"BLAME!" Character List and plot synopsis
To anyone who thinks they can follow the story without reading it, you do not know what you are missing. This is what you are missing. Blame can be confusing at times. I am not sure I understand it all myself. Part of that may be that like most comics, it is written as it goes along, so it starts off pretty unfocussed and weak, and gradually solidifies it's story. Part of that is that it is complicated.
This is a pretty thorough explaination of what everyone and everything is, and their relationships to one another. Well, everything important. Some things, particularly things without names, and things which don't affect anything else before or after them, are left out. Some things which don't really matter are in, because they have names.
If you cannot read it (and WELL) you will not know the difference between the Controller and the Safeguard, or even that the Cyborgs are a separate group. You may not know that the boomerang-wielding guard of the Director of the Cyber-life Society isn't with any of those groups. Basically, going by the pictures, you'll lump large groups together, because they look similar, even though they aren't.
To anyone who has "read" Blame
without being able to really read it, tell me I'm wrong. Tell me
you knew all of this stuff.
WARNING:
This list contains MASSIVE spoilers!!! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
I'm not kidding...this
is pretty close to the whole story.
Last chance....
All names are drawn from my translation, or from Roman alphabet text in Blame! itself. A few of them (Particularly "Controller" "Father" "New Model" "Dry People" "Cyber-Life Society" "Cyborgs" and "Ship Collective AI") are debateable. Suck it.
No particular order, but there are links to each relevant entry.
People:
A mysterious traveler, searching for the Net
Terminal Gene. At times it is suggested that this may
be to cure some plague, but perhaps not. Anyhow, he
begins his search on behalf of some group residing at least 5000 levels
below the City.
Killy possesses a Graviton Radiation
Projector, which is capable of disintegrating or incinerating absolutely
ANYTHING. (Almost) It is a weapon of incredible destructive
power, and happens to take the form of a not-terribly large pistol.
It is similar to weapons used by
the Safeguard, making Cibo
suspect that Killy may be one of them. The Controller
assures her that he is not, however, he is an agent of another, older,
system.
Killy doesn't talk much. He lets his gun do the talking.
Killy is superhuman. He can withstand devastating attacks
without injury, and heals fast when he is injured. He
can continue to fight with broken or severed limbs, and can climb thousands
and thousands of flights of stairs without significant fatigue.
Killy has a conscience, which gets him in trouble on occasion.
Killy has clearly traveled a lot, and remembers much of it, but he apparantly
has some mysteries in his past.
Cibo
Cibo
is Killy's constant companion and comrade from the
middle of book 2 onward. She was the chief scientist of the Cyber-Life
Society . She tried to access the Net
Sphere without the Net Terminal Gene,
resulting in the explosion of her power source. (Which she
intended to later explode anyhow) As punishment, she was resurrected
and
left in an immobile, rotting body, which Killy finds.
This is how they meet. Cibo cracks security systems and gathers
information to help her and Killy's journey.
Cibo is killed by the Safeguard in book 4.
But her personality escapes to a part of the Net
Sphere, thanks to the help of the Controller
. She then takes over the body of Sanakan
.
When Cibo and Killy are transported mysteriously
away right before they would have battled Ivy and Maeve, they are separated,
and Killy is transported 10 years into the future,
and Cibo spends 10 years waiting for him. 
There is another Cibo in future Cave 4 of Toha
Heavy Industries. Why is not revealed. This is the first Cibo
Killy meets in the future. This "Alternate
Cibo" (as I call her) dies after she, Future Cibo and Killy
return to the present.. Her body is then
taken over by the other Cibo after Sanakan reawakens
inside Toha Heavy Industries.
Through the end of book 6, we see Cibo in 5 bodies. Her rotting
corpse, her new leggy blue-haired body, her chief scientist body, Sanakan's
body, and Alternate Cibo (Same as the second body, but better armed).
Future Cibo is, of course, the Sanakan Cibo.
