Blade Runner Gets A Cut And Paste Anime Trailer

By Brent McKnight | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

If you’ve ever wanted to see an anime version of Ridley Scott’s 1982 science fiction classic Blade Runner, or at least wondered what that might look like, have we got something for you. This video does just that, giving you something you didn’t even know that you’ve always wanted.

If you dig what you see here, you can thank a guy named Chris Kessler for putting this together. He has recreated the original trailer for Blade Runner using bits and pieces from classic popular anime. Talking clips and images from Bubblegum Crisis and AD Police Files, with the soundtrack from the trailer laid over the top, and the result is pretty damn awesome, and unexpectedly natural.

These two elements fit together very, very well. I don’t know why I found that surprising at first glance, because when you think about combing these things it makes a great deal of sense. When you take even a cursory look at these 1980s and 1990s anime series, the neo-noir, cyberpunk, Blade Runner influence is abundantly clear, if not painfully obvious. When you watch this video, it’s like they created these pictures just for this specific purpose. Even the futuristic cityscapes look like they are lifted directly out of the frames of Blade Runner and its ilk. No matter how you break it down, the influence is readily apparent.

Loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Blade Runner follows the adventures of Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a specialized futuristic cop called a Blade Runner. He is tasked with tracking down a group replicants, bioengineered synthetic humanoids that have gone rogue and returned to Earth after being banished. Identifying them with their skewed emotional responses, he hunts them down, but gets more than he bargained for in the process.

DeckardUniversally regarded as one of the greatest science fiction films ever made, there has been talk of Blade Runner 2 for years. Even as recently as this past May, shortly after it was announced that he would reprise another of his iconic roles—Han Solo in Star Wars: Episode VII for J.J. Abrams, Disney, and Lucasfilm—Ford was reportedly offered his old role of Deckard once again.

As bad an idea as most of us think this is, the process of pumping out Blade Runner 2 is well under way and this seems like an inevitability at this point. Scott is attached, and there is supposedly a script from original screenwriter Hampton Fancher and Green Lantern scribe Michael Green, for some reason, and all Alcon Entertainment really needs is to put the cast in place. And Ford is, by all accounts, including his own, rather enthusiastic to return. If that happens, you can bet the rest of the pieces will quickly fall into place.