When I first watched the trailer for Black Lotus I thought it was just a generic story that they slapped the Blade Runner title on for some name recognition. But after watching it, the story truly does fit within the Blade Runner universe. The themes of what it means to be human and whether Replicants should be treated as human is central to the plot.

The animation style still looks too much like a video game cutscene to me, but it isn’t a bad show. It’s also very slow. I think they were trying to mimic the slow pacing of the original Blade Runner but were only partially successful. They weren’t able to pull-off the quiet melancholy feel of the original Blade Runner, or an anime like Serial Experiments Lain. It isn’t bad, it just isn’t a masterpiece.

The first episode is available on youtube, and the entire series is available on Crunchyroll.