This is Not a City

[@TheTaleFoundry]

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[@user-yv3nt5mu9v54]

MAN , your videos are masterpeace , can you make videos about Concepts like oblivion , limbo and phantoms ? thank you again for this video

[@arnijulian6241]

Go to eastern Europe or china with commie blocks then you will see a city that is built for nobody. If you added the appearance of Megacities like New York, Tokyo, Delhi & shanghai as places that look artificial were no sane person would want to live you get Ex - Log. I Life in London that is one of the world 1st great cities as both a metropolis & cosmopolitan city it rather immense to new comers but Mega cities are on a whole other scale with often no greens areas with vast portions that have barely any people with other portions that are so densely populated that no one would want to live in either area of a mega city. You have the highest depression, mental illness & self harm rates in megacities as frankly humans are not meant to live like that. Many want to make London a mega city or claim it is but it really isn't as we have few high rises but nothing like in USA, China, India's or Japans mega cities for comparison. I am genuinely amazed that you have never been to a city as how do you manage that in the 21st century?

[@KaiserAfini]

Have you considered covering The Void video game ? Its an fascinating existential puzzle. Pathologic 2 might also be worth examining, its rich in metaphor and symbolism, while also having a unique world and interaction with the player.

[@mykalkelley8315]

Literally was obsessing over this manga the past few days, and then you upload this. What are the odds, lol 😂

[@fang4223]

Ground News is a good step forward, but you gotta remember that everyone has a bias, even folks trying to work to cut through it. It's worth at least throwing that out there.

[@approximateCognition]

i think the one thing that's been overlooked here is that the city isn't actually *dead*. throughout the manga we're shown cultures of who adapted to the city, organisms who feed on the structures, increasingly more variable builders built by builders built by builders all the way down, like a mutating von neumann cascade. some of the builders we meet are even aware; some builders are people now. it's an ecosystem. and the builders are at the top, while what they build is the raw materials upon which the ecosystem is built. the city isn't "for" anyone anymore. it just is. a big dynamic system with diverging clades and cultures and species, robotic and organic. the city truly became a jungle at last

[@ARockRaider]

I haven't read the manga, But based on what was shown and spoken about in the video, I feel like it was a disservice to the manga to compare it to nuclear weapons and burial sites. To me, the foundation sounds like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy run through AI A few times tries to build a city and the result slowly gets more corrupted as it continues to grow. The idea that the city is more populous than ever actually makes the setting much more intriguing to me then the idea of A simple eldritch city with A handful of people scurrying at the corners.

[@Bluedragon-iz3oo]

So nature, but instead of just plant cells and animals cells, they get metal and plastic as well.

[@rossbob4215]

Great ending to your comment✨

[@rossbob4215]

@@Bluedragon-iz3oo at the rate we’re going, soon we’ll have that irl if we don’t already lol

[@JB52520]

Also, there's the substrate for the Netsphere. I don't know the story well enough to know what minds it holds, but it's possible that the structure of the city could be more about the Netsphere's computing needs, with any resemblance to human architecture being a vestigial artifact of the building process.

[@syttemis3]

"This is what happens when humanity betrays itself." gold

[@Ebani]

If they're not human how can they have betrayed humanity?

[@AnomalousVixel]

​@@Ebani Ultimately, all of BLAME! began with a faction creating Silicon Life, a faction setting the Safeguard to exterminate anyone without the Net Terminal Gene, and that first faction unleashing a pathogen that eliminated the Net Terminal Gene from the human genome. This is the betrayal in question.

[@saint037]

that was Tale Foundry warning us that he and robots like him will take over because of our own failings

[@stone-hand]

This is what happens... When an architecture student that can draw people discovers the nature of most of an architect's clients.

[@LoneTiger]

@@stone-hand Architect boss: _"Your designs will never be published."_ Nihei: _"Hold my beer."_ +Draws "Blame!" manga+

[@jackmesrel4933]

The moment I saw the thumbnail, I knew it was going to be about Blame, can't wait to leave work so that I can see this video (EDIT: I finally saw it, great video as always, and yeah, Blame has become unsettlingly relevant in today's AI emerging age)

[@31webseries]

Same! Instantly stoked!

[@red_laurel]

Same, such an iconic setting

[@homer3817]

Same

[@Leto85]

It's been two hours. Have you left work yet?

[@jackmesrel4933]

@Leto85 getting home, the moment I have dinner ready I'm watching it XD

[@epiendless1128]

This reminded me of a 1968 Star Trek comic I had as a child: "Invasion of the City Builders" where the crew find a world covered in unpopulated city. The story has its flaws, but the tale of how aliens automated everything until their machines began to design themselves, resulting in unstoppable city-building machines, sounds rather familiar and ahead of its time.

