← Back to the Library

Who Is Killy in Blame!?

Killy is a man walking the largest structure ever drawn, looking for a gene that would let humanity log back into its own city.

Almost nothing about Killy is ever explained, and that is the point. He enters Blame! already ancient, already armed, already walking. His quest has one sentence: find a human who carries the Net Terminal Gene, the genetic marker that once let people access the Netsphere, the control network of the City.

The marker is lost. A retrovirus released by a cult called the Order deleted it from humanity, and without it no one can order the Builders to stop building or the Safeguard to stop killing. Killy’s search is therefore not a treasure hunt. It is the only remaining way to switch the world off safe mode. His weapon is the Gravitational Beam Emitter, a handgun that fires a line of annihilation and is one of the only things that can pierce the Megastructure itself.

THE PEOPLE AROUND HIM

A silent man, a talkative shelf

Cibo

A scientist of Bio-Electric, Inc., met in the Capitol levels. Cibo becomes the quest’s voice and engineer: she talks, hacks and negotiates where Killy simply walks and fires.

Sanakan

Found first as a small girl among the Electro-Fishers, and revealed as a high level Safeguard in disguise. Enemy, then, by the final volumes, something more complicated.

The Electro-Fishers

A human tribe of armored hunters who live by raiding the City’s levels. They give the early volumes their warmth, and the 2017 film its story.

Dhomochevsky and Iko

Provisional Safeguards, rogue defenders of one unofficial level, and the closest thing the later volumes have to a second lead pair.

THE NAME

Killy, or Kyrii

One name, two spellings

The Japanese name is written in katakana and sits between two readings. Tokyopop’s 2005 edition chose Killy; Vertical’s Master Edition of 2016 chose Kyrii. Same man, same walk.

How this Library spells it

These pages use Killy, the spelling on the Japanese covers’ own English tagline and the one most shelves in English grew up with. Editions pages note the Kyrii spelling where it appears.

Who Is Killy in Blame!?

THE PEOPLE AROUND HIM

THE NAME

THE FIRST WORD