Blade Runner: Black Out 2022

It is no surprise that the director of Cowboy Bebop is able to produce a brilliant bridge between the first and second Blade Runner films. In 15 minutes this short is able to portray all the necessary information to link the two films, while also serving as a great companion to the other shorts created to bridge the Blade Runner series. I am glad I watched this before watching Blade Runner 2049 and whenever anyone asks me about watching the film I always tell them to watch this short first.

It is a shame that when they decided to make Black Lotus they chose the CGI ... route.

Tbh nothing much to say here a 15 min short on the origin of the Blackout which was a catastrophic global event in the Blade Runner universe that led to the the fall of the Tyrell Corporation.

The story was alright alot of things left unanswered but you could make out some parts. The animation was flawless with a respectable artstyle and the music choices were amazing. We honestly didn't get to know much about the characters so I can't say much for them either.

Overall an enjoyable short flim that was fine for the most part. If you just wanna watch more Blade Runner then ... this it.

Well it was nice seeing Watanabe direct something once again. If you enjoyed his Matrix shorts I think you'll be able to enjoy this too cause they're done in a roughly similar style Blade Runner is brimming with good animation and stylish shots.

As is, this is intended as one of the pieces that bridges the gap between original Blade Runner and 2049 and it gets the job done. You learn what Black Out is, what led to it, who did it and partly what effect it will have. On the side it also tells you about the right eye that makes it easy to tell ... a replicant from a human and that they were used as cannon fodder for wars. Even though you don't need it at all to understand 2049 cause Denis Villeneuve is a great director who doesn't need to rely on side material to fix his shortcomings it's still a nice addition to the universe.

While the visuals are great and plot is serviceable everything else in my opinion is mediocre to terrible. The characters, despite how little there is of them really annoyed me. This is in part due to how the anime shows replicants as if they are badass heroes who are willing to put their life on the line to set themselves free but I don't think it can get with that when it's a man made thing telling you how terrible humans are and causes something that will lead to a lot of innocent people suffering or dying just so that can erase information about replicants and potentially stop production for an indefinitely but not obviously not permanently. The action was beyond silly, I feel like the only idea behind it was to have one guy go around shooting the recognisable Blade Runner guns while the other one is doing acrobatics in the style of Pris albeit more exaggerated. There's no real coherence to it. The dude is just walking around killing helpless guards that offer zero resistance while the girl is just just doing dumb bullshit that looks look but there was so little effort put into making these scenes look believable that it took me out of the whole thing really hard. In one of the scenes she just starts flipping over a police car to go god knows where while surrounded by five cops and they let her do the acrobatics routine until surprise surprise everything starts to go in slo-motion and she gets shot once and dies. In general there are so many tasteless references or thematic and visual similarities in this that just feel like cheap fan service that it was getting rather annoying by the end.

All in all if you like Blade Runner it's worth seeing this at least once, the animation can be nice to look at but don't expect it to actually be good, it doesn't even stand up to the other two shorts.