[@msmaria5039]

I'm going to find that comic.

[@JTByrd386]

The algorithm is not new, but it has grown tetrationally.

[@BaronVonMott]

My grandma actually gave me some old retro comics years ago, and one of them was that Star Trek story! I remember it really made me stop and think about the danger of humanity being so creative and curious, that we might accidentally end up making ourselves obsolete.

[@handlesshouldntdefaulttonames]

Blame and the Star trek Comic are both likely to be inspired by E.M Foresters 1909 Short Story "The Machine Stops"

[@JTByrd386]

@@handlesshouldntdefaulttonames A favorite of mine, and constantly on my mind since the quarantine.

[@hazrust]

The thing that replicates patterns without any understanding of it is truely terrifying

[@CurrentlyDuck1]

Yeah, it resembles what came before but possesses none of the purpose, and now it lives in an uncanny valley of runaway replication. Eventually, it just starts replicating its earlier replications and it spirals down infinitely into a meaningless distortion that has no humanity to it

[@tahunuva4254]

Me watching sports be like:

[@spacecowboy5486]

So AI art?

[@tahunuva4254]

@Cordelia Wagner: yeah, that's another good example

[@editordimentio]

That’s just AI

[@NotPork]

The crazy part to remember is; in BLAME!, there are more humans alive than have ever been. By a factor of unimaginable proportion. They just can't find each other. They're more than a lifetime's journey away from the next tribe, and unable to venture far from their food source.

[@y.matocinos8448]

In the Space Battle forums, people have even tried throwing different fictional universes and even several Warhammer 40K factions and races to try and control the City. Despite all the absurd coping and calculations, the results are almost always this: "Lost, presumed eaten by locals." And it is not even a joke. That is the MOST LIKELY OUTCOME.

[@Pandor18]

JFC, I need to read Blame again

[@emperorgalaxian6573]

@@y.matocinos8448 So even 40k, THE #1 "Curb-Stomp practically everyone else" series when dropped in discussions...aren't able to conquer the place. Holy Jesus.

[@y.matocinos8448]

@@emperorgalaxian6573 As quoted by a user when someone asked if a billion Imperium of Man can control the City: "To give an idea of the sheer size of the City. The spherical portion stretches out to the orbit of Jupiter, which is 744 million kilometres away from the Sun. This gives it a volume of 1.7e+27 cubic kilometres. If you want a single Guardsman per cubic kilometre, you would need 1.7e+27 Guardsmen. Dividing that by a billion, the Imperium of Man would need to have 1.7e+18 Guardsmen or 1.7 quintillion Guardsmen. I don't think they have that many. Besides which, 1 Guardsmen per cubic kilometre is not going to let them win. It's still not enough force concentration to overwhelm the City." The funny thing about it is that even if the forums would disregard the ridiculous mass and size of the structure (theoretically the size of Betelgeuse, theoretically the size of Jupiter's orbit, and with some parts theoretically reaching the Oort Cloud), what about the Megastructure? Gravitational Beam Emitters are needed to destroy the material in the first place because of the gravity furnaces allowing it to be indestructible without the mass turning into a massive black hole. And if those very gravity furnaces can regenerate on their own, what's not to say the whole City can't regenerate by itself as well? And even if you could meet a new person every couple of years, it could either be Safeguards or Silicon Life. Safeguards have GBEs of their own, as well as GBE shields to block said shots. Same goes for Silicon Life, who even have melee GBE weapons that have the same destructive output, like swordwaves. And in terms of individual power-scaling, the characters of BLAME! are ABSURD. I won't spoil so much, but Killy's GBE's Level 1 shot has a recorded range of 70 kilometers. We don't know if that's the minimum, the average, or the maximum range. And Killy's fired GBE MAX shots several times, but we are not given any statistics on how destructive that is. We only SEE the results via the illustrations. Even if a lot of theory-crafting and implications are needed to wrap our heads around the manga, those theories and implications are terrifying, and no one will understand fully until they read the manga themselves.

[@HonestDepression101]

I didn't know that there were more humans in Blame. I only watched the anime tho. That changes things a lot.

[@wumbojet]

The second i saw the thumbnail i immediately thought: "Oh, finally, a Tale Foundry BLAME! video".

[@BiomeWalker]

It's always fun when another media analysis channel decides to do a video on Blame!, you never know what they'll focus on; the expansive architecture, immense implied and experienced time for the characters, foreboding future, character designs, Kili's gun, anything. For such a comparatively short series with so little dialog, it has so much to it.

[@damonhawkes2057]

That message goes so hard. "We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. This place is best shunned and uninhabited."

