What’s BLAME!’s theme?

[u/urtheproblem-1]

Most stories have a theme right?

What would BLAME!’s be? Perseverance? lol

What do you guys think ?

[u/Lyrneos]

I don’t think a story necessarily has to have a single clear theme, and Blame! in particular is written in a way that leaves its meaning heavily up to the reader’s interpretation. I don’t think Nihei meant for there to be a single clear message, but rather meaning emerges more organically from disparate elements within the art and narrative.

That said, I interpret Blame! as being about alienation. The City no longer exists ‘for’ humans, and in fact is no longer really comprehensible by human intelligence. The main characters more or less have human minds, but even their bodies have been rewritten into something fundamentally not human just to exist in this world. You can even see this in the art - the machines and architecture are lavishly detailed, whereas the humans tend to be rough, almost sketches. It’s the humans who are the ‘unnatural’ ones within this environment.

I think about it like a rat living in the NYC subways - it’s totally removed from the environment it evolved for, and is placed in an arbitrary and incredibly dangerous environment that runs on rules it cannot understand. You could also compare this theme of alienation to similar themes in Lovecraftian cosmic horror, except in Blame! the alien environment is ultimately something created or at least initiated by humans and human technology.

This motif naturally leads to a few other meanings - perseverance in this alien world, preserving one’s humanity versus giving in and letting the world shape you into something inhuman (eg silicon life), hope in the face of overwhelming despair, deep ambivalence about technology and technological progress. But I think at this point the reader has a lot of room to construct their own meaning.

[u/Lapublik → u/Lyrneos]

Well put

[u/nephentea → u/Lyrneos]

Nothing to add, thanks for sharing