Manga: Battle Angel Alita - Deluxe Edition, Volume 2

Content Warning: Mild gore, sexism, explosions, brief underage nudity (because Japan), violence

 Welcome back to this series reviewing the Battle Angel Alita manga. Oh, you didn’t know this was a thing? Yeah, it is. I think every January I’ll be trying to cover a whole series of something, depending on what I want to do.

This deluxe volume starts out with the conclusion of Yugo’s story. If you’ve seen the movie, you have an idea of what happens. For those of you who haven’t, Yugo starts going nuts. He starts laughing hysterically and ends up running away, leaving Alita and Vector behind. While Alita searches for him, chips start falling from the sky, sparking fights in the streets. She catches up with him on one of the support tubes of Zalem, trying to make his way there. But, there’s a small problem. Zalem sends down spinning rings of blades to clear away vermin, including people like Yugo. He gets badly damaged by one and Alita tries to save him from the next one. She holds on to his arm and he says he’s glad he’s met her. And then his arm gives way and he falls to the ground while Alita screams his name.

A month later, we’re with Ido as he tries to find Alita, having given up his Hunter-Warrior gig and the clinic to search for her. Along the way, he stops a (very) young woman named Shumira from being raped (Japan, please stop with the rape stop, thanks). It turns out that she recognizes Alita, and making sure that she isn’t Ido’s girlfriend, reveals to him that she’s joined the Motorball league. That’s right, we’re in the Motorball arc now.

After being rejecting Ido, we now switch to Alita’s point of view. She’s got a pair of mechanics or coaches or something, named Ed and Umba. Ed is an old Motorball player, who has a resemblance to Frankenstein from Rodger Corman’s Death Race 2000, while Umba is the mechanic and looks like a plum that’s on it’s way to becoming a prune. Together, they help fix Alita’s new Wettzeug, or racing body, keeping the Berzerker body in storage.

From here on, we jump between Alita and Ido. Ido has kind of joined up with Shumira, who turns out to be the younger sister of Jasugun, the champion of Motorball. He’s so good, he often plays with one arm removed from his Wettzeug. But, he has a brain problem and Ido is able to help. Meanwhile, Alita is making a name for herself and is about to cross into the Second League rankings. However, another player, Aydakatti, has the number that Alita wears in the Third League. They have a match to settle if Alita gets the number (she doesn’t even have any special attachment to it, she just likes it) or Aydakatti will still wear it. This match isn’t official, so they use a skull and it’s just the two of them, but shit gets real fast. Aydakatti is a brawler, not a racer, so it throws Alita off at first. She then proceeds to kick the crap out of him so bad, he concedes to Alita after the second match.

While out and about, Alita beats up some bikers and then runs into Jasugun, Ido, and Shumira. Shumira tries to steal Alita’s little fuzzy creature friend (Kimji), Ido trash talks her, and Jasugun ends up defeating the leader of the bikers in an arm wrestling match. We also find out that Ed and Jasugun used to play on the Motorball circuit together back in the day. They were in an accident, which is why Ed’s arm shakes randomly and Jasugun was used by a man named Desty Nova as an experiment. After beating the biker boss, Alita challenges Jasugun to an arm wrestling match, putting her heart on the line. Alita bets her heart on the match. No, she seriously takes her heart out of her chest on puts it on the table, so it’ll be crushed if she loses. There’s a lot to this, as Jasugun uses Ki to fight, while Alita puts her faith in her abilities. It ends in a draw, as Jasugun destroys 80% of Alita’s arm power but he wants to face her on the Motorball track. After he walks away, his arm falls off because she wrecked his arm.

After this, Alita goes into her Second League game, with everyone knowing about the challenge and that she gets to pick five other players to join her against Jasugun. This game is a slaughter fest. There’s Adyakatti, three of his “disciples” as he calls them, a guy they call Caligula because he’s so violent, and a few others. It becomes a mess quickly as most of the players start attacking each other. One, Tiegel, called the Shame of the Second League, because he has a hulking Wettzeug and doesn’t move very fast, doesn’t get into much of the fighting as they leave him in the dust but he keeps begging Alita to let him join the group she’s forming. This whole match is fantastic to read. The design of the players is varied and different, the fights are great (if bloody), and you get a sense of every character as the game progresses. I won’t tell you who wins but it’s a real upset. The other thing is that Alita gets a memory from her home: A giant red mountain.