[@DudeInADinoOnesie]

The parallels of how the AI builders work and how AI works now is shocking. AI can talk to communicate with you, create images, songs, and mimic people’s voice by taking samples of what they’re trying to do and creating a sort of Frankenstein’s monster as a result

[@addison_v_ertisement1678]

You guys are actually comparing this to Frankenstein? Really?

[@DudeInADinoOnesie]

@@addison_v_ertisement1678 what’s wrong with that?

[@benjamindebo9283]

Generative AI taking the corpses of stolen art and sewing them together into a new form of soul less art. Naw there's no parallels there, nope, no.

[@addison_v_ertisement1678]

@@DudeInADinoOnesie A song made by AI isn't going to slaughter townsfolk.

[@DudeInADinoOnesie]

@@addison_v_ertisement1678 I was saying more like the idea of different parts being put together to make something since I couldn’t think of anything else to connect how AI works

[@zolden37]

The title made me think you were going to talk about Construct cancellation order. It’s film about robots trying desperately to build a city dispite the orders being terminated for months. It really dives into the complex ideology of following your instructions to the letter to your and everyone else’s detriment. This city is being built for no one.

[@mme725]

Never heard of this, but now you gave me something interesting to look into. Thanks!

[@zolden37]

@@mme725 Your welcome. Its a really good short film.

[@chasethemaster3440]

Oooo I think I know that nice

[@tahunuva4254]

For me it was reminiscent of the Iterators in Rain World. They're not empty (in fact full of evolved and deadly wildlife), but they've got such weird, alien layouts. Sky-high chimneys, ladders too tall for you to climb, industrial architecture with seemingly no purpose... It's definitely not a city built for you. Also the 2d medium probably helps.

[@simonus5039]

Sounds like the beginning of Wall-E - a robot desperately trying to build a city long after humanity is gone and all

[@runningthemeta5570]

This series sounds terrifying purely because of the city itself. Like the thing that terrifies me the most is that room the size of one of Jupiter’s rings being where Jupiter used to be.

[@phftheebonidiot637]

Even tearing all of sols planets down to nothing, thats no where near enough mass to build something so large. Im curious if the story accounts for that in some way. Planning to read it now though.

[@DarthBiomech]

@@phftheebonidiot637 IIRC there's no direct explanation, but it is suggested that The City uses some lovecraftian clarketech to both not let the city to collapse into a black hole under its own weight (it is estimated that it extends out to the Oort cloud by now and outmasses half the galaxy) and to get all this building material, which also I think implied to be gathered from the _alternative timelines,_ Appertuse Science-style.

[@boppertron4929]

Holy shit thats a complete nightmare, now I'm more convinced by arguments that the strongest and biggest fictional armies would be unable to conquer this place. Its so big and automated that it undoes any amount of progress, slowly or with abrupt force. I watched the movie on Netflix and felt like I was missing something, now I understand the movie much better.

[@soundcloudpandapandawa2997]

​@@boppertron4929 do you think it's possible a human in the future is born with the gene to control the city within reason and become immune to the virus that renders this ability mute. Cause supposedly at one point humans were able to control the city but due to a plague it altered humanity's DNA and the city no longer registered them as legal citizens. It became hostile and here we are.

[@handzze7341]

@@DarthBiomech The near a galaxy worth of mass calculation IIRC was if the city was made out of *air.* And the city is most definately not made up of only air. And also I think it only accounted for the layered parts of the city. Which is up to around Jupiter orbit.

[@brainflash1]

"This is no mine. It's a tomb."

[@catbatrat1760]

That sounds familiar. Where's it from?

[@addison_v_ertisement1678]

​@@catbatrat1760Lord of the Rings series.

[@thejudgmentalcat]

​@@catbatrat1760The Mines of Moria, LotR

[@Ebani]

@@catbatrat1760 Boromir

[@davejohansen8603]

This kinda reminds me of a thought I had about remote controlled aircraft carriers. Imagine how spooky it would be to infiltrate a carrier only to find that there are no doors, windows, or any human-centric interfaces. The formidable ship sending drones that have been wreaking havoc on your country, is in itself completely unmanned. I mean, it certainly makes your job of stopping it a little easier considering you're the only one there, but it would be a strange encounter to be sure.

[@VidkunQL]

Remote-controlled, or autonomous? There would almost certainly be passageways, for robots. Try designing passageways without the usual assumptions such as ventilation, lighting, safety, uniform size... Would there be anti-interloper systems? Write it.