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This is what Cibo looks like when she meets Killy.
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This is Cibo the super-hottie.
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This is Cibo's old body. Not bad. But I like the
new one.
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This is Cibo after she stole Sanakan's body. She
kept it for 10 years.
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This is Alternate cibo. She meets killy and Cibo
in Toha Heavy Industries. There is no explaination given or implicit
as to exactly where she came from. Cibo takes over this body after
they get back from the future, and find Alternate Cibo dead.
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Cyborgs (Silicon Life)
The
first enemies Killy fights. They are also looking
for the Net Terminal Gene . To
destroy it. They require chaos in the Net
Sphere for some reason, so want to prevent a human from accessing
it and setting things right.
Killy kills the first cyborgs he meets. He
later encounters other more powerful Cyborgs, Ivy and
Maeve, in Toha Heavy
industries. He fights them a bit, but Seu
does most of the work.
In the future Cave 4, Cibo has
been fighting more evolved cyborgs. When Killy
returns to the present, he has her weapon, to use in place of his Graviton
Projector (which, being a weapon of the Safeguard,
is suppressed.)
It is pretty clear that most characters in Blame are technically cyborgs,
but these ones, you really know it.
Ivy
Leader of the contingent of Cyborgs attacking Toha
Heavy Industries. 
He/she/it carries a massive weapon, which is essentially four swords,
with two of them spring-loaded to swing out from the middle to bludgeon
enemies. Ivy is killed by Seu. (head split by
a broken sword).
Maeve
Ivy's sidekick. More obviously female. Maeve
is cut in half by Seu, and later attached to the body
of a New Model cyborg from the future, which
came back with Killy and Cibo. Maeve is killed
by Seu (sword handle to the eye), and Killy
(deathblow with his Graviton Projector).
New Model
Descended from the Cyborgs
who invaded Toha Heavy Industries,
it is the latest model Cyborg when
Killy meets alternate-Cibo. Cibo's
weapons cannot kill them. It can heal itself by transmuting elements
from the surrounding environment into what it needs. One of them
is brought back with Killy and Future-Cibo
when they return to the present. Maeve
, who lost her legs, gets attached to it to attack Killy,
Mensab , Seu, and the Central
AI.
Dry
People
A bunch of people attacking Tettan and Yoshio's
freighter because it is hauling their stolen bodies for transplant.
They either live or like to attack freighters in the Pipe
Forest Zone . Killy first meets them after
saving one of them from some giant worm thing (one of which is later used
to attack Tettan and Yoshio's freighter).
The eye emblem on some of their foreheads suggests a possible connection
to the Cyborgs, given the similarity
to the eye emblem on the Cyborg production
facility that Killy destroys in book 1.
Controller
The
ruling level of the Net Sphere . It
tries at times to 
assist
Killy and Cibo, against
the Cyborgs, and against the Safeguard.
It has powers identical to the Safeguard, but
cannot itself control the Safeguard.
There are some human groups on the lower tier with
whom the Controller fights directly. It wants the Net
Terminal Gene to be found to stop the runaway growth of the
City. The controller agents are distinguishable from the Safeguard
by the markings on the forehead. Note that the cyborgs
generally lack any such markings.
Safeguard
The
completely independent defense system of the Net Sphere
. It kills any human who attempts to access it, or to cross
the Barrier without the Net
Terminal Gene . It can transmute any part of the
city for its purposes. It can also transform humans into its
soldiers. And it has more powerful agents, like Sanakan,
and the monster which attacks the Fishermen.
They're like "The Agents" in "the Matrix."
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Near the Megastructure
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In the Net Sphere
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The usual aspect.
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Cyber-life
Society
The rulers of The City. This is the group
for whom Cibo worked, and which is controlled by the
Director. Killy goes to them
looking for information on the City's
laborers, to see if any of them have the Net
Terminal Gene.
