History Anime / BladeRunnerBlackLotus

* KillEmAll: [[spoiler:After finding out about how she was hunted for game and how she's a unique replicant, Elle decides to go and kill the four people who hunted her and the others.]]

* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Elle decides to embark on one of these after she discovers that [[spoiler:she was created to be the prey in a brutal blood sport.]]
* RobotGirl: The series' protagonist is the adorable Elle, who is a replicant.

* InspectorJavert: Davis is determined to track down and eliminate "Black Lotus" (Elle) despite the fact she's not a Blade Runner and is repeatedly being stonewalled by her superiors at every turn. Mind you, multiple homicides have been committed, including a U.S. senator, and she has no idea about the mitigating circumstances of Elle's actions.

* ReassignedToAntarctica: Though not as drastic, [[spoiler:Davis is put on leave for three months for her report on the replicants, with her being called delusional despite the overwhelming evidence. However, she still continues her investigation while on leave.]]

* LoopholeAbuse: Niander Wallace Jr. points out that [[spoiler:Elle can't knowingly hurt him because of her programming, which comes up twice in the final episode. And unlike her [[GrewBeyondTheirProgramming previous case]] that he instigated off of insane odds, she can't overcome this one. Her response? Lower his guard by sheathing her katana -- and then performing a swift draw and slash with her eyes closed, [[EyeScream blinding him with his eyes cut.]] The programming required her to consciously know who she was targeting, so by doing a blind attack, she circumvents it easily.]]

* TheChanteuse: We discover in Episode 10, "Clair de Lune", that Joseph [[spoiler:fell in love with a replicant named Selene who was one of these. Emphasized with Selene voiced by Music/AlessiaCara.]]

* TheChanteuse: We discover in Episode 10, "Clair de Lune", that Joseph [[spoiler:fell in love with a replicant named Selene who was one of these.]]

* TheChanteuse: We discover in Episode 10, "Clair de Lune", that Joseph [[spoiler:fell in love with a replicant who was one of these.]]

* EvilCounterpart: [[spoiler:Niander Wallace Jr. created Water Lily to replace Elle when the latter completes her mission.]] Both are voiced by Creator/JessicaHenwick and motion captured by Rie Ueda, with Water Lily looking exactly like Elle except [[AlbinosAreFreaks albino]].

* RecapEpisode: Episode 8, "The Davis Report", has Davis testifying the findings of her investigation into Elle and the trail of bodies she has left behind.

* AndTheAdventureContinues: At the end of the series, [[spoiler:Elle takes off into parts unknown to set out and live her own life]].

* EvilCounterpart: [[spoiler:Niander Wallace Jr. created Water Lily to replace Elle when the latter completes her mission.]] Both are voiced by Creator/JessicaHenwick and motion captured by Rie Ueda.

* EvilAlbino: Water Lily looks exactly like Elle, except albino.

UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, 2032. A young girl named Elle (Creator/JessicaHenwick) suddenly wakes up in the back of a moving truck. She has no memory of who she is or how she got there. All she has is a device which requires a key code to open it and a strange tattoo of a black lotus on her shoulder. While searching for information, the girl runs into trouble, and her memories as well as inhuman combat prowess begin to awaken during the fight. Determined to find out what's in the device, Elle sets out to recover her past.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: [[spoiler:Niander Wallace Jr. kills Water Lily when he notices that the best she can do is fight Elle to a draw.]]

* EvilCounterpart: [[spoiler:Niander Wallace Jr. creates Water Lily to replace Elle when the latter completes her mission]]. Both are voiced by Creator/JessicaHenwick and played in motion capture by Rie Ueda.

* EvilAlbino / EvilBrit: Water Lily is identical to Elle, but albino, and British.

* EvilCounterpart: [[spoiler:Niander Wallace Jr. creates Water Lily to replace Elle when the latter completes her mission.]]