[@wesleystockford2616]

Kinda like the multipede weapon platforms in Appleseed, needing to shut down the ai controlling them and bypassing it's defence systems

[@davejohansen8603]

@@VidkunQL honestly I was just thinking it works like other military drones. No place for people to really take control on it. Just a bunch of big slabs of metal with a whole lot of electronics and engines inside. But yeah the more I think about it, the more interesting it seems like it could be. I was thinking of writing some scifi for a while. Maybe that's something I can include :D

[@arthurhill8185]

to be honest, I think recommending this series by starting with the backstory kind of undercuts a lot of the power it has. It's so impactful just going on with no idea what's going on and seeing these mysterious structures and wondering how they fit together.

[@Pandor18]

well, then dont do that

[@schemingbanana2213]

Haven't read Blame but the tower with increasingly abstract architecture and uncanny emptiness remind me a lot of the city from Girl's Last Tour.

[@FairbrookWingates]

Oh my, yes! I've only seen the first few episodes. Thank for the reminder to pick it up again!

[@thebeesknees1162]

Girl's Last Tour draws inspiration from Blame and has a lot of little references to it.

[@makinshort101]

This scenery painted by Blame is so unique and recognisable I really hope other interpretations of this or similar things pop up in other medias

[@thecyanpanda241]

This concept is definitely going to be a location in a Destiny themed dnd location for my campaign. A massive city that sprawls infinitely into the planet of Venus, with seemingly no creators in sight. It's clearly Vex, but none of them are in sight.

[@AnomalousVixel]

it's pronounced "blam" - Nihei just didn't know how English works. Anyway, the Jovian Void is about halfway from the sun to the surface, according to the infographic floating around, so the City's diameter is around 20.8 AU or 3 billion kilometers. The ENTIRE STRUCTURE is a whopping 64 AU.

[@mrnohax5436]

my brain cant brain because of the sheer size of the structure let alone have a whole room where a freaking gas giant use to be

[@Pandor18]

Blame!, Girls' Last Tour, and Yokohama Shopping Log are series that have profoundly impacted me. They masterfully balance a delicate line between despair and iyashikei. In these stories, the scale-whether in terms of time or space-emerges as a protagonist in its own right (special mention to Junk Head)

[@Bergensape]

It reminded me of SCP-184, recommended read (or watch on KZbin), it's basically an artifact that expands space around it, filling it with similar structures and objects, but left uncontained it keeps generating more and more space with objects and structures making less and less sense

[@y.matocinos8448]

Funny thing about it is that it considers EVERYTHING as a room, including the entire universe. This basically leads to SCP-184 becoming one of those potential SCP-001 entries, because its anomalous properties can create the very anomalies the Foundation is trying to contain.

[@Blue2x2x]

The city building reminds me of the "Paper Clip" AI theory. Where if you teach an AI robots to make paper clips and noting but paper clips. Eventually the robots will run out of steel wire, and will teach itself to use something else to fulfill its programming to make paper clips. First might be garbage and waste, then the iron and steal part of the factory, then any materials around the area, to even people would be turned into paper clips.

[@BlueSpirit422]

The universal paperclip game is soooo good

[@xyreniaofcthrayn1195]

It may even cannibalize itself to make more paperclips...

[@RealCodreX]

And how will it teach itsrlf if it never learned to teach itself? Theory busted, I would say.

[@IamAlleycat]

@@RealCodreXyou underestimate AI

[@NobuExp]

The fact that you put this much effort on this video for a manga series that everyone barely know is amazing.

[@jdpowell6405]

I read Blame! at a very important time in my creative development. The dense and lonely art impacted me and was a great introduction to Oppressive architecture. (Fun fact ‐ it was not intended to be called "Blame" but "Blam!" and was mistranslated." So nice to see this manga getting some attention.

[@TeeKing]

"There Will Come Soft Rains" springs to mind. Eerily, it's set in 2026, which sounded like the distant future when I first read it in the mid-60s.

[@Stormbringer178]

i understood this videos theme from the thumbnail. one of my favourite manga of all time. thanks as usual for your job.

[@82dorrin]

50,000 people used to live here, and now it's a ghost town.

[@richardconnor2871]

An anime you might be interested in, is "Girl's Last Tour" which features a pair of girls who are the only humans left in an enormous city, that has been completely abandoned, and left to what automation exists to construct and rebuild it... And, it's implied, they are the last humans anywhere in the world, period. It's just a mood piece, there's not really anything too malicious or thrilling. It just explores the world, and lets you soak it in with our two girls with their somewhat minimal dialogue.

