I’m not sure why I didn’t get round to watching this TV series sooner. It’s been three years since it was released, and heck, it’s Blade Runner, after all. The 1982 original and the 2017 sequel are among my all-time favourite films. So I watched it. And while I’ve got one major gripe with it, that’s not enough to stop it being a worthy addition to the Blade Runner universe.
Black Lotus is set in 2032, after the original film but before the latest big screen entry. We follow Elle. Elle, not L, although the name seems prophetic considering Ryan Gosling’s character in the sequel was called K. Will the next hero be called M? If James Bond copyright issues have their way, then maybe not. Can you copyright a letter? Who knows? Anyway, Elle is a stranger in a strange land, that land still being the dystopian Los Angeles that served as the main location in the previous films. Having few memories of her previous life, she has to navigate the dark streets of the city and ultimately work out the truth about a memory of a man in her past.
By the looks of it, this series hasn’t received too much love from the fans. Ultimately it doesn’t do much in the wider Blade Runner timeline besides a bit of character worldbuilding for Niander Wallace and Badger (y’know, the guy who looks at the wooden horse when K shows it to him and offers to give K a horse in return). And those visuals certainly aren’t up to standard for 2021. When I first saw them, I was reminded of a Sims game. And there are some unnecessarily long flashbacks. Yet I still enjoyed it, goshdarnit. There was some good voice acting and some decent music (well, maybe not the opening and closing titles), and it still got the feel of a dystopian LA despite drawbacks with visuals. Heck, that building drop onto the flying motorbike than spun away was a nice little callback to the Akira slide in, uh, Akira. You also get references to the original with the opening eye shot and a shootout that seems to take place in the same derelict apartment area where J F Sebastien’s digs used to be.
Black Lotus doesn’t come close to the quality of the previous two films, but nonetheless offers an intriguing look at the Blade Runner world in anime format. Roll on Blade Runner 2099.