Laborers
The
underclass of the City. An extensive database
of information on them is held by the Director.
Killy wants to access this to see if they have the
Net Terminal Gene. A contingent of Laborers
accosts Killy trying to get him to help them overthrow
the Cyber-life Society, but they'll just settle
for taking his Graviton Radiation
Projector.
Ruler of the Cyber-life Society , and the City. He is a gigantic monstrosity of a human, with an enormous brain. One of his (normal) clones was sent to assist Cibo before her ill-fated attempt to access the Net Sphere.
The
bodyguard of the Director, or perhaps head of
security for the city....something like that. This is the most bad-ass
cyborg (Not affiliated with the other Cyborgs) we see until Ivy and Maeve
show up. Despite her appearance, she is neither Controller
nor Safeguard.
Sanakan
A
high level agent of the Safeguard , who tricks
Cibo and Killy and the Fishermen
into letting her into Toha Heavy Industries.
To do this, first she poses as a human to gain the trust of Killy
and Cibo. Then she feigns an attack by the Safeguard,
to further gain trust. She leads Cibo and Killy
to the Fishermen, and the outside of Toha
Heavy Industries. Cibo gets inside.
The Safeguard attack ensues. Cibo
dies while trying to control first the giant Builder,
and then the Safeguard's machine, but she takes
over Sanakan's body. Sanakan later reemerges, but vanishes
again when thrown by Killy into Toha
Heavy Industries (where the Safeguard is
forbidden). She regains control again when the treaty between the
Central AI and the Net
Sphere is cancelled. Her goal is the destruction of the Central
AI. Sanakan is killed by Killy
with a blast from his Graviton
Radiation Projector.
Yone
and Asako
Two
warriors of a group in the middle of the lower tier ,
who fight Sentinels (some sort of flying cyborg-monster,
possibly connected to the Controller ) for their
survival. Killy helps them by destroying the
source of the Sentinels . They are
not dissimilar to the Fishermen , and are probably
the original incarnation of that idea. They possess armor
similar to that of the Fishermen . It is
unclear if it is this which gives them their superior speed and strength,
but it is clear that it is not sufficient to protect them from the Sentinels
.
Sentinels
May
or may not be agents of the Controller .
They attack the settlement of Yone and Asako.
They are big cabbage-patch-kids-from-hell human-like flying things that
shoot beams from their faces. They are born from a great big monster
thing which Killy destroys after Yone
leads him to it.
Kumoi
and Yaki
Kumoi
is a nut who lives outside the city, and Yaki
is his traveling companion, who happens to be a practical vegetable.
He thinks Killy is a doctor come to help Yaki.
Killy helps him stop a builder
from destroying his home. Kumoi is killed by a Cyborg
after the Builder is stopped.
Builders
Robots
which construct the City. They are not
connected directly to the The Net Sphere
or Safeguard. They come in a wide variety
of shapes and sizes. Killy has a device which
allows him to stop them, and Cibo uses his knowledge
about them to learn to control them completely. She uses this
information to use a giant builder to clear a path to the entrance to
Toha Heavy Industries for the Fishermen,
and to fight off the attack of the Safeguard.
Namie
A
storekeeper below the City. Introduces Killy
to Tettan .
Tettan and Yoshio
Tettan
and Yoshio run a freighter (carrying bodies to be used for transplant) to
the City. They are attacked by the Dry
People. Tettan gets killed. Killy kills
Yoshio (who is a head attached to life support) in disgust after finding
out what the cargo was. (And then proceeds to destroy the rest of the Cyber-life
Society warehouse.)
Fishermen
People
descended from people who used to live inside
Toha Heavy Industries. They have been locked out for many generations,
and have forgotten everything about why they are there and what Toha is.
They fight the Safeguard using powerful needle-shooting
guns. Cibo helps them enter Toha
Heavy Industries, which had long been something their people had wanted
to do. But they pretty much had to to escape the attack of the Safeguard.
