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Tsutomu Nihei's Blame! Manga Gets Theatrical Anime Adaptation

The wraparound jacket band on the 15th and final volume of Tsutomu Nihei's Knights of Sidonia manga (volume pictured at right) is revealing on Friday that Nihei's Blame! manga is getting a theatrical anime adaptation. Nihei also made the announcement on his Twitter account on Thursday, adding that Polygon Pictures will animate the project.

Nihei launched the science-fiction action story Blame! as his first manga series in Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon magazine in 1997, and ended it in 2003. Tokyopop published the 10-volume manga in North America and describes the story:

Killy is a man of few words. He wanders, seemingly endlessly, through a lonely, gargantuan labyrinth of concrete and steel, fighting off cyborgs and other futuristic nightmares, searching only for something called Net Terminal Genes. And he has a very powerful gun, which he uses without hesitation whenever anything resembling danger rears its ugly head.

Who is this quiet, violent, determined man and what are these Genes he seeks? The small communities he finds tucked into the crevices of this towering, dystopic ruin hardly give him leads on his treasure, driving him to find larger enclaves of civilization where people can reveal more about the world he lives in and the quarry he seeks.

If Killy is going to find the treasure he seeks, he will need more help and information than the inhabitants of these beleaguered outposts can offer. He needs to find a larger cluster of civilization, but he'll have to survive the trip to get there, first...

Kodansha published a new six-volume edition of the manga (first volume pictured at left) in April-June.

The manga already inspired an original net anime project in 2003, and the production company Micott & Basara (Appleseed) announced at Tokyo International Anime Fair 2007 that a CG film was in the works. However, this proposed CG film project was not released before Micott & Basara filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

The manga was then animated within Knights of Sidonia: War of the Ninth Planet, the second Knights of Sidonia anime season. Specifically, the adaptation aired as an anime within the world of Knights of Sidonia, as seen by the characters in episode 8 of the second season.

Polygon Pictures also animated both TV anime seasons of Knights of Sidonia, as well as an anime compilation film.

[Via Otakomu]