[@TheAstralBlade]

I had a dream with a somewhat similar setting before - the endless city of pipes and metal and rooms and corridors, with endless pits and strange architecture.... abandoned except for the rotting shells of robots and machines.... and anthro mice people barely surviving on the little scraps of wood and food they could find, but quickly running out. There were also weird chimera owl robot monster things that would chase them and turn them to stone. Wack

[@DarthBiomech]

The only thing I'd contest is that Blame is neither dystopian nor oppressive. It's _posthumanist_ to it's deepest core. The City isn't a city anymore, nor is it dead, or a tomb, or a memorial to human hubris or some other vapid thing - it's an ecosystem of proportions that a human mind is just unable to comprehend, self-building for a purposes that just do not include humans in the scope anymore. Characters of the manga take years to walk up a staircase. Centuries to travel to another part of The City. But The City is both empty and bursting with life and activity on an unimaginable scale. The room the size of Jupiter looks incomprehensibly, impossibly vast, but then you need to remember that it in itself is just a tiny, absolutely insignificant part of The City.

[@handzze7341]

this^

[@miyawedaplayer1237]

5:25 my favourite concept idea is the dull block city that is built to allow the wind to create haunting howling sounds throughout

[@prepthenoodles]

The epitaph for the nuclear wasteland is strongly reminiscent of Shelley's Ozymandias poem: I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said-“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

[@craz2580]

The thought of an ever growing building that makes itself like a living being has always been one of my favourite ideas

[@ravena8408]

Check House of Leaves or Piranesi.

[@OhhCrapGuy]

Just did the back of the envelope math, and... anything spherical with a radius of Jupiter's orbit with approximately half the density of a city *should* exceed its own schwarzschild radius. i.e. it would collapse into a black hole instantly.

[@tforter]

I believe they said it was empty

[@aleksatanaskovic9172]

​@@tforterthe gaping hole where Jupiter used to be is empty. The rest of space in our solar system isn't.

[@diabeticvodka9312]

It would've collapsed if not for the gravity furnaces which regulates the gravity being produced by the megastructure (countless computer chips stacked on top of each other in higher n-dimensions). Gravity furnaces are the ones responsible for why the the countless layers of the city still feels earth-like gravity.

[@OhhCrapGuy]

@@tforter actually, turns out if you replace the entire solar system with air, that means "get rid of the sun and the planets and fill an entire sphere the radius of the solar system with air", you will still end up with a black hole. Fun fact, the Schwarzschild radius of the observable universe is almost exactly the size of the observable universe. Another fun fact: The Hubble Constant, representing the red shift of the universe, can be expressed in Hertz, and the wavelength of that frequency is the size of the universe. 3rd fun fact: both of those are 100% coincidences. 5 billion years ago they weren't close, and in 5 billion years they won't be again.

[@thepacific2933]

​@@OhhCrapGuyin reality, yes, in BLAME! theoratical gravity particles, gravitons are proven and is harnessed by technology. The self building city regulates its gravity and does not collapse into a black hole. There is also a possibility that in BLAME gravitons are really weak infinite energy sources, which then can be used to convert into more matter.

[@TheFrostedfirefly]

What's wild is, the tech bros will preach about how the AI is "improving", how it's getting better and better, good enough to replace real humans, and to an extent, this is "true", but it fails to account for something... Once AI has replaced humans, what do they think AI is going to base it's produce off? AI is only as good as it is due to human input. It isn't *truly* "intelligent, otherwise AI would be the one making suggestions to us, unprompted. The reality of "Blame!" doesn't feel so fictional after all.

[@tahunuva4254]

But humans too have to be prompted (birthed) in order to make suggestions.

[@candlestone5397]

in fairness, all art is based on other things. Thats simply how the human brain works. There are no ideas in a vacuum. Before a human becomes an artist, they learn through exposure to art, and knowledge about art. All Modern art is built upon the art of its predecesors. we look at art, take what we like, and add it to our own. The best we can get without doing that, is either Photorealism, or more likely, Stick figures. Which are both still based on other things. Ever realize that Cave Paintings Look Exactly like Kindergarten Art?

[@plaidhatter1674]

​​@candlestone5397 It does These things yes, but for what purpose. If left to its own devices without a directive, AI will do diddly squat. It also requires human beings to dictate if what it makes is any good. Its program allows it to replicate patterns, and mimic agency, but without humans to make its first references, it would have nothing. AI lacks agency, and that agency requires true sentience.

[@candlestone5397]

@@plaidhatter1674 why do we make art? For a lot of folk its because they are told to, and paid for it. who tells a human if their art is any good? Other humans give them validation because without it they might stop altogether. What does a brain do if the part of it that wants to create art doesn't do anything? All the brain does is replicate patterns. We only have as much agency as our brains can comprehend. If you can't imagine it, it can't be done. Period. The only thing separating brain from computer aside from what it is made of, is that the brain is more advanced by far. And considering how fast we are advancing on that front, it won't be true forever.