* ArtificialHuman: Elle is initially told that she is a replicant, barely even a week old. Whenever her combat skills activate, her eyes flash black. Joseph later examines her and confirms that she isn't one because she doesn't have a serial number imprinted on her eyeballs like the Nexus-8 models do. [[spoiler: This is subverted when she finds out she ''is'' one, except she's a replicant who [[GrewBeyondTheirProgramming overrode her submissive programming through sheer will]].]]

* FantasticRacism: Goes without saying in a ''Franchise/BladeRunner'' work but replicants are considered to be soulless automatons that are used or killed without remorse by the majority of the population. This despite the fact they are thinking emotional beings all but indistinguishable from humans.

* TheManBehindTheMan: [[spoiler: Niander Wallace Senior is the person responsible for the Doll Hunt.]]

* EvilCounterpart: [[spoiler:Niander Wallace Jr. creates Water Lily to replace Elle when the latter completes her mission.]]
* EvilFormerFriend: Marlowe and Joseph are this to one another, though the "former" part is debatable, given neither wants to kill the other. [[spoiler:This changes in "Artificial Souls", where Joseph lures Marlowe into a duel to try and protect Elle from him as well as avenge Selene's death.]]

UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, 2032. A young girl named Elle (Creator/JessicaHenwick) suddenly wakes up in the back of a moving truck. She has no memory of who she is or how she got there. All she has is a device which requires a key code to open it & a strange tattoo of a black lotus on her shoulder. While searching for information the girl runs into trouble, and her memories as well as inhuman combat prowess begin to awaken during the fight. Determined to find out what's in the device, Elle sets out to recover her past.

Along the way, Elle befriends a mysterious junkyard owner & hacker named Joseph (Creator/WillYunLee) and a pawnshop owner named Doc Badger (Barkhad Abdi). After a couple of violent encounters, a powerful politician is dead and she is now on the run from the LAPD as well as their Blade Runners. She also gains a powerful new purpose: revenge.

* ActionGirl: Elle has been kicking a lot of ass since the start of the series, often to her surprise as much as the audience.
* TheAlcoholic: Joseph is a fairly functional one that, nevertheless, prefers to spend most of his days heavily liquored up. [[spoiler:This is due to his anger when Marlowe killed a Replicant that he fell in love with right in front of him.]]
* AlternateHistory: A billboard for Creator/{{Atari}} confirms that in the ''Franchise/BladeRunner'' timeline UsefulNotes/TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983 either never happened or didn't cripple Atari as a corporation.

* AndThenWhat: Chief Grant brings this up in episode 6 when he points out that Elle's quest for revenge is not going to help her find peace. [[spoiler: It's sadly a trick but still is relevant since she's almost completed her revenge by the end of the episode with only one survivor, Doctor M, left that she kills off in the next episode.]]

* ArtificialHuman: Elle is initially told that she is a replicant, barely even a week old. Whenever her combat skills activate, her eyes flash black. Joseph later examines her and confirms that she isn't one because she doesn't have a serial number imprinted on her eyeballs like the Nexus-8 models do. [[spoiler:Subverted when she finds out she ''is'' one, except she's a Replicant who [[GrewBeyondTheirProgramming overrode her submissive programming through sheer will]].]]
* BadassNormal: Marlowe. Even as a Blade Runner he's more than capable of retiring most Replicants easily and managed to fight Elle to a standstill the first time they fought. He may have ended up retiring her in the second encounter if it wasn't for [[spoiler:Joseph covering her with a SniperRifle]].
* BigDamnHeroes: [[spoiler:Joseph rescues Elle from falling off Niander Wallace Senior's tower on a flying motorcycle.]]
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Elle managed to kill all of those responsible for the Doll Hunt, but Niander Wallace Junior just used her to usurp his father and take over the family corporation so he can [[AGodAmI play God.]] Joseph ends up critically wounded in his final battle with Marlowe, and performs a HeroicSacrifice to destroy Junior's research, while Elle manages to [[EyeScream blind him]], but Davis meanwhile ended up wheelchair-bound after Water Lily ran her through with a sword while having no means to ever report her findings to the world, and ultimately Junior will [[Film/BladeRunner2049 continue his plans regardless of these setbacks]]. The only positive beat is that Elle ends up alive and kicking at the end, and gets to ride off into the sunset to find her own path in life now. [[RuleOfThree But]] a hovercycle flies in adjacent to hers in the middle of nowhere in the final shot with eerily precise timing, with it left ambiguous if it was hostile or not.]]
* BrokenPedestal: [[spoiler: Elle runs away from Joseph's home when she overhears that he used to be a Blade Runner who killed over a hundred, if not two hundred, Replicants.]]
* TheCavalry: [[spoiler: Joseph serves as this to Elle when she makes her assault on Wallace Tower in "Free Will", serving as her sniper support and saving her multiple times.]]
* TheChanteuse: We discover in Episode 10, Clair de Lune, that Joseph [[spoiler: fell in love with a Replicant who was one of these.]]

