English Dub Review: Blade Runner – Black Lotus “Artificial Souls”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Things come to a boil as Elle meets her doppelganger, Water Lily, who is intent on killing and replacing her. Meanwhile, Joseph reunites with Marlowe and the two old friends have a bloody, final confrontation.

Our Take

And so, the penultimate episode of Blade Runner: Black Lotus is here. Some of you may have stuck it out, some may have dropped out a while ago. Whether you liked it or not, the show is nearly over, and before Shenmue the Animation replaces it on the Toonami block, we have to see if Black Lotus winds up sticking the landing or falling on its face. So how did this episode pan out? Well…

Okay, to give the episode some credit, it finally gave us some action that’s been teased for quite some time. The show begins with Elle coming face-to-face with Water Lily, Niander Wallace Jr.’s latest replicant model. As the last vestige of the previous generation of replicants, Elle has to die, which leads to a pretty decent fight scene between the two. Unfortunately it’s pretty much over before it starts as Elle escapes only to run into Officer Davis. I was hoping to finally see some team-up action, but no such luck. Elle runs away and Davis just sort of…lets her? I feel like every time these two have crossed paths, Davis does absolutely nothing to pursue her, which is weird considering she’s supposed to be a competent cop.

Davis does report the run-in, only to be knifed by Water Lily. I was prepared to be really pissed considering we hadn’t seen Davis since that abysmal recap episode, but Davis appears to have gotten away for now. Lily calls Niander and requests permission to go after Elle. Wallace tells her to stand down, confident Elle will come back (because the plot demands it, of course).

Oh, and speaking of recaps, there were plenty here. Old memories of Joseph and Elle interacting with one another over the course of the season, scenes from Joseph’s past as a Blade Runner. For a brief second, I got pretty incensed thinking we’d been bamboozled into another episode of padding. But it least that stopped quickly and we get another solid fight scene.

Blade Runner Marlowe tracks down Joseph to his apartment and the two begin a gunfight. Sure we got an episode about their tense past, and Marlowe did kill the last replicant Joseph loved, but I wasn’t exactly buying the reasons behind the fight. That said, I was just happy to see some action between the two. Joseph and Marlowe’s fight ends after Joseph gets his hands on Marlowe’s shotgun and delivers three solid blows to his chest. He may be gone, but Marlowe went out like a champ. RIP.

Though nearly beaten to death, Joseph and Elle come back together once again (as expected) and are going to make one final attack on the Wallace Corporation (also as expected). The episode serves as a decent lead up to the finale, but I feel like I’ve been saying that the last few episodes. Sure, we got some fights in here, but it just feels like nothing’s truly resolved. I honestly wish we’d seen more of Marlowe so his final death would’ve had more of an oomph. I’m not saying the show should’ve been centered on Joseph and Marlowe’s past, but giving the latter more of a presence would really made Joseph killing him a lot more impactful.

So, I guess the episode was serviceable. I don’t exactly feel excited to watch the finale, but I guess there’s still a few questions to be answered. How did Officer Davis get away? How do Elle and Joseph plan to take down Wallace? And where the hell has Doc Badger been, anyway? I’m sure at least 2 of these questions will be answered (while conveniently not giving me the answer I actually want).