“Blade Runner: Black Lotus” (2021-22) didn’t quite earn spots on my yearly top 10 TV lists. The story, perhaps suffering from translation from the Japanese, is at times clunky. Budget limitations are indicated in one of the 13 episodes, which makes use of scenes from previous episodes.
Still, the animated “Black Lotus” got under my skin much like the original “Blade Runner” film, wherein I didn’t like it at first, but kept being drawn back thanks to the SF-noir style. I think I’ll watch “Black Lotus” again someday.
A perusal of the web indicates no Season 2 in the works, but its popularity is apparently in that middle ground where it’s canceled but ancillary products still come out. There’s a soundtrack and a making-of book, and – our focus here – Titan’s four-issue comic series “Leaving L.A.” (2022).
“Blade Runner: Black Lotus – Leaving L.A.” (2022)
Four issues
Writer: Nancy A. Collins
Artists: Enid Balam (pencils), Bit (inks), Marco Lesko (colors)
Taking Elle out of L.A.
Main character Elle, an amnesiac replicant assassin whose quest for her identity (literally and figuratively) backbones the TV show, was last seen in 2032 fleeing Los Angeles to escape Niander Wallace Jr. The new head of the Wallace Corp. (formerly the Tyrell Corp.) had built and programmed Elle, and now needs to kill her to preserve his cover-up of his company takeover.
Writer Nancy A. Collins stays with Elle as a character but changes genres, much like “Soldier” changes genres from “BR.” This is a Western and a chance to see what life is like outside of L.A. (which seems like the only metro area still standing in the “BR” future).
“Leaving L.A.” is propelled by crisp, if one-dimensional, character writing; decent drawings of Elle by Enid Balam; and colors by Marco Lesko that link it to the other “BR” comics. Elle arrives at a settlement and meets the likable leader of a “greenie” commune that creates reusable energy, his doctor wife, and a female mechanic who belies the gender stereotype of the job like “Firefly’s” Kaylee and “Gilmore Girls’ ” Gypsy.
The greenies are the good guys, and the power- and water-plant folks are the bad guys. The main villain and his henchman use and discard replicant pleasure models – useful for keeping the plant’s blue-collar male workers happy – so that further paints them as villains.
Although I appreciate that this is the Western template featuring good guys, a drifter who proves herself, and bad guys, “Leaving L.A.” goes only skin deep even by this standard. It’s a shallow but enjoyable read through the first three issues, with the conflict (“Meet me at the break of dawn”) set up. But then a twist involving a side character who I hadn’t paid attention to arrives abruptly, awkwardly, and with preachiness that goes beyond the environmentalism.
Side characters not as strong as the lead
“Leaving L.A.” has a lot of “taken for granted” elements. Certainly, I agree that the villains’ treatment of the pleasure models is bad, but it’s a shame we don’t get to know the pleasure models. For comparison, in the “BR” film, Pris is a pleasure model with many appealing traits, but she’s also a threat to Sebastian and Deckard.
“Leaving L.A.” doesn’t have time for characterization of those replicants, making us think of them as machines, like the villain does. (Of course, we kind-hearted readers feel some sympathy for them, like we do for R2-D2 and the programmed-for-good T-800.) Treating replicants this way is odd for a series about a highly humanized replicant.
Elle remains a solid heroine in the Western vein, someone who does good because it’s the right thing to do. Her attractiveness and fighting abilities would be “Mary Sue” elements except that she literally is an artificial creation of Wallace Jr., so “Black Lotus’ ” writers get a free pass there, and Collins is simply letting Elle be Elle.
There’s more to learn about Elle, as she gets to determine her identity and fate in a purer way than most of us humans are able to do. While we won’t get more “Black Lotus” on TV, the final panel indicates we’ll get more of her in comics. Even if “Leaving L.A.” isn’t an elite “BR” yarn, more of Elle is a good thing.