* CorruptPolitician: Several of the people who [[spoiler:hunted Elle and other Replicants for game]] turn out to be this. She manages to [[spoiler:kill Senator Bannister at an unlawful MMA tournament and later on decides to kill the other three.]]

** Joseph suffers one of them, driving him to be TheAlcoholic. [[spoiler: Due to his possession of a Voight Kampff test, ESPER, and the gun--he's a former Blade Runner.]] Furthermore, we discover that he [[spoiler: saw the Replicant he loved get murdered in front of him by his former friend.]]

** Chief Grant - the head of the LAPD - is this, [[spoiler:as being one of the four hunters - alongside his wife - who tried to kill Elle and other Replicants. He makes sure that his subordinate Davis doesn't find out about his involvement with that incident and then deploys all police officers to find and kill Elle before word gets out.]]
** The higher ups in the LAPD are just as much when they [[spoiler:put Davis on leave for 3 months because they choose not to believe the evidence that Replicants are being made and they can't have her around.]]
* TheDragon: Marlowe is the most capable and dangerous adversary that Elle faces. He's also directly employed by Niander Wallace rather than the police department.

* ExactWords: Once Davis is able to provide evidence to back up her theory, the IA investigator tells her that she's uncovered something big and it will change her career. [[spoiler:She is labeled delusional and given a 3-month suspension.]]
* {{Expy}}: Joseph turns out to be one for [[spoiler:Rick Deckard, as an alcoholic, retired Blade Runner with feelings for a Replicant.]]
* EvilCounterpart: [[spoiler: Niander Wallace creates another Black Lotus android to replace Elle when the latter completes her mission.]]
* EvilFormerFriend: Marlowe and Joseph are this to one another, though the "former" part is debatable, given neither wants to kill the other. [[spoiler: Until "Artificial Souls", where Joseph lures Marlowe into a duel to try and protect Elle from him as well as avenge Selene's death.]]

* FantasticRacism: Goes without saying in a ''Franchise/BladeRunner'' work but Replicants are considered to be soulless automatons that are used or killed without remorse by the majority of the population. This despite the fact they are thinking emotional beings all but indistinguishable from humans.

* GambitRoulette: [[spoiler:Niander Wallace Jr. guided Elle's RoaringRampageOfRevenge to lead towards [[SelfMadeOrphan killing his father]] through implanted memories, manipulating Joseph, and giving her his handprint. However, it required her to survive the doll hunt ''and'' overcome her programming that prevented her from hurting humans, both of which just barely happened and only because one hunter stayed behind to play with her and another Replicant while the others left.]]
* GrewBeyondTheirProgramming: [[spoiler:Elle is a non-lethal Replicant, the same as the rest of her batch, but seeing them slaughtered before her eyes and then being put at near-execution gunpoint has her hit a RageBreakingPoint and kill her attacker in self-defense. NiceJobFixingItVillain. Initially, she is unable to turn against Niander Wallace Jr. but does manage to blind him with her sword.]]

* HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler:Elle goes through one after she sees the tape recording of when she was hunted for being a Replicant. She makes peace with the fact she's not human, but she plans to go through a RoaringRampageOfRevenge by killing the people who tried to kill her.]]
* HeroicSacrifice: In episode 13, [[spoiler:Joseph, already on his last legs from the fight with Marlowe, pushes Elle out of the archive room and seals the door as he detonates the C4 charges to blow it up. [[FaceDeathWithDignity He accepted his fate]]]].

* HopeSpot: Davis has one of these when she seems to finally convince the higher-ups of her theory. They, instead, shut her down hard.
* HoverBike: Joseph has a motorcycle that integrates the same hover technology as [[FlyingCar Spinners]], possibly making it a [[IncrediblyLamePun SpinCycle]]. Naturally that makes it a CoolBike.
* HuntingTheMostDangerousGame: Elle and other Replicants were hunted for sport by the wealthy, including a sitting U.S. senator. [[spoiler:It turns out to have been a high-stress test of Replicant obedience.]]

* InTheBack: [[spoiler:Water Lily stabs Officer Davis through her midsection with a longsword before Davis has a chance to reveal Niander Wallace Jr as the mastermind of the Black Lotus project to her superiors. Davis is able to drag herself away while Water Lily is preoccupied before she can finish her off]].

* InspectorJavert: Davis is determined to track down and eliminate "Black Lotus" (Elle) despite the fact she's not a Blade Runner and is repeatedly being stonewalled by her superiors at every turn. Mind you, multiple homicides have been committed (including a US Senator), and she has no idea about the mitigating circumstances of Elle's actions.

* KillEmAll: [[spoiler:After finding out about how she was hunted for game and how she's a unique Replicant, Elle decides to go and kill the four people who hunted her and the others.]]
* LoopholeAbuse: Wallace Jr. points out that [[spoiler:Elle can't knowingly hurt him because of her programming, which comes up twice in the final episode. And unlike her [[GrewBeyondTheirProgramming previous case]] that he instigated off of insane odds, she can't overcome this one. Her response? Lower his guard by sheathing her katana -- and then performing a swift draw and slash with her eyes closed, [[EyeScream blinding him with his eyes cut.]] The programming required her to consciously know who she was targeting, so by doing a blind attack, she circumvents it easily.]]
* MadeOfIron: Noticing a gas pipe leaking in the kitchen while hunting the police chief and his wife, Elle decides to use her sword to light it up and cause a huge explosion. Marlowe is mere feet away, while Alani is in the hallway just outside. The explosion causes Elle to fall out of the penthouse window, eventually getting caught on a clothesline. None of the three suffer any burns or even damaged clothing, and both Elle and Marlowe are able to walk away with nothing more damaging than some sore muscles and soot on their faces. Davis gets knocked unconscious by the explosion and Marlowe moves her to safety.