[@TheYeetedMeat]

⁠​⁠@@candlestone5397Yeah, but I'm pretty sure AI art programs (in their current state) can't make value judgements or actually recognise flaws in 'their own' work.

[@johnnydarling8021]

*Great video* As a long time fan of Blame!, I'm thrilled to see it become the subject of a Tale Foundry video. Much better than the Netflix adaptation.

[@InaudibleHippo]

As soon as I saw the thumbnail I knew "ITS ABOUT BLAME!!!!" ❤❤❤

[@vivekgogate3068]

This gives me major Girls last tour vibes. Definitely not similar, but the focus on architecture and how humans destroyed themselves is common in both. Difference being it doesn't have a hopeful ending....

[@M2607d]

yepp tkmz did said that Blame! was one of the inspiration

[@dbboy2133]

YES! Thank you so much for making a video about this. Blame has so little online coverage. It's insanely underrated.

[@bbittercoffee]

Reading Blame was the worst mistake I've ever made because when I finished all the chapters (including the spin-off/au ones) I was just left with a Blame sized hole in my chest And I don't think there will ever be something that can fill it, short of a new chapter which I don't think will ever come

[@transfern7]

I love you tale bot! You always draw attention to the coolest aspects of world building!!

[@yaomingas5425]

If you ask me, it is pretty badass to have a solar system sized tomb for humanity

[@joshualin5476]

Blame is a masterpiece. Glad you're covering it!

[@MegaHighmax]

DoroHeDoro anime made a job so damn well done in creating a really amazing cityscape, you should watch it just for the architecture they created, it feels extreme but at the same time it feels like something that could actually exist in real life

[@v.v365]

The intro reminded me of my thoughts about the design of what we’ve gotten to see of Celestia in the game Genshin Impact, the empty feeling, the strangely crumbling architecture despite supposedly being a sort of Heaven, the fact that we have lore about a bunch of gods above the gods among mortals, but we’ve only seen one character residing in Celestia, the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles, and the question of what exactly is she supposed to be sustaining?

[@BBB_bbb_BBB]

Highly recommend Knights of Sidonia by the same author. He is able to make the horrifying beautiful, similar to Clive Barker. I also love the story of how he designed the mecha by buying pla-plate and locking himself away as he obsessed over making a model instead of actually working on the manga.

[@cinthiagoch]

At first I thought you were going to talk about "City", a work of art from Michael Heizer. It's an actual city, but empty and with some odd building choices. Less than 500 people are aloud to visit it every year. Jacob Geller has a very interesting video about it called "Art for No One". It's not just about City, but it takes up most of the video (that I can remember), and it's what stood out for me the most.

[@alexjohnson6069]

"I am ozymandias king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty and despair"

[@joyous18]

I mean, technically, the worksare still there 😂

[@Hellqueen135]

This kind of reminds of a game that I used play few years ago, it's name is "LET IT DIE" and if I remember correctly, there were these long empty hallways after u have killed all of the small enemies, kind of reading the player for a big fight, this manga is kind of giving that same vibe, without giving the reader a fight or anything that would break the tension

[@megolson9888]

This is the fastest I’ve ever gotten to see a Tale Foundry video. Nicely done and thank you for sharing this with us.

[@ThePumpkinPuffin]

Someone really needs to take this robot to see a city.

[@Lumberjack_king]

0:56 they should really extend Talbots track so he can go places or give him cameras

[@buckethat7585]

Like a podcaster💀

[@Lumberjack_king]

@@buckethat7585 i mean maybe lol it would be interesting expand the story

[@BIacK_JacK_]

NEW TAKE FOUNDRY VIDEO!

[@somepersonyouhavenoassocia1856]

My brain: Ooh! Naissance! Everyone else: BLAME! So we basically had the same thing

[@Korii_01]

This city really reminds me of Rain World's build style

[@wyvern5438]

Tale Foundry doing a video on my favorite manga? How?!??

[@rafnael8807]

It's always a dead giveaway that they're talking about Blame when "large raging abandoned cities that aren't cities and are built by creatures called Builders" are the topic. It's so nice to be able to guess

[@kris1123259]

Tsutomu Nihei is a funny author, his first series was huge hit, universally praised, a true manga classic. But everything he has done since has yet to even come close to reach the heights of Blame!. I'd even argue he just keeps getting worse with the years.

[@jalpat2272]

Sidonia quite decent tho his Post-Post Apocalypse and "Industrial" setting and story are rehashed a lot and obviously feel repetitive but the art always the main course .

