Blade Runner: Black Lotus

To assess this anime series adequately, I need to think about a lot of questions first. Was it good? Well, it was as good as ever. I was intrigued by some of the scenes, even though I was rather bored overall, and the eighth episode is an absolute waste of time. Did it manage to capture the atmosphere of Blade Runner? Some of the exterior shots did, even though it felt bland overall, almost empty, lacking detail at times. What about the narrative? It has a straightforward narrative, although, at the same time, it is unnecessarily drawn out, predictable and superficial. Everything was quite truncated and badly edited at times; the shifts between a few scenes were unnaturally jumpy, without any progressive connection to the plot. The characters? Unfortunately, the characters were not very interesting either, and they lacked any more fleshing out to make them more interesting so I could understand them better, and more importantly, like them. As it was, I mostly did not care about them and did not find their interactions with each other believable. In addition, they did not make any emotional impact on me; it was not moving. The animation? It looked pretty good in the fight scenes; I liked the movement and framing, even though I was not into the constant, supposedly dramatic slow-motion, which I thought failed half the time. As I have written above, the exteriors had something going for them, especially the shots of the city. The motion capture is more like average, and regarding the characters, the overall movement is sometimes quite fluid and natural, and other times it looks a bit weird. I was not too impressed with the facial expressions when the characters were trying to portray emotions. When I compare it to some modern games and the facial expressions of their characters, this is pretty weak. What about the soundtrack? It was relatively OK even though it was not my cup of tea. After saying that, it suited some of the scenes quite well. Would I like to watch it again sometime? I do not see why not. Did it bring anything new to Blade Runner’s narrative, in my opinion? It is more like it just filled in some of the blanks in the narrative and added some information, although nothing too interesting for me. Well, the main idea “about the nature of humanity,” or rather “about androids and humans,” was all just boring. Plus, it superficially regurgitated everything I had already seen and heard. Would I recommend it to anyone? At most to die-hard BR fans who might find something interesting (references, context, etc.) that I missed, and perhaps to someone who wants to watch some pretty decent 3D fight scenes. My overall impression? A lackluster 4.5/10. (06/02/2022)