Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 13
Source: Original (based on Blade Runner franchise)
Episode Summary: A young woman awakens in the cargo hold of an autonomous transport vehicle having lost most of her memories. The only item she has with her is an electronic device she can’t seem to unlock. As she enters Los Angeles, she has a sense of where “home” is, but the city has changed since she last remembers being there and she’s not quite sure how to navigate it. A group of thugs picks up on her confusion and, seeing the valuable tech she has in hand, they begin to pursue her.
As she fights off these organized criminals she begins to remember bits and pieces of things, including her name – Elle. In exchange for more information about the technology in her hands, she offers a local dealer named Doc Badger protection from the thugs that are hassling them both. Swordplay and martial arts seem to be part of Elle’s repertoire and she easily dispatches them all. When Doc Badger reveals that he’s been unable to decipher locking mechanism on her tech, he offers to take her to see a man named J who seems to have more of a specific knack for that sort of thing. But J is awfully familiar…
Impressions: I’d describe my first viewing of Blade Runner as “formative.” A close friend of mine invited me to his house one weekend, where we watched a video tape copy of the director’s cut – the version without Harrison Ford’s narration that had been present in the theatrical release. I felt extremely highbrow in that moment, watching cult classic film in the way it was intended to be experienced. Since then, the film has been re-released in several different cuts and spawned a recent sequel and some shorts that I enjoyed very much. I don’t know if it can necessarily be designated a “cult” classic any longer, since it’s become well known and woven into genre media culture. Heck, there’s even now an anime series set in the same universe – not simply just a cyberpunk anime series that can trace its aesthetics to the original, but one which purports to explore the troubled future world Los Angeles that proved to be a character unto itself in the original film.
Appropriately, this first episode of Black Lotus is dripping with atmosphere. The soundtrack, mellow and brooding, echoes Vangelis’ original sinewy electronic tones. The dusty, polluted air hangs heavy over the urban landscape, thrusting it into a permanent nighttime, dripping with rain. The bright neon signs that dot nearly every building and loom over the streets below hum and flicker, their words a combination of English and Japanese, echoing past Western anxieties about the potential of Japan’s economy to absorb and surpass our own. In short, judging from this episode the show seems to have a handle on what makes Blade Runner look and feel like itself.
The one issue as I see it, though, is that I don’t know that even high-quality CG animation is a great fit in this case. No, this isn’t my typical CG whining – I’m slowly making peace with the fact that we’re in the middle of a transformation (or perhaps a reshuffling) of the animation landscape that includes CG anime as a viable form. But despite the fact that this series’ CG animation eschews the typical attempts to directly clone anime’s hand-drawn feel and holds to a more medium-appropriate (and, to be fair, nice-looking) way of rendering its characters, it almost feels too clean. Blade Runner is a story that, among other things, shows off the grit and grime of a city that’s managed to continue existing in the face of continually-increasing population and pollution. There’s garbage all over the place, and shiny new technology exists alongside home-made electronic hacks and loose wires. It’s a place of many contradictions.
There are scenes throughout this episode that are beautiful because of their lighting, framing, and use of color, but many of them just don’t feel dirty and gritty enough to me. Though the atmosphere feels correct the texture does not. It’s a difficult feeling to quantify and definitely not a complete mood-killer, but it is a reminder that there’s still a ways to go before this type of animation can really stand on its own to convey nuanced visual styles.
Pros: The use of color in this episode is very striking. So much of the episode is dark due to the realities of the setting, so the moody strokes of green and red, and the browns and yellows of the polluted sky do a lot to convey certain emotions.
I thought the soundtrack was utilized well. I’d describe it an unobtrusive and moody. There are a few… somewhat odd musical cues that are worth mentioning. While Elle is fighting a group of enemies, the same smooth, flowing music continues unabated. It’s not something that I particularly mind, as I think that sort of choice is usually purposeful and meant to allow other things in the scene to provide their own emphasis, but I imagine it might sound strange not to have a heavy beat backing up the action.
Cons: I’m personally not a huge fan of using character amnesia as a way to start a story. It feels cheap and a little hokey to me. While it does provide a way to trickle important information into the narrative, allowing the audience to learn important things along with the protagonist, I feel like their are other ways of accomplishing that which don’t rely on a very specific mental situation whose actual mechanics are rarely so convenient.
I do think it’s also worth mentioning that this was clearly animated to accommodate the English-language dialog. With typical hand-drawn animation the lip-flaps are generally much less specific, so this wouldn’t be noticeable. With this style of CG, however, it’s clear that the timing and shape of the mouth movements don’t quite match up with the Japanese dialog. If this is a big issue for you, though, the English version is being broadcast on Adult Swim in the United States.
Content Warnings: Violence, including physical violence and sword use resulting in dismemberment.
Would I Watch More? – I think I’ll probably watch more because I just really enjoy Blade Runner and its storytelling universe. I think the examination of AI within a context where it has reached self-awareness will always be a fruitful well from which to draw (at least until we reach a place in our own society where this actually happens).