[@WatermelonTombo]

Good to hear that Odysseus got an entire city, even if it does sound uninhabitable

[@igamewhenimbored7696]

Tsutomu Nihei is visionary My god I love his works

[@RougeMephilesClone]

So happy to see a big channel cover this manga in the modern year. Blame! (and its short prequel, I'd say) is a hidden gem. Just don't watch the movie. I'd like to note, without much detail to avoid spoilers, that the furthest reaches of the City go beyond even nonsensical AI architecture. The City's edge incorporates biological imagery, despite having no reason to use materials that are any different from the rest of it. At some point, running on the same inputs for long enough caused the builder AI to completely lose the plot. It's surprisingly prescient for a 90's work, even if the story is mostly in service to the art.

[@gandelfdev2556]

2 of my favorite youtubers talking about blame … this gotta be a dream

[@Del_1710]

Another banger video, love your work

[@doomrevolver8387]

I Can't believe you just made a video about my favourite scifi story. Thank you xD amazing video.

[@denisejeffries2675]

Thank you for introducing me to another manga that I did not know about! I am so excited to get a copy of this to read it for myself! I’m curious, is there merchandise with the image of Talebot ? If not, there needs to be!

[@Juansonos]

I not sure of Talebot, but I remember seeing Tailoid (the little guys) keychains available. Edit: correcting an auto-correct.

[@AxelLeJeff]

To borrow a phrase, it's a paper-clip factory.

[@LevtoChannel]

Talking about a city, you should pay a visit to The City of Project Moon universe. Each district has its own unique singularity, the disease of mind of its citizen, and let's not forget that there's Nothing There!

[@absurt11]

There is a story similar to this concept - "The dauther of the Looter" ("Córka Łupieżcy") by polish writer Jacek Dukaj, about a alien city mimicking every city that has ever existed, including previous universes. Allowing civilisations to gain knowledge and leading them to their doom

[@Kholan95]

BLAME! is iconic in its architectural horror. I recommend the manga to anyone that might appreciate it. Any if you want some closure afterwards and some explanation, check out Noise. It's only 1 book.

[@Kholan95]

To me, BIOMEGA can also serves as more of an origin point to the start of "the city," while noise explains the contexts of the other characters.

[@OmegaEnvych]

While the comments here are mostly about the world of Blame! which is one of most fantastic sci-fi universes I've ever seen (and I, who normally doesn't collect things for collecting sake, for a record, have two editions of Blame! in two different languages), what absolutely astonished me in this series is that Blame! wouldn't work as a movie or TV show or a game or a book. It only works as a comic book. Words cannot describe this world. Motion would make world loose its stillness, action would remove sense of solitude. City is perfectly captured by artist's pen. There were several attempts to adapt Blame! as a movie or a series of shorts. All proved to be either mediocre or failed projects altogether. Netflix adaptation is closest... but it's not the same. Beauty of Blame! is in the fact that only force that moves in the City is the Reader. As a reader, you can spend as much time on each page as you want. You can glance across several pages in seconds, or spend several minutes looking at a single page - it's all on you. And it's beautiful...

[@Geebees93]

When I saw the art style I was like "No way. Not a chance." Then when I saw the characters I was like "BLAME!?"

[@marcosantoro7465]

I love Blame! It's always been fascinating to me. And scary. The first time I read a few pages I was so confused by the artstile I felt physically sick, and yet I came back at it times and times again. Great analysis, really!

[@ApahtieParty]

Blame! will always be peak 🙏🏽😭

[@Fallkhar]

Tsutomu Nihei is such a brilliant artist. I am so glad I found out about him.

[@intellectually_lazy]

man, i gotta thank you. just the title of this video essay gave me a freakin' sweet idea, and no it's not about an empty city, but it is pretty absurd

[@thetravelerofworlds8359]

You should look into the game "NaissanceE". It's an exploration based platforming/puzzle game that takes heavy inspiration from the manga "Blame!" as it explores the idea of megastructures that seem to be built for nobody at all, or at least... nobody human.

[@geist95dlr]

0:24 sort of looks like the Village Hidden in the Rain from Naruto.

[@johnathanclayton2887]

Reminds me of the Solstice-5 short film. Machines keep on building, their purpose forgotten, ambivalent. It's on KZbin, I highly recommend.

[@chrissbasement169]

Hehe i knew it from the title Glad to see Blame get more recognition Its not obscure but man Its not as popular as it should be

[@Omegaroth666]

"It's wear Jupiter used to be" is likely the confounding and intriguing phrase I've ever heard lolz

[@kmrose4741]

LOVE the long term nuclear waste warning messages. So happy you referenced them!!!