* RecapEpisode: Episode 8, "The Davis Report", has Officer Davis testifying the findings of her investigation into Elle and the trail of bodies she has left behind.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Niander Wallace Senior gives one to Elle in "Free Will" where he says that not only do Replicants not have free will but neither do the teaming masses. It's all just an illusion and they just have to learn to obey.
* ReassignedToAntarctica: Though not as drastic, [[spoiler:Davis is put on leave for 3 months for her report on the Replicants, with her being called delusional despite the overwhelming evidence. However, she still plans to do her work while on leave.]]
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Elle decides to embark on one of these after she discovers that [[spoiler: she was created to be the prey in a brutal blood sport.]]
* RobotGirl: The series' protagonist is the adorable Elle, who is a Replicant.
* SavedByCanon: Due to this being set between the events of the first and second movie, Wallace was going to walk out of this alive. [[spoiler: We do see, however, how he got [[EyeScream blinded]].]]
* ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: The rich and powerful are able to enjoy sadistic games with Replicants despite their ban due to the fact they are the ones who enforce the law. This includes boxing matches and hunting them for sport.
* SecretTestOfCharacter: [[spoiler:The Doll Hunt turns out to have been a particularly warped example of such as Niander Wallace Senior was attempting to make sure his son's Replicants were totally obedient and sell them to the kind of people who were most skeptical.]]
* ShotgunsAreJustBetter: Marlowe's WeaponOfChoice, also a {{BFG}} given its capability to lay Replicants low.
* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: After the bungling fantastic racists and SmugSnake types of the first few episodes, Marlowe proves to be a hundred times more dangerous and more than a match for Elle when they finally meet in Episode 6. Which makes sense as he's a Blade Runner trained to kill her kind.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: The setting of ''Blade Runner'' treats the Replicants as subservient androids you can inflict whatever you want upon, in pure disregard of the human-like emotions they're built with, which is a recurring problem in both movies. [[spoiler:Elle's [[GrewBeyondTheirProgramming rebellion]] is seemingly impossible from a scientific perspective, but entirely predictable from a ''human'' perspective, which baffles her targets in a world where the human element isn't what it used to be.]]
* ThisCannotBe: Hooper's reaction when [[spoiler:Elle overpowers him and slowly stabs him to death with the knife he gave her]]. This example is {{justified|Trope}}, given [[spoiler:as a non-violent Replicant, what Elle was doing ''should'' be impossible, but [[GrewBeyondTheirProgramming no longer was]]]].

* VengeanceFeelsEmpty: [[spoiler: Elle kills the last of the Doll Hunt participants in Episode 7 but the experience doesn't leave her feeling any better about herself and also even more confused about her purpose.]]

** "Clair De Lune", Episode 10, ends with the revelation of [[spoiler:Niander Wallace Jr. being the tattoo artist who gave Elle the Black Lotus, and that he hired Joseph to help her]].
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: A central theme of the franchise that is replicated here. Society does not consider Replicants to be human and any who are found are killed. That doesn't stop the rich and powerful from illegally making them, though.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: [[spoiler:Niander Wallace Jr. kills Water Lily when he notices that the best she can do is fight Elle to a draw]].

* EvilFormerFriend: Marlowe and Joseph are this to one another, though the "former" part is debatable, given neither wants to kill the other.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Elle managed to kill all of those responsible for the Doll Hunt, but Niander Wallace Junior just used her to usurp his father and take over the family corporation so he can [[AGodAmI play God.]] Joseph ends up critically wounded in his final battle with Marlowe, and performs a HeroicSacrifice to destroy Junior's research, while Elle manages to [[EyeScream blind him]], but Davis meanwhile ended up wheelchair-bound after Water Lily ran her through with a sword, and ultimately Junior will [[Film/BladeRunner2049 continue his plans regardless of these setbacks]]. The only positive beat is that Elle ends up alive and kicking at the end, and gets to ride off into the sunset to find her own path in life now. [[RuleOfThree But]] a hovercycle flies in adjacent to hers in the middle of nowhere in the final shot with eerily precise timing, with it left ambiguous if it was hostile or not.]]

* HeroicSacrifice: In episode 13, [[spoiler:Joseph, already on his last legs from the fight with Marlowe, pushes Elle out of the archive room and seals the door as he detonates the C4 charges to blow it up. He accepted his fate]].

A joint collaboration between Website/{{Crunchyroll}} and Creator/AdultSwim[=/=]Creator/{{Toonami}}, ''Blade Runner: Black Lotus'' takes place between the original ''Film/BladeRunner'' and ''Film/BladeRunner2049''. The series is directed by Shinji Aramaki (''Manga/{{Appleseed}}'', ''Anime/GhostInTheShellSAC2045'') and Kenji Kamiyama (''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'') and writen by Kamiyama. Shinichiro Watanabe (''Anime/CowboyBebop'') serves as the creative producer (he previously directed the ''Blade Runner'' short ''[[Film/BladeRunnerShorts Black Out 2022]]''). It began airing on Toonami on November 14, 2021.