This was apparently all a plot to allow Sanakan
to enter. They are rejected by the Central
AI, and spared from the Cyborgs'
attack by Mensab, who transports them from Cave
8 to Cave 13 . They escape the destruction
of Toha Heavy Industries with
the help of Mensab and Cibo
. They wear armor similar to that of Seu, and
the armor that Cibo and Killy
find shortly after they follow the Fishermen into Toha
Heavy Industries.
They aren't really fishermen.
Father
The apparent leader of the Fishermen, at first. Probably
not really the father of everyone who calls him that. He dies during
the Safeguard attack inside Toha
Heavy Industries after (miraculously) surviving the Safeguard
attack outside it.
Sutezo
A younger Fisherman. He and Father "rescue"; Killy,
Cibo, and Sanakan from the
Safeguard . He is beheaded (inadvertently,
but maliciously) by Sanakan's
wings.
Zuru
Sutezo's girlfriend, and the leader of the Fishermen after
Father and Sutezo die. She is the "healer" of the Fishermen,
but really it's just a sort of Cargo-Cult medicine. She leads the
small surviving group in Cave 13.
Mensab
Ruling
AI of Cave 8. Defied the Central
AI and the Ship Collective AI by allowing
the Fishermen to stay, and by evactuating them
to Cave 13 . She has some sort of a body,
and it is repeatedly attacked by Maeve, but seemingly
to no effect. Regardless, she dies when Toha
Heavy Industries is destroyed.
Seu
A
human, who wears armor similar to that of the Fishermen.
He is a powerful swordsman, and is the protector of Mensab.
He fights for her. Whenever he is injured severely, Mensab
takes him to be restored by equipment maintained by those fairy
-things. But he loses memory each time. Seu kills Ivy
and Maeve. He dies with Mensab
in the destruction of Toha Heavy Industries
. A capsule containing his genetic information is given to
Cibo before she escapes, probably by Mensab
, although it resembles the capsule passed from Future
Cibo to Alternate Cibo when Sanakan
reemerges.
"Seu" means "shrimp" in Korean. I don't know if this is coincidence.
Central
AI
The
main AI of Toha Heavy Industries
. Dead set on teleporting Toha somewhere else, in violation
of the treaty with the Net Sphere.
It refused to naturalize the fishermen .
It has a treaty with the Net Sphere which
forbids it to move Toha Heavy Industries
. It violates this treaty, precipitating the Safeguard
attack. It is killed by Sanakan,
with a blast from her Graviton
Radiation Projector.
Ship
Collective AI
A gathering of Toha's AI's. Mensab got kicked
out.
Those
little fairy things (no name)
They
maintain the equipment used to restore Seu .
They also help Killy and Cibo
on numerous occasions. They die if they go too far from their power
source in Cave 8. Cibo
indicates that she knows this while talking to them, after returning from
the future with Killy to a point in time before the
first time she had met them. Naturally they were confused
by this.
After
leaving Toha Heavy Industries, Killy
and Cibo stumble across a group of naked dirty girls,
all identical, living in their own filth. They are being produced by a
machine which is hooked up to a person, on life support, who might be
called their "Mother." Cibo wonders why
anyone would do this, and I think it is left up to our filthy imaginations
to guess why. Killy says he's seen something like
it before. He destroys it.
Places (only those with names, or which are especially significant):
The
Pipe Forest Zone
While
riding in the transport with Tettan and Yoshio , Killy
fights off an attack by the " Dry People" in
this area.
This is the area right below the City.
The
City
The
biggest settlement Killy encounters up through volume
6. It is ruled by the Cyber-Life
Society. This is where Killy meets Cibo,
and where the story begins to acquire a plot.
The
City
The term is also used to refer to the entirety of the world in which
all these characters reside. It is built and maintained by
independent robots which I translate as "builders."
