REVIEW: ‘Blade Runner: Black Lotus,’ Episode 8 – “The Davis Report”

Blade Runner: Black Lotus is a sci-fi/action joint Crunchyroll-Adult Swim exclusive from Sola Digital Arts. With Elle continuing to rack up a body count and the police left with few leads, Detective Davis is called into a meeting with a special investigator to give her side of the events surrounding Cheif Grant’s death and why she was at his home that night in Blade Runner: Black Lotus Episode 8.

While largely functioning as a recap episode, this story manages to make its retread of much of the show’s prior narrative worth watching thanks to the point of view it takes. By delivering this look back at earlier events through the frame of Davis’s report to Investigator Chen, Blade Runner: Black Lotus Episode 8 brings some new perspective to the events that are reviewed during the meeting, as well as about Davis herself. Some important information concerning the detective’s past surfaces during this episode that helps to bring the side character that Davis has been so far into a bit clearer focus.

While I called this episode a recap earlier, it does feel like a natural event for the show to feature. Given how closely Davis has been to the case, even being present at Chief Grant’s home the night he was murdered despite having no official business there, having the interview makes sense. I just feel there was a far more efficient way to present it. Rather than replaying sequences that brought no new information with them, like Elle’s thrashing of the gang during episode one, cut away to Elle or J to touch base on where they are. The story could then return to the interview once the recap part of the moment had passed and we could learn more about Davis, which feels like the episode’s primary purpose.

With Davis’s story coming under doubt by Chen, Blade Runner: Black Lotus Episode 8‘s biggest visual task is to bring Davis’s emotions to the viewer as the facts, theories, and intuition she has concerning the case are attacked. Unfortunately, the visuals never manage to accomplish this to a satisfying degree. Given how focused and all-consuming the hunt for Elle feels to have become for Davis, the visual portrayal of her feelings comes across as contradictory in the intensity, or lack thereof, that they display.

As Blade Runner: Black Lotus Episode 8 comes to a close it does deliver a couple of important story beats that make the episode worth the viewing, even if the story takes an inefficient approach to getting there. How Davis will continue to play a part of the show’s story from here looks to be changing drastically. As a character that has lived on the fringe of the narrative until now, I’m hopeful that this may mean a more impactful presence for her from here on out.

Blade Runner: Black Lotus Episode 8 is streaming on Crunchyroll and Adult Swim.