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White Blood

White Blood is a very quirky sci-fi thing that is relatively rare but also common enough for me to take notice.

The Deal

I first took note of white blood when watching ghost_in_the_shell, where androids there ā€˜bleed’ a white liquid.A) There I remembered that synthetics in Alien also ā€˜bleed’ a white liquid.
Here is where I took note of it and started wondering. It’s kinda weird that two distinct sci-fi stories from two distinct countries, from vaguely the same time period, happened to agree that androids had white blood.
Further, there are apparently a few more instances of white-blooded androids in fiction. Notably to me, because it probably planted the seed, was the artist itou, who depicts androids with white blood.B) The other notable reference is probably Cyberpunk 2077, though I have never played the game or seen footage, so I’m going purely off of what I heard others say.C) It would be easy to say that GiTS is just referencing Alien, though I didn’t buy this as an explanation, since it’s a weird connection.
The answer I have settled on, for now, is that Alien and GiTS were both working from the same source material from the time period. Though I’m not 100% sure since I checked what year Alien came out.
In the footnotes of the Ghost in the Shell manga, the Masamune Shirow explains why androids have white blood. How unusually and pleasantly considerate of him. His explanation is that, at the time, synthetic blood was not only being experimented with, but actively sold and used. This synthetic blood was colored white. It was taken off the market in, I believe, the mid 90s because it had the unfortunate side-effect of causing heart-attacks, if I remember that correctly.
Though Masamune-sensei neglected to explain why he decided androids would have blood in the first place, this is a satisfying answer. By the way, it is still the case that most kinds of synthetic blood (which includes the shady Russian one you can acquire) are white, because hemoglobin is apparently toxic, which makes it difficult to turn into synthetic blood.
So the conclusion I reached is that authors of the time, roughly the 80s to 90s, looked at the synthetic blood and on the market and just decided it was reasonable to give it to androids.
Though, I’m now skeptical of my own answer so I might have to find out why the synthetics in Alien bleed white.
I should also note that there are synthetic bloods in fiction that aren’t white. Detroit: Become Human has androids with blue blood which is, a choice. This article is just focused on white blood.


A) This is referred to as white blood in S.A.C. though what it is is unknown to me. Also, the only time I remember it referred to as such was actually in reference to androids. Specifically with ā€˜I can smell her white blood’.
B) This one is apparently just a coincidence, as he claims the image looked too graphic with red blood, so he made it white.
C) Though in that case it isn’t androids but rather a gang that relies on synthetic blood.
lb/white.blood.1746034080.txt.gz Ā· Last modified: 2025-04-30 17:28:00 by ninjasr

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