VIZ Picks Up Anime ‘Blame!’ and Web Comic ‘Homestuck’

Acclaimed sci-fi thriller from Polygon Pictures coming to Blu-ray and DVD, and popular web comic coming to print and digital, in 2018.

Hiroyuki Seshita’s anime ‘Blame!’ will come to Blu-ray and DVD in 2018 via VIZ Media.

SAN FRANCISCO -- VIZ Media announced at New York Comic Con the acquisition of the North American home video and product licensing rights to the celebrated film, Blame!, and the popular web comic Homestuck for print release — both due in 2018.

VIZ will release Blame! as Blu-ray and DVD editions, featuring an art gallery, and a Blu-ray exclusive “Making of Blame!” documentary. The film was directed by Hiroyuki Seshita, who also brought the world the complex, sci-fi action of Knights of Sidonia and Ajin: Demi-Human. Blame! debuted on Netflix this past May.

Created by Andrew Hussie, Homestuck Book 1: Act 1 & Act 2 is rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens and will be published in April.

Andrew Hussie’s acclaimed web comic ‘Homestuck’ comes to print and digital in April 2018 via VIZ Media.

Future books in the series will be released by VIZ Media on a quarterly basis. Each volume will be a deluxe hardcover, full-color edition of roughly 400 pages in length and will feature new cover art and other exclusive content. Animated content in the web comic will be rendered as frames on the print page, and every page will feature commentary from Hussie. Digital editions of each volume will also be available through partner storefronts.

Blame! was originally serialized as a manga series in Kodansha’s Afternoon magazine from 1997 to 2003. It tells the tale of a girls named Zuru who goes on a quest with Killy the Wanderer to use the Net Terminal Genes to restore a world destroyed by out-of-control automation. It was the debut work of creator Tsutomu Nihei, who went on to win the 39th Kodansha Manga Award for his series, Knights of Sidonia.

Blame! was produced by Polygon Pictures, the Japanese 3DCG animation studio widely renowned for its award-winning work on shows like Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Transformers: Prime, as well as the acclaimed Knights of Sidonia series.

In the Homestuck comic, on his 13th birthday, John Egbert starts playing a mysterious videogame called Sburb. Unfortunately, this triggers the apocalypse. Fortunately, he and his friends can create the universe anew -- if they can beat the game. But there’s another group of players trolling them to unknown ends, and a big bad who might be impossible to defeat. They’ll need a lot of teamwork, a little luck, and some inspired shenanigans along the way to make it through this mind-bending, genre-defying adventure.

Written, illustrated and animated by creator Andrew Hussie, Homestuck is one of the most spectacular pop-culture phenomena of the past decade, a unique and massive internet-based hybrid work consisting of web comics, chat logs, gifs, video games, animation and music.

Launched in 2009, Homestuck comprises over 8,000 pages encompassing such diverse genres such as action/adventure, sci-fi and fantasy, comedy, romance, and drama.

Source: VIZ Media

Thomas J. McLean's picture

Tom McLean has been writing for years about animation from a secret base in Los Angeles.