit. Talk about space? Oh, I think we'll get to Mars because of brain genius Elon musk. Climate change? We need more entrepreneurs like brain genius Elon musk. Aspirations? Brain genius Elon musk. The world would be a lot better if we were all just a little more like brain genius Elon musk! I already had to deal with fucking Steve Jobbs worship for decades. At least he had a turtleneck and glasses that made him look like a serial killer. I can only explain the truth so many fucking times . YES, I will derail every conversation in which he is mentioned! No, I will not hold my tongue to maintain peace! I will make  and  proud!

chapotraphouse Thallo • Now • 97%

Okay, seriously tho

If you have a materialist worldview and understand class relationships, you can generally come out of most situations with the correct take without knowing the details.

anime Thallo • Now • 100%

Anyone recommend some manga?

Been reading it lately, and it helps reduce my scrolling time. I've hardly read any, so you can recommend really popular stuff, too. I've read Vagabond, 20th Century Boys, Claymore (years ago), and some berserk. I just finished reading Teppu, which I thought was an interesting subversion of a lot of anime tropes. I also liked that it was a short run (only 8 volumes). I guess I like seinen, but I've also enjoyed josei like She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat. Anyway, no shonen please. Hard mode: please nothing about high school

traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns Thallo • Now • 100%

Anyone here transition later in life? (Book discussion)

This post is a discussion of Shou Arai’s manga, “At 30, I Realized I Had No Gender.” However, feel free to just answer the question in the title if you’re not interested. I’m wondering if anyone here transitioned in their 30’s or 40 plus. Shou Arai is an intersex person from Japan who is somewhat well-known in the local queer scene. Arai lived the first 30 years of his life as a woman before transitioning into a man. I’ll be using he/him pronouns to describe Arai, as those are the ones he uses in the manga. The LGBT movement in Japan is obviously different than it is in the West, so some terminology doesn’t fit exactly. Arai is physically intersex, having physical characteristics of both sexes. He is also described as trans, non-binary, or agender at times; however, in this case agender is translated from something that more closely resembles “between genders.” Having read the manga, I personally feel that the term agender doesn’t really fit in the Western sense, and I believe the title is more in reference to “I am without gender because society doesn’t have a name for people with genders like me” rather than a true absence of gender. Like Poppy Pesuyama, Arai considers himself a manga essayist. This means that the manga is primarily expository rather than narratively driven. Unlike Pesuyama, who wove their exposition into an overarching narrative, Arai foregoes narrative all together. Instead, each chapter of the manga is based on a topic or anecdote. Some chapters are even just Q&A sessions with other queer people. Often times, Arai is just giving practical advice about being queer. Despite the title of the manga, Arai actually wrote it when he was nearing 50 years of age, so he 30 years of female experience and about 20 of male experience by that time. Quite a veteran queer! Here's a list of the topics he covers:  As you can see, the majority of the manga is devoted to aging while queer, which is why I was drawn to it. Frankly, I think some of the advice that Arai gives might be a bit antiquated, but he is real af. I think that some of the chapters were hard to read for me not because the subject matter or presentation is heavy but because he clearly voices a lot of the small things we worry about when aging and queer. In particular, the chapters “If I had aged a woman” or “Is it impossible to be a young girl” are a little rough if, like me, you’re transitioning late in life. Other chapters just discuss aging in general like body measurements, choosing glasses, facial sagging, or having a big head lol. In general, he’ll discuss an issue and then provide a way to try to mitigate it or think about it differently, and he’s always real about what’s actually achievable. The manga is a real grab bag of tough thoughts, which I’m gonna list here: ::: spoiler mild dysphoria Having smile lines, growing unwanted facial hair, trying to manage your aging so people don’t just identify you as male, wishing you had transitioned sooner so you would’ve had better skincare, being jealous of people who started hormones early, having no memories of being young in the gender you want, being easier to present masculine when you’re older, having a weird mismatched body, using clothing to present femme but feeling dysphoria when you take them off and see your masculine body, changing your clothing style just so people identify you correctly, having a non-binary heart while still presenting in a binary manner, confusing looking femme with looking young, getting too old for sex, and many, many more! ::: Overall, I think that the manga is rather formalistically boring. There’re really no characters, and the art is fairly basic, so there’s nothing really to latch onto. Unlike other queer manga I’ve read, this one didn’t really move me; however, I think it’s bursting with important and helpful content, so it’s worth a read if any of this interests you. ::: spoiler personal dysphoria To be honest, despite the fact that it’s really light, I found myself quite bothered by a lot of it. For me, a lot of my dysphoria comes more from my age than my gender. I’m closer to 40 than 30 these days (much older than Arai when he transitioned), and sometimes I can’t help but think I’m a man playing dress up or that I missed my window to transition or that I’m going through some midlife crisis to make me look younger. I also acknowledge that there’s more to being trans and queer than being pretty, and a lot of transfemmes are really obsessed with youth and beauty, and then I just feel guilty for boiling down gender to being pretty. Anyway, I know all of these things aren’t true, and it’s just societal ideas that I’ve internalized that are causing me dysphoria. I can’t help thinking it would be easier to just age male, though. I wish I had the awareness that kids nowadays get, but back in my day (at least where I lived), trans literally wasn’t a thing. We had no language or conception of it. In fact, I'm remembering now that when I came out to my wife while bawling, I kept repeating, "I just didn't know we could do this [transition]" >.> ::: Anyway, I wanna hear from the younglings too, but this post is for the geezers like me. Have any kind words? 

chapotraphouse Thallo • Now • 97%

So we're allowed to "rationally and calmly" debate the existence of trans people publicly, but we're not allowed to debate the existence of Israel?

