@Dranto
True enough, that's why Fire Punch is the shakiest of the recommendations on my reading list. Dorohedoro absolutely oozes creativity and imagination. One of the most original manga I've ever read.
Blame! Is one of my three favorite manga alongside Berserk and Nausicaä (if you haven't read Nausicaä I highly recommend it!). Though I enjoyed the rest of his works, I think Nihei Tsutomu really peaked with Blame! and hasn't matched it since. I'd lay the fault with his editors who, according to interviews, were hounding him constantly to put in more conventional elements and fan service. Then again you have to sell copies to eat. That's what I happened with his later works. Knights of Sidonia was a much more conventional story. His latest work is basically a much more conventional version of Blame! They both have these bizarre moments of fan service that clash with the tone. They're so strangely done and out of place it's like an alien trying and failing to act human. It's clear he has no interest in fan service and is just putting it in out of obligation, which is a shame because the stories would be better without them, but what can you do?
When he was working on Blame! he had different priorities. From an interview: "My work is pretty light on dialogue and people tend to say it’s hard to understand, and I think back then I really just wanted to do something strange. Back when I was starting out I thought of drawing manga not as work, but as a means of self-expression. I wasn’t concerned with entertaining my readers or making something that’ll actually sell, which I suppose is why I made such an opaque manga." Blame! has this almost trance-like quality to it. Long silent walks through a gargantuan cityscape punctuated by explosions of violence. It's one of those unique works where you can't really get a similar experience anywhere else.
But he wasn't selling well. In order to continue publishing he had to get more mass appeal. When he made Knights of Sidonia he deliberately set out to create "as user-friendly a manga as possible." So there you have it, an interesting artist having to bend to convention in order to put food on the table. I hope one day he'll have made enough money for his publishers and they'll indulge him let him return to creating as a form of self expression.
Apparently I just use this site's comment section as an excuse to write shitty lit analysis. Maybe I should get my head checked...
