Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus: Die In Peace Review
Writer: Kianna Shore
Artist: Mariano Taibo
Colorist: Marco Lesko
Letterer: Jim Campbell
Editor: David Leach
Creative Consultant: Mellow Brown
Publisher: Titan Comics
Price: $17.99
Release Date: February 18, 2025
Stix was supposed to meet Mead in a poor Tokyo district. But when he doesn't show, Mead confronts a protection racket alone and gets a meat cleaver in her leg for her troubles. As a gang member flashes a gun, Mead thinks she's finally bought it. But then Stix arrives, claiming the train was late, and helps her survive the battle. Can Mead still trust her replicant partner with her life? Or is her partnership with Stix on the rocks? Let’s leap into Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus: Die In Peace and find out!
Story
After tending to Mead's injuries, the two private investigators go out for drinks and dumplings. While Stix rejoices in closing their latest case, Mead is confused. She smelled the beer and dumplings on his breath when he arrived to help her. But before she can ask what troubles him, a young woman requests their help. Mayo accompanies Mead and Stix back to their home. But when she claims her sister is a private investigator, Stix senses Yakuza involvement and bails.
In Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus: Die In Peace, Stix ventures into the tunnels beneath Tokyo. Tyrell constructed replicants to live offworld. But like Stix, other replicants have snuck back to Earth after the war. While he assists those in need, Stix also meets someone from his past who warns him about a new model of replicant. Another combat-grade model like him.
Perhaps it’s the fact that Stix refused to hear Mayo's story. Or maybe Mead needs something to distract her from worrying about her partner. In any case, the former soldier agrees to help Mayo find her sister. Like Stix, Mead senses that Mayo and her sister hail from a Yakuza family. But in this city rocked by riots, and a world where Humans treat replicants as disposable property, the Yakuza represent just one more type of Human authority.
While Mead and Stix hide from their military past, a Blade Runner arrives from Los Angeles. Rumika claims she’s hunting a rogue replicant. But she takes her orders from Tyrell. From working with the refugees in the underground, Stix knows another organization has hired scientists from Tyrell. While Rumika uses her Tokyo police resources and information from Tyrell to search for Mayo’s sister, Stix strives to protect replicants from the scientists experimenting on them in Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus: Die In Peace.
Art
Sunlight streams past a crazy quilt of towers to reach those wandering the crowded streets. Nature defies the metropolis, as plants, trees, and gardens fill the spaces between buildings. Plants also cling to balconies like algae, refusing to let the gray structures win. Yet banners hang down as Mead and Stix eat, while cage-like window frames fill the background. Mariano Taibo fills the world of 2015 with bulky computer monitors, brick-sized cellphones, and a '70s arcade game. And despite all the houseplants filling their residence, a maze of lines adorns the top of the walls, enhancing the straight lines of the carpet and window shades.
Stix and Mead wear long blue coats over their white dress shirts and black ties. Yet when he leaves Mead, he changes into a gray jacket. Just as on the surface, yellow and green find their way into the underground. With a green experiment table, Marco Lesko suggests a new future for replicants in Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus: Die In Peace. Likewise, the orange hair of Miyuki's girlfriend links with the paper lanterns hanging over the streets, suggesting peace and rebirth. But the scarlet that spills in the opening scene, and the bodies both Private Investigators find, suggest the price Humans and Replicants will pay for their grand new society.
Jim Campbell fills white balloons with black uppercase letters and shares Mead and Stix's lowercase musings in colored narrative boxes. Sound effects emphasize Stix’s enhanced abilities, flying police spinners, high-speed trains, and a doorbell ring as a Blade Runner arrives. Thanks to Titan Comics for providing a review copy.
Final Thoughts
Ever since Mead and Stix went AWOL and returned to Earth, everything has been clear. Stay under the radar and work cases together as Private Investigators. But suddenly, Stix is keeping secrets, and Rumiko, a Blade Runner from Los Angeles, wants to work with Mead. Just like in the war, the bodies begin to pile up. And the experimental program Mead and Stix hoped was dead and buried arises to haunt them again in Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus: Die In Peace.
Rating 9/10
Watch the trailer for this week's next installment, Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus: To Lose Is To Win #1 at the Titan Comics Youtube channel.
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