Blame! Movie

A young girl named Zuru sets out on an expedition through a post-apocalyptic city controlled by machines in a desperate hunt for food. Things go awry when her team accidently triggers the city's AI defense program called the Safeguard. Attacked by the machines, her companions are on the verge of being annihilated when a mysterious man named Killy arrives and exterminates the hostile units.

Despite his heroic intervention, Zuru is hesitant to trust Killy and questions his motives. He reveals to have come from thousands of levels below the city in order to find humans possessing the Net Terminal Genes—a trait that would allow humans to regain control of their civilization and shut down the Safeguard. After hearing his story, Zuru and the rest of her team join Killy and embark on a journey in search of the Genes that could prove to be mankind's last hope of survival.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Killy Main

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Cibo Main

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Sanakan Supporting

Hayami, Saori Japanese

Zuru Supporting

Amamiya, Sora Japanese

Tae Supporting

Suzaki, Aya Japanese

Sutezou Supporting

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Yaichi Supporting

Yamashita, Daiki Japanese

Shizu Supporting

Sakura, Ayane Japanese

Zuru's Granddaughter Supporting

Shige Supporting

Nishiyama, Koutarou Japanese

Seshita, Hiroyuki Director

Iwanami, Yoshikazu Sound Director

Murai, Sadayuki Script

Nagazono, Reiji Storyboard

Reviews

Mar 4, 2026

C__C

Recommended

It made me want to go read the manga, so I guess it has done its job...
It does a good job introduce the world building/setting. The visual has done an ok job to portrait the scale of this claustral city, although still lacking a bit compares to the manga panels I have seen. Other than these, there isn't much mentionable about it, the story is mediocre AF and the characters are flat.
Since I haven't read the manga so I cannot say if this is worth of watching for manga reader, but for those who are still hesitate on if they should read the manga, ... this is worth a watch as a pilot.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 18, 2026

SecurityHelm

Mixed Feelings

This is almost nothing like the manga, the way the world and characters are approached are fundamentally changed.
On its own, its ok. It is quite interesting with the world it sets up but it ultimately does not explore it to its full extent. Much of the exposition is told to the audience probably because of how insular the story is of the larger world. But I understand what they're going for, I enjoy them tackling Blame! through one of the isolated "districts" that Killy visits, I like how they give him this almost cowboy motif with his musical cue. This is about all I ... truly enjoy about this movie however. The characters aren't very interesting or notable, the main threat in the Safeguards isn't really that interesting without the other factions, and the animation looks cheap. Blame! is very hard to adapt without serialization, but even still this is okay to alright at best.
As its own movie, which is what I'm rating this as, its ok, but as a Blame! adaptation, this is not good.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Nov 3, 2024

CaptainSalty

Not Recommended

This was the first anime adaptation I've seen following reading the manga. That being said, as a standalone movie, this is pretty bare bones basic besides the world being quite good with its scaling. The characters feel extremely tiny and at the mercy of their world. The characters themselves however, are bare-bones-basic. They aren't likeable, but they aren't unlikeable. They're on par with an empty shell, with zero depth and here to serve the plot more than be their own people. The characters who are from the manga feel more like wasted potential, besides Kyrii who stays relatively the same in this adaptation. This is ... also the first (fully) 3D movie I've seen and I have to say the work was eh. Characters feel laggy at times, (there was a frame drop near the start of the movie. This was the movie, not my streaming platform) and they couldn't bother to make more than like 4 background character models so the duplicate villagers are extremely apparent and off-putting. However, that's where most of my complaints end that are objective enough points to judge. The score itself was amazing, Yugo Kanno composed for this movie and personally this is my first slice of his work. I'm very impressed and now have around half the soundtrack in my personal collection to listen to. The movie's premise was also nothing special, because we take the perspective of more the humans rather than Kyrii, the amount of potential we can take from the world is extremely limited and uninteresting compared to Kyrii's quest.
Now, I'll be delving into this as an adaptation rather than the standalone movie. This movie is incredibly underwhelming after reading the source material, I did not read the one volume manga, Blame!: The Electrofishers Escape, which this is based on, but even as a standalone movie this doesn't offer the watcher much else besides an interesting world and a dull story. Tsutomu Nihei's art style is incredibly gorgeous to look at and unfortunately that cannot transfer well into a 3D movie. It would be astronomically difficult though to do 2D with his style, so I understand that the struggle to make the movie was incredibly easier via 3D.
However, in the manga, the storytelling presented is almost entirely by visual storytelling. There is little dialogue present in all of BLAME!'s books, and that did not translate over to film. We will never get a true Tsutomu Nihei story that's told and shown the way it was meant to be, because unfortunately a movie told mostly through visual storytelling doesn't sit well with most people, much like 2001's A Space Odyssey. But unlike that movie, Nihei's work is incredibly interesting and unique, making it a spectacle to take in a single panel of his work. Moving on to the characters, I have no idea if they were accurate to the manga one off, but they made Sanakan a one dimensional Safeguard due to the runtime of this movie and Cibo was also changed in her introduction. The story this movie chooses to tell, its incredibly underwhelming and disappointing how much potential was missed due to the choice of having the humans be the main characters and Kyrii a supporting character. We only see a very very short step of Kyrii's goal and its not satisfying to finish watching the movie knowing this.
Overall, it was a fine watch. I was bored at few points, the voice acting was great, the score was incredible, they got the world down for what little we see, and a lot of wasted potential. I wouldn't recommend people to watch it, pick up the manga instead.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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	Poll: Blame! Movie Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) rvbrick - May 19, 2017	139 replies	by neilsif »» Dec 10, 2025 6:33 PM
	Where did Blame! 2 go? MrHoodie - Jan 5, 2020	5 replies	by askilledjerk »» Jan 26, 2023 5:09 PM
	Which is better dub or sub version of the movie? Xion69 - May 20, 2017	6 replies	by Mizmimi »» Feb 22, 2018 1:23 AM
	sequel news, if any, post here vinnipuh - May 21, 2017	5 replies	by RoryBurrows »» Feb 13, 2018 4:46 AM
	Things you must know before watching the movie ? ( spoilers ) IsekaiNekko - May 20, 2017	13 replies	by Nothingness39 »» Jun 2, 2017 2:02 PM