List of Blame! Characters - Structures

Structures

• The Megastructure (originally chou-kozoutai (超構造体?)) - These are large plates that lie between levels of The City and are made out of an unknown, nearly-indestructible material. They are part of some kind of major isolation system between the gargantuan floors of The City. Attempts to approach the megastructure result in a massive safeguard response so as to prevent trespassing. Bypassing the safeguard is pointless, as it is nearly impossible to even scratch the megastructure. Only a direct Gravitational Beam Emitter blast is known to have been capable of tearing a hole into a megastructure.

• The Netsphere - A possible future incarnation of the internet available only to those with the Net Terminal Gene and guarded by the Safeguard. According to the opening of the Net Sphere Engineer, it was meant as a new world order, and could fulfill the desires of the people. It is posited in NOiSE that it was in fact a New Social Order designed to exclude the infected. It can only be accessed by those possessing Net Terminal Genes.
• The City - The City is actually a structure that began on Earth. The mechanical beings known as Builders, which move around reforming and creating new landscapes, appear to have begun building without end, creating an enormous structure with little internal logic or coherence.

The City, and the Builders, were controlled by the Netsphere and the Authority but they have since lost the power to control the expansion of The City due to the chaotic and insecure manner of its growth. Without intervention by a user with Net Terminal Genes, they cannot reestablish control over The City nor the Safeguards, whose original job was to eliminate any humans who try to access the Netsphere without Net Terminal Genes. The Safeguard now attempts to destroy all humans without the Net Terminal Gene as the degradation of The City has corrupted their true goals.

It has been suggested by Tsutomu Nihei himself in his artbook Blame! And So On that The City is actually a growing Dyson sphere of gargantuan proportions. Its spherical circumference is speculated to be roughly the size of Jupiter's planetary orbit (32.675 AU). No evidence contradicts this speculation, and the prequel to Blame!, NOiSE, even states that the structure has passed the orbit of the moon. In the last chapter of NOiSE, it is stated "At one point even the moon which used to be in the sky above, was integrated into The City's structure". In Volume 9 of Blame!, a room is even revealed to have a diameter roughly the size of Jupiter itself, reinforcing the speculation on the sheer size of the Megastructure.

• Toha Heavy Industries (originally Toua-juukou (東亜重工?)) - A massive edifice or possibly vehicle separate from the megastructure. Toha Heavy Industries was mentioned as the benevolent organization in Biomega as well as a mecha manufacturer in "Knights of Sidonia. It is inhabited by humans known only as the 'planters', and is the origin of the splinter group, the 'fishers'. It is controlled by a central AI, and has a collective of thirteen other AIs; one controlling each cave. The Collective AI was created in an effort to prevent insanity, however, in the end it didn't work out. The central AI shows increasingly irrational behavior with its use of teleportation technology, and its gravity furnace. The AI isolated itself from the outside using a treaty from the Governing Agency because of the seriousness of the Silicon Creature's disease, and excommunicated those who did. Toha Heavy Industries is crucial because the planters may be netgene carriers.
• Structure conversion towers - These buildings appear to be autonomous energy reserves and/or producers which are independent of the Megastructure. They're apparently capable of synthesising any form of matter, mainly Safeguard units. However, when Davinel acquires a group of them, they produce tainted, once-Safeguard exterminator units which make up the bulk of Davinel's army.