The Blame! Manga Gallery

Ten volumes, one walking man, and the biggest room in manga.

This is the paper shelf: every Japanese tankobon cover of Blame!, Tsutomu Nihei’s cyberpunk manga from Kodansha’s Monthly Afternoon, collected under the Afternoon KC label between June 1998 and September 2003. Nihei drew and painted all ten covers himself.

Read as a row, the covers are a design system: a stencilled BLAME! logo, the volume number built into the painting, and an English tagline printed on the Japanese original, “Adventure-seeker Killy in the Cyber Dungeon Quest!” Every cover below was checked against the publisher’s records and read one by one.

VOLUME 1, TWICE

Kodansha 1998 · Tokyopop 2005

The same painting, two designs

One cover image · two publishing eras

Blame! volume 1 Japanese cover, Afternoon KC, 1998 — **Afternoon KC · 1998**The original: Killy raising the Gravitational Beam Emitter, the logo low and teal, the English tagline already printed in the corner.

Blame! volume 1 Tokyopop English cover, 2005 — **Tokyopop · 2005**The first English edition keeps Nihei’s painting untouched and moves the logo to the top, with the author’s name set below the art.

Tokyopop’s 2005 edition did not redraw or replace a thing. The painting is identical; only the furniture around it moved. That restraint is part of why the original Blame! covers read as one unbroken shelf in both languages.

VOLUMES 1 TO 5

Afternoon KC, 1998 to 2000

Volume 1

Kodansha · 23 June 1998. ISBN 978-4-06-314182-5. The quest opens: Killy, the Gravitational Beam Emitter, and the first Builders.

Volume 2

Kodansha · 18 December 1998. ISBN 978-4-06-314194-8. The Capitol and Bio-Electric, Inc.: Cibo enters the story, and the Netsphere is named.

Volume 3

Kodansha · 23 August 1999. ISBN 978-4-06-314218-1. The Electro-Fishers appear, and a quiet child named Sanakan is found among them.

Volume 4

Kodansha · 23 March 2000. ISBN 978-4-06-314235-8. Toha Heavy Industries: a self contained megastructure with its own AI, Mensab, and her guardian, Seu.

Volume 5

Kodansha · 22 September 2000. ISBN 978-4-06-314251-8. The Gravity Furnace burns at the heart of Toha, and the long arc closes in the thirteenth cave.

VOLUMES 6 TO 10

Afternoon KC, 2001 to 2003

Volume 6

Kodansha · 23 March 2001. ISBN 978-4-06-314263-1. Sanakan and Cibo share a cover and a volume; the Unofficial Megastructure rises outside the rules.

Volume 7

Kodansha · 23 October 2001. ISBN 978-4-06-314277-8. The provisional Safeguards, Dhomochevsky and Iko. This volume also came in a limited edition with its own ISBN.

Volume 8

Kodansha · 23 April 2002. ISBN 978-4-06-314289-1. Inside the Megastructure at last: the road to the Level 9 Safeguard.

Volume 9

Kodansha · 20 December 2002. ISBN 978-4-06-314310-2. The long aftermath. Fourteen years pass inside the story while Killy repairs.

Volume 10

Kodansha · 22 September 2003. ISBN 978-4-06-314328-7. The Edge of the City: the final log, and the stars.

READING THE COVERS

What the row shows

The tagline

The Japanese covers carry their own English slogan, “Adventure-seeker Killy in the Cyber Dungeon Quest!”, years before any English edition existed. Nihei’s City was always drawn for export.

The numerals

The volume number is never typeset on top. It is built into each painting: a two storey “2”, the 4 inside the logo block, the 9 worked into the final volumes’ typography.

The rotation