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A review by rkiladitis
Decelerate Blue by Adam Rapp
3.0
In a hyper future, speed and efficiency rule the day. Everything is sped up, from literature’s classics to movies. People end sentences with, “Go”, letting the other person know it’s their turn to speak. Angela is a teen who hates this crazy pace of living, especially when her grandfather is being sent off to a “reduction colony” because he can’t keep his numbers up. Angela goes off in search of something he’s left for her and finds her way into an underground community of citizens rebelling against the hyper society. She joins the movement, but their plan to free society from this delirious pace – a drug called Decelerate Blue – is in danger of being found out by the authorities.
This is a case where I love the idea, but the execution left me a little cold. I love the idea of this crazy hyper society where everything is skin deep; no one has real conversations anymore, and even Shakespeare has been edited for brevity. It’s an outcome that is chilling in its plausibility and is begging for a dystopian telling. Decelerate Blue just didn’t grab me like I hoped it would; the graphic novel had powerful moments, but didn’t sit down and unpack them enough to invest me in the characters. The ending bordered on melodramatic, and left me frustrated. I did want to know more, though: what happened after? Did society examine what happened, or did they continue on as if nothing happened? Will the movement continue? Like I said, great ideas, stumbled in the execution.
This is a case where I love the idea, but the execution left me a little cold. I love the idea of this crazy hyper society where everything is skin deep; no one has real conversations anymore, and even Shakespeare has been edited for brevity. It’s an outcome that is chilling in its plausibility and is begging for a dystopian telling. Decelerate Blue just didn’t grab me like I hoped it would; the graphic novel had powerful moments, but didn’t sit down and unpack them enough to invest me in the characters. The ending bordered on melodramatic, and left me frustrated. I did want to know more, though: what happened after? Did society examine what happened, or did they continue on as if nothing happened? Will the movement continue? Like I said, great ideas, stumbled in the execution.