The hardware on which the Net Sphere runs
is embedded in it's structure. No picture, as all picture are of it. Except
for Toha Heavy Industries, which
isn't a part. The City is growing out of control, as a result of humans
being cut off from the Net Sphere, which
is why the Cyborgs want to destroy
the Net Terminal Gene. They like the
city running amok, for some reason. The City is divided into Tiers separated
by Megastructures.
The
Net Sphere
This
is kinda like the Matrix or something. (Only it predates it)
Except it's backwards: humans are kept OUT, not IN. It is
a virtual world, generated on hardware which is ubiquitously distributed
throughout the City (both of them). It is
ruled by the Controller, and protected by the
Safeguard.
Toha Heavy Industries
A
massive structure which functions independently of the
City and the Net Sphere.
It is made a of a different material from the rest of the
City structures, and is even tougher than the Megastructure
(no holes are blown into it by Killy and Sanakan's
Graviton Projector battle). It is a vehicle of some sort.
Possibly a spacecraft. It is the ancestral home of the
Fisherman, who have lived near it for generations. It is ruled by
the Central AI, and the Ship
Collective AI. It is divided into 13 "caves"; each governed
by an AI.
It is destroyed by the explosion that occurs when the Central
AI teleports it into non-empty space.
The AIs governing Toha Heavy Industries have a treaty with the Net
Sphere which disallows the Safeguard from
acting inside the structure. The Cyborgs
are not bound by this treaty, and neither is Killy,
but due to countermeasures in effect, Killy's gun
will not work while the treaty is in effect. Future Cibo
knows how to counteract these, however, and can create an area where Killy
can use it
Cave 8 
Governed by Mensab , this is where
the Fishermen and Cibo and
Killy entered.
It's residents were the only ones not killed by the Cyborgs
' poison attack. Of these people, we only ever see Seu
and the Fishermen .
Cave 13
This is where Mensab sent all the
residents of Cave 8 to save them from the poisons brought by the Cyborgs
. It had no people and so was not subject to the same contamination.
Cave 4
This is where Cibo waits 10 years
for Killy after being separated by being teleported.
By whom is not revealed. Also, another Cibo,
who's origins are not revealed, meets Killy here.
Central AI
The Central AI has it's own
place. This is where the final battle between Ivy and Seu
takes place, and it is the target of Sanakan.
The
Barrier/The Megastructure 
This is the nigh-impenetrable thing which Cibo wants
Killy's gun to blast a hole in. There
are similar Megastructures elsewhere, like the one Cibo
and Killy take a less violent trip through at the
end of book 6. (Although, since Toha
Heavy Industries teleported, this could technically be point far away
on the same Megastructure as before, and in fact, given that Toha
Heavy Industries was not far from the previous Megastructure, vertically
speaking, it seems likely)
The Safeguard is activated if it notices a human
without the Net Terminal Gene attempting
to cross between the Tiers.
The City is divided into at least three, probably
more, tiers. They are at least 5000 levels high.
AT LEAST. (It is not revealed about how high one level is.
It may or may not be equivalent to one story of a building, but I assume
it to be.) The City (the other The
City) is at the top of the tier that Killy starts
in.
Elevator
After
reuiniting after the destruction of Toha
Heavy Industries , Killy and Cibo
continue on, eventually reaching another (?) Megastructure
. There is an elevator through it which is operated by a rotting
cyborg thing which talks like Max Headroom, and which has some connection
to the Safeguard, but not much. He says
they can pass through because the runaway Builder
activity has distracted the Safeguard .
Things:
Net
Terminal Gene
The
Net Terminal Gene is what Cibo and Killy
are looking for, what the Controller wants them
to find, what the
lack of will activate the Safeguard, and what the Cyborgs want to destroy. It allows a human to directly access the Net Sphere. How exactly is unclear. Trying to cross the Megastructure or access the Net Sphere without it will activate the Safeguard. The Cyborgs want to destroy any humans who may have it because they somehow benefit from the Net Sphere being in a state of chaos, and they are afraid a human might be able to right it. Those who possess it will have letters or graphics appearing on their retinas, and that is one of the cues Killy (who sees such things himself, but apparantly either isn't exactly human, or doesn't possess the Net Terminal Gene) looks for in people to see if they have the gene.