[@tomaszchudy8503]

Whats crazy is the scale of it like theres an elevator ride that takes 800 hours

[@user-iv1od1qm7q]

Thank you so much I've been looking for this story for a few months.❤

[@yggdrasilburnes]

The Megastructure of BLAME!/BIOMECHA Edit: I KNEW IT. Edit 2: So, the Megastructure was, at some point, entirely practical. It was, for a whole millenium at least, entirely habitable and designed for logisitcal coherence, but... after such an unbelievable span of time, the building machines responsible for outward expansion themselves have simply gone senile. Years pass with every comic panel, and countless swathes of space are purposed as nuclear reactors, refrigeration, water storage, mining long since defunct, breeding grounds of silicon life and pockets of human civilization. It was not that it wasn't supposed to consume the solar system- the sun became an interior dyson sphere at some point, if it even still burns, but the Builder's memory and logic simply decayed as they ran ceaseless. Humanity did forget about them, but they were doing exactly as were designed. Additionally, the Net Gene is not, anymore, supposed to fix the builders. That ship has sailed by the time of BLAME!. The Net Gene allows transcendence from physicality, it is the only escape from the city and it's brutalist horrors. It is the only place grass still grows.

[@MTTT1234]

I kinda imaged that the sun is stil burning in the center of the solar system, while the 'city' has become a massive structure surrounding it, like a solid dyson-sphere. And the hollow sphere around the sun is used to collect both the releasing gases and sunlight from the star, converting it to building material (you know, e=mc2), because otherwise, where would the builders at that point even get building material from?

[@handzze7341]

@@MTTT1234 Nah, the sun cannot possibly provide enough energy and material for the scale that the City operates at. There are running theories that suggest the City get building materials through alternate realities and mines dark matter for energy by using gravity furnaces. Gravity furnaces are also responsible for why the City hasn't collapsed into the biggest black hole the universe has ever seen despite massively outmassing the galaxy that it's currently in.

[@Dimensions_X_Warpgates]

Hey Tale Foundry, I see you are trying to pick a title for this video, and I have one that you should go for: The City of Nowhere

[@Gfish17]

@TheTaleFoundry please don't pretend AI that can put images together is stopping You from making Art. You're not a victim and there isn't a robot ripping your paper and pencils and Brushes out of your hands or in your case Claws. Besides you are a robot who appreciates stories and art. All intelligent life be it Organic or Artificial has the right to make Art. Don't let Anti-robot humans tell you differently.

[@newdivide9882]

HOLY CRAP, TALE FOUNDRY IS TALKING ABOUT BLAME. PEAK HAS ENCOUNTERED PEAK

[@handzze7341]

SO REAL OMG

[@richarddeese1087]

Thanks. BTW: beautiful intro music. Top shelf! Worthy of a favorite movie or TV show. tavi.

[@FifthConcerto]

What if ground news goes the way of the city? What if you can't trust it in the end, because it becomes a runaway system, still involving humans, but humans doing an algorithmic dance that no longer has any connection to the original intent of the algorithms?

[@x1viper392]

Fun fact: BLAME is a tv series set in Knights of sidonia. Fun Easter egg

[@greenhydra10]

If I had a nickel for every video essayist I watch who made a video talking about this manga in the last week, I'd have two nickels.

[@nightwatch3889]

I'm so glad you covered Blame! It's so incredible

[@matteste]

As you seem to be on a manga binge, might I suggest Girl's Last Tour and its follow up Shimeji Simulation by the author Tsukumizu. Both are some rather interesting and quite weird stories. Seems to deal quite a bit with ideas of absurdism.

[@Tinkerer_Red]

congrats on 1 million team, you really deserved it.

[@johnnydarling8021]

Whatever future humanity gets, is the one it deserves.

[@c-dawg98]

Pride comes before the Fall! I guess that could also mean the pedestal of pride humans built will eventually overthrow us.

[@calebmaples7068]

I’m glad blame is getting more recognition

[@AxeMan808]

Nihei is right there top of second tier, reaching for first tier but that's occupied by Shirow, Otomo, Ito, & Hara. EDIT: NOiSE and Biomega and Snikt! (a cyberpunk Wolverine story) and Beowulf (a cyberpunk retelling) are really REALLY good too. (it feels like NOiSE and Biomega and Blame! are all more or less the same dimension - or very closely related dimensions).

[@gluelake]

For those that want to experience this setting in a more literal sense, try playing Bleak Faith: Forsaken. I normally dont recommend this, its a flawed game, but the world is heavily inspired by BLAME! and other source materials like 40k and Evangelion, and is a joy to explore.

[@catalinaplaza7909]

If anyone is interested there is also a manga called Girl’s Last Tour that takes place in a city like this, and a video game called Inside.