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Sure, most people older than eight hate narrators in stories, as if you can't realize it yourself eh? Point is that most people can't, and most stories have a narrator as a consequence. The so called 'hidden narrator', a supernatural being that possesses all the characters at random moments and lets them say or discuss things that are completely out of character and just absurd for them to discuss, but it helps clear things up for you, the reader. You don't really say to your arch enemy 'It's you, the guy that...' when you see them now do you? Just picture yourself doing that to ... an old enemy, it's pretty stupid and you're probably cut off and punched before you can complete.

BLAME! doesn't do this, the manga is infamous for the fact that the character hardly ever speak, in reality, they speak as little as most people would speak without a hidden narrator, and as a consequence most people are struck dumb by what exactly BLAME! is about, and most diehard fans don't know it either in detail. The plot seems gigantic but at the same time it could all be power of suggestion. The author has published some details afterwards which indeed reveal the intense and consistent with what's showed machinations in the world of BLAME! of which only shards have reached the readers eyes. A lot of planning probably went into this to make it all fit.

Said author's an architect, and this clearly shows, the backgrounds are more detailed than the characters, way more detailed. The characters in this black-and-white manga are mostly pale faced and lack detail in a way, it helps to the setting that they are quite featureless. The the contrast with the extremely detailed dark background of enormous structures works here, which are drawn with disproportionally high detail and certainly for a manga series. It's not the case like with a lot of manga that there is no background and just a face if that's enough to infer the idea. There are a lot of scene with only background in fact. It couldn't be any other way, the setting is the inside of a seemingly endless and extremely chaotic structure called 'The City'. A welcome change as I'm often to lament on the fact that humans are overused in art and fiction and getting fed up with this egocentricism of man. But The City seems to have more prominence in the story than the characters, and the characters are still pretty well made. No heroes larger than life here, sorry if you like that. The characters and the entire setting is quite surreal and grotesque, be ready for a lot of mutilation and amputation. But surely in a different way than most media, it adds to the surreal feel and the grotesque, the characters hardly even seem to notice their arms torn of and remain staring stoically from it. Imagine Alice's Wonderland assimilated by The Borg.

Naturally, as the feel is a big part of value, the re-read value is practically infinite, the second time is probably better for most people. It's like Donnie Darko, the more you read, the more you seem to understand it. And it's equally cryptic and vague. The Tagline is 'Maybe on Earth, Maybe in the Future', and that sums up the idea of BLAME!, it could take place in Earth's future, but maybe not, maybe it was a distant galaxy a long time ago? It's really not a world connected in any way to our own, and that's another escape from the arrogance of man. There's not a lot to relate for here. One of the best things I ever read.