Graviton
Radiation Projector
Killy's
gun is one of these. It completely destroys just about anything.
It creates a big hole in anything in it's line of fire, eventually resulting
in an enormous explosion some distance away. The Safeguard
's more powerful agents, like Sanakan also
possess this weapon. Consequently, it does not work
inside Toha Heavy Industries while
the treaty is in force, without Future Cibo's device
to cancel the interference. The City's
Laborers want it to destroy the Director,
and Cibo wants it to blow a hole in the Megastructure.
The Cyber-life Society was unable to
reproduce the technology.
This image is of Killy disintegrating some Safeguard soldiers with his Graviton Projector.
SIMPLIFIED:
The City is a structure which presumably covers large parts of the planet (earth?), large enough that Killy doesn't know where it ends or if it ends. Throughout, it contains the hardware on which runs the Net Sphere, a computer-world, which controls the builders, the robots which actually build the city. The Net Sphere is running out of control, causing The City to grow uncontrollably and chaotically.
The Controller is the controlling level of the Net Sphere. Except it seems to lack control. The Safeguard is a sentinel which protects the Net Sphere against outside invaders. It will kill anything that attempts to enter the Net Sphere without the Net Terminal Gene. The Safeguard and the Controller have virtually identical powers, but the Safeguard is far less judicious in using them. The Safeguard is the only part of the net sphere that the Controller cannot control.
Killy is trying to find the Net Terminal Gene, presumably to stop the chaos in the Net Sphere. Cibo...who knows why she's trying to find it. Curiosity?
The Cyborgs are trying to find it so they can destroy it. They like the cahos in the Net Sphere, and in the City. They don't want it to end.
Toha Heavy Industries is a structure unrelated to the City and the Net Sphere. It lies outside it, and has completely different, anthropomorphized AIs ruling it. It has struck a treaty with the Controller, which survived a long time, but the Safeguard still sees it as a threat and is still trying (probably never stopped trying, from the look of things) to get inside.
WHO FIGHTS WHOM
Killy & Cibo vs:
The Cyborgs
The City
The Safeguard
The Controller (for a short while)
The Dry People (briefly)
The Cyborgs vs:
All humans who might hold the Net Terminal Gene
Killy & Cibo
Toha Heavy Industries & it's AIs
The City vs:
Killy & Cibo
The Dry People
The Dry People vs:
Killy (briefly)
The City
The Safeguard vs:
Toha Heavy Industries & it's AIs
The Fishermen
Killy & Cibo
Any human who tries to access the Net Sphere without the Net Terminal
Gene
The Controller vs:
Various small human factions near the start of Killy's quest
The Safeguard
Presumably the Cyborgs as well
Killy & Cibo (for a short while)
The Fishermen vs:
The Cyborgs
The Safeguard
Toha Heavy Industries Central & Collective AIs vs:
The Cyborgs
The Safeguard
Mensab & Seu
Mensab & Seu vs:
Central & Collective AIs
The Cyborgs
More as I read it. And since everything died at the end of volume 6, and they moved to a new tier, there will be a lot new.
KOREAN CARS: Hyundai -
Kia - Daewoo - Ssangyong
- Samsung - Asia
- Motorcycles
- Foreign Cars in Korea - Other
JAPANESE CARS: Daihatsu
- Toyota - Honda - Nissan - Mitsubishi - Mazda - Subaru - Suzuki - US/Europe - Bikes/Other
OTHER:
Art Page 1 - Art
Page 2 - BLAME! - Spiders
- Autochart - Photos
- Photoshop