Really says something about society 

askchapo Thallo • Now • 95%

How come when I press next, it just keeps loading the first page?

Are you just tormenting me?

anime Thallo • Now • 98%

Happy Pride

Just wanted to post this pic

chapotraphouse Thallo • Now • 100%

Title

 

askchapo Thallo • Now • 100%

Is it possible to block a comm or do I have to just subscribe to comms I want to see?

Not sure how to curate my hexbear browsing experience Edit: thank you!

traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns Thallo • Now • 100%

Effort: In Praise of the Weird Genders or "Are You Me?"

This post is for all of the gender questioners who lurk around these parts and feel like their experiences don’t line up with other people’s. I write this as a trans person who has no clear indication of what s/he’s transitioning to. In the last few years, I’ve gone through extensive questioning and experimentation with my gender all up until my recent hatching. During this time, I’ve met so many different kinds of beautiful people on this site. Over a year and a few accounts, I’ve talked with binary trans people, non-binary trans people, bigender people, people who have detransitioned, queer people, and many others who have been incredibly supportive when sharing their experiences and supporting my journey. I think the people who I have interacted with the most over this time, though, is the group that I belong to myself—gender anxious people—gender weird people. The people who aren’t even sure if they’re unhappy with their gender and their body. I stayed quiet for a long time because I didn’t feel like my experience lined up with anyone else’s, but when I started posting, I started seeing one comment in particular. I wrote this comment to others, and people wrote it to me, and others wrote it to others. “Are you me?” After literal years of questioning, it took maybe two hours in the mega to have multiple people replying to me telling me that they felt the same way. If I don’t relate to the experience, I don’t reply, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the call “does anyone else feel this way?” go unanswered. Other people feel the way you do about your body and gender. Many of us feel like we’re in a gendered box, and we’re asking for permission to leave it. We want to know that our reasons are good for leaving the box. We feel like we need a clear destination of where we want to go after we’re out of the box. The truth is that we don’t need any of these things. We just have to want to leave the box—that’s it. I was stunned when I read Trans Liberation because it had hardly anything to do with binary trans people at all. That book is about all of us, all the weird stuff sprinkled from binary to binary (including the binaries!). Let me dispel a few myths for you: 1. There is not a prerequisite amount of pain that you need to feel to prove you want to change your gender or gender expression. You don’t need to be sick at the sight of your body. It doesn’t matter if you’re comfortable living they way you are. If you want to change your gender expression just because you think it might make you happier, that’s the only reason you need. 2. There is no number of signs that you need to collect that will validate your experience and choice. You don’t need an epiphany where you “knew for sure.” You don’t need to have grown as a boy who always loved playing with Barbie or a girl who hated wearing skirts. Many trans people knew for sure, and they knew it for a long time, and that comes with its own challenges; however, it is not a necessary experience for all trans people. Some of us get halfway through our lives and just feel like we’d like to be something else. I think a lot of us who grew up in the West are stuck on essentialist thought. We want to feel that there is something inherent to our existences that will tell us what our gender is. What we “truly are” deep down. What we’ve always known we are. For some people, this may be comforting; however, I think that there are other ways to think about it. For instance, we can look at gender through the lens of practice, and we can ask ourselves how each of us practice our gender each day. Most cis people practice their genders daily, but it’s invisible to them. Once you start practicing your gender differently, that’s when things start to come into focus. Once I started dressing in women’s clothing and painting my nails, you won’t believe how many straight cis guys came out of the woodwork to give positive feedback. They tell me things like “I always wished I could paint my nails, but I never had the guts” or “I’ve always been jealous of women’s clothing. I don’t feel like I have any options in menswear.” These are dudes who have probably never complimented another man’s outfit in their entire lives, but, when confronted with someone outside of the rigid gender box, they start admitting that they want to paint their nails and wear dresses. So, what I’m saying is, regardless of where you fall on the gender/sexuality spectrum—even if you just want to break the rules a little—your gender expression is beyond valid. Your simple existence is revolutionary because it’s a challenge to a rigid binary gendered society. Don’t believe your existence is revolutionary? Try to practice your gender in a non-sanctioned way. You’ll feel the counterrevolution real fast. If you’re a guy and you do something as simple as grow out your hair, you will be constantly socially policed. Push the gender binary just a little bit further than that, and you’re very realistically facing violent opposition in a fascist society. Don’t think being a crossdresser is valid? It’s valid enough to get you outlawed or thrown in a pit. These non-conforming gender identities, no matter how subtle, stand in complete opposition to the fascist project. You being publicly weird robs them of one more mechanism of social control. So, if you take anything from this post, please let it be this: 1. If you think nobody else feels the way you do, start asking and finding the people who do. 2. Don’t get hung up on the validity of your feelings or reasons—they’re all real. Not every option is available to every person, but there are things within your power now to start practicing and exploring. Start practicing. It really doesn’t need to be big. start slow. You don't need to start HRT tomorrow, or ever, for that matter. Do what is fun and safe. It's your body to manage the way you please. I hope to see more folks in the mega. It’s really been popping off lately. Btw, even if, by some freak chance nobody feels the way you do, you’re STILL going to get good ass advice from our expert posters. There’s no gatekeeping happening.