Wait a minute, Blade Runner content that’s actually good?? Yes, Black Out actually pulled it off! It’s pretty fun overall despite the short length and delivers some solid action scenes. Definitely surpassing anything you would have seen in the live action movies. It does a good job of showing just how twisted things are without dwelling on it too much. You can see why the replicants are making their big stand here. They are tired of being kicked around and yeah this is probably the most direct way to stop things.

The short starts with a replicant named Trixie being attacked by a bunch of guys but she’s saved by Iggy. Iggy has decided that the corporation behind the replicants needs to be stopped. Basically the older models are going to all be wiped out by the newer ones so one by one they are all being targeted. The only way to stop this and stay alive is to destroy the primary database but like most things in the world it’s already in the cloud by now. So the move is to destroy the satellite and every database installation at the same time. Fortunately the replicants have a fairly solid information network across the globe and are all in on this. If they can harness the powers of teamwork and friendship then they can pull this off and he wants Trixie’s help. She agrees to go in on this.

Keep in mind that the short’s only around 15 minutes and I think that’s counting credits and such so more like 13. That’s really just enough time for that intro, a quick origin for Iggy and then the fight. As a result there isn’t the usual fluff associated with Blade Runner and I was glad about that. It meant we could get right to the good stuff and that was most excellent. Blade Runner is a series that is usually a bit afraid to get right to the action and wants to stick to either high concepts or people talking in a room the whole time. Sometimes a bit of both to be honest here. Well that wasn’t the case this time.

It was also good to see the robots actually be able to look good here. They were able to run around at high speeds and take out tons of opponents. In the main movies they may be reasonably tough but for the most part nothing too superhuman which is a bit boring. What’s the point of being some kind of super robot when you can’t do the big feats like that right? Ultimately it doesn’t mean that the two steamroll everyone. The short is fairly realistic about how athletics can only take you so far when you jump into a whole stream of bullets. Still, it made for a good action scene.

The animation is pretty solid here. The combat is on point and the visuals work well. There are a lot of fun things done with the lighting that help to make the short very memorable all the way through. The soundtrack is more on the forgettable side but again this is a very short special so there’s not a lot of time for a bunch of themes or anything. You take what you can get and ultimately it works well enough.

The ending of the film is basically there to remind you that corporate can be delayed but they can never be stopped. It may not be the happiest ending out there but it was still enough of a win for the main characters that I’d say you can at least count it as part of a happy moment. The alternative would have meant that they’d all be hunted down immediately while this way there is time to hide and try to make a new identity. As we see in the newest film that doesn’t work for most but you like to think some have completely managed to stay off the grid.

Overall, They should focus on more Blade Runner spinoffs like this and just ditch the mainline movies. Trust me this is way better and I can only imagine that a full length anime would be really solid. I don’t trust the franchise enough yet to say that it would be amazing or anything like that but the potential would be there. The humans will probably be the most annoying characters based on how they looked here. After all almost all of the humans are evil in these films since they were bought out by the main company or just don’t want to make them mad. Either way it means that there aren’t a lot of humans that you can trust. Even if you haven’t seen the Blade Runner films you should be able to appreciate this special.

Overall 7/10