What Are the Blame! English Editions?

Two complete English editions exist, eleven years apart, and they could hardly be more different as physical objects.

The first is Tokyopop’s: licensed in February 2005, published in ten standard trim volumes from August 2005 to November 2007, matching the Japanese tankobon one for one. It was honored in its day with a Harvey Award nomination for best American edition of foreign material, then went out of print when the run ended, and several volumes became genuinely hard to find.

The second is Vertical’s Master Edition: when Kodansha reissued Blame! in Japan in 2015 as a six volume large format set, Vertical licensed that edition in February 2016 and published it in English from September 13, 2016. Early copies sold at San Diego Comic-Con that summer, two months ahead of the shelf date. The Master Edition volumes are oversized omnibuses, roughly two tankobon in one, finally printing Nihei’s architecture at the scale it was drawn for.

SIDE BY SIDE

The two shelves

Blame! volume 1 Tokyopop English cover, 2005

Tokyopop · Volume 1 · 2005

Standard manga trim, ten volumes, ISBN 978-1-59532-834-2 for the first. The painting is the Japanese cover, unaltered.

Vertical · Master Edition · 2016

Six oversized volumes from September 2016: volume 1 on September 13, then December 2016, March, June and September 2017. Print ISBN for volume 1: 978-1-94299-377-3.

Killy or Kyrii

The editions even spell the hero differently. Tokyopop reads Killy; the Master Edition reads Kyrii. The katakana name supports both, and the difference is the fastest way to tell which edition a reader grew up with.

WHICH ONE TO READ

The honest answer

For the art

The Master Edition, and it is not close. Blame! is an architecture book wearing a quest’s clothes; the large format is how the City was meant to be seen, and the edition is complete and in print.

For the artifact

The Tokyopop ten are the edition of record for the 2000s Western discovery of Nihei, with the one to one volume mapping collectors use to cite the original chapters. Out of print since 2007.

What Are the Blame! English Editions?

SIDE BY SIDE

WHICH ONE TO READ

THE FIRST WORD