After this game, Alita has formed her team to take on Jasugun. It’s her, Adyakatti, Caligula, Tiegel, and Zafal Takie, who was the other player that almost beat Alita. Before the match, Ed has Alita’s broken Damascus blades made into one and Ido meets with Alita. There’s also Jasugun trying to prevent himself from dying from the neural overload he’s been dealing with this whole time. After the conversation with Ido, Alita tells Ed that she’s quitting after the game against Jasugun, win or lose. He freaks out and drags her to meet with their sponsor. A crazed man tries to kill Alita with a pipe gun but Ed throws himself in the way and dies instead.

It’s all come down to this: Alita and crew versus Jasugun. It’s so important, Zalem illuminates the track. This battle is the best of the whole volume, with Jasugun making short work of everyone except Alita. During the struggle between the two, Alita has another flashback, of a red landscape and someone teaching her a secret. She also learns her real name, Yoko.

Who wins? Well, seeing as there’s another three volumes of this series, I think you can guess. But I won’t tell you how the fight goes, only that it’s worth your time to check it out.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Suggestion: This volume is more focused than the last, even if there is some filler, but it’s an important part of the series.

Manga: Battle Angel Alita - Deluxe Edition, Volume 1

Content Warning: Violence, threats of violence and sexual assault, hypercapitalism, minor gore, and filth.

For a very long time, Battle Angel Alita has been a bit of cult classic in the world of manga in America. I remember seeing the OVA ages and ages ago (on VHS, which should tell you something) and read some bits and pieces of the manga. It wasn’t that remarkable to me except for the visual style. I thought Alita was an interesting character but nothing too amazing.

And then I saw the film that got made. And I realized that James Cameron had seen something in this I hadn’t, around the same time I had watched the OVA. In fact you didn’t know, he read the manga, sought out the movie rights, acquired them, and then sat on them until he knew the technology was ready for it. I’ll talk more about this at another time but we almost got the movie instead of Avatar. I wonder what that reality is like?

Let’s talk about the manga. I picked up the first Deluxe Edition hardback right before the world went to hell and then got around to it after I was panic buying Godzilla and Scooby-Doo movies on Amazon. And it hit at the right time.

Our story begins with Ido finding Alita in the trash heap. She’s nothing but head and shoulders. He brings her back to his workshop where he, and his partner Gonzu, get her booted up. Sadly, in the 300+ years she’s been out, she’s lost her memory. Ido names her Alita after his (male) cat that died the month before. He tries to find her parts to build her a body and ends up using arms from a female murder victim. Before too long, Alita has a full body.

But, she’s been noticing Ido leaving at night and decides to follow him one night. She tries to stop, thinking him to be the serial killer that’s been killing women. Turns out that he’s a Hunter-Warrior that’s been trying to hunt down the serial killer. Now, Alita fights to defend Ido and unleashes her Panzerkunst on the killer, splattering her on a wall. This causes Alita to become a Hunter-Warrior herself, which then causes a fight between her and Ido. They separately go out on the hunt that night, with Ido taking out some small fry while Alita battles Makaku, who almost destroys her. Makaku is an endorphin junkie, killing people and eating their brains. While Alita manages to punch out his eye when she’s nothing but a head and arm, Ido saves her from getting eaten by Makaku. Makaku gets away as he’s nothing much more than a head and spinal column, able to slip away.

Badly hurt, Ido is able to retrieve what’s left of Alita and call Gonzu. Alita is down while Ido heals. Ido and Gonzu look for a new body for Alita, showing that Ido had found a Berzerker body some time ago. The Berzerkers were used in a great war centuries ago and this body is male, but can adapt to a female form easily enough. Alita continues to dream, before waking up in her new Berzerker body.

The story shifts here. Since the beginning, we’ve mostly seen Alita trying to figure out her place in the world, not being a doll for Ido to dress up. Now with this powerful body, she has found her place. The still injured Ido and Alita visit a Hunter-Warrior bar named Kansas (really?) and start asking the other Hunter-Warriors for help. This is where we first met Zapan, with his Blue Oyster Cult forehead tattoo. Alita wants them to help her track down and kill Makaku but they refuse. So, Alita just kicks their asses. All of them. Of course, Makaku turns up in his new, very large and very powerful body. He kills some of the other Hunter-Warriors, kidnaps a baby, and runs into the sewers below the Junkyard. Alita follows and we get one of the best fights in the series so far. The sewers are very well drawn and show the age of this world. The fight between Alita and Makaku is just… Out of this world. Alita is able to do so much with her new Berzerker body and Makaku’s body is also very powerful, originally belonging to a blood sport champion. We she that not only is Alita powerful, she’s smart. You can guess who wins.

With this introduction arc done, we get to what is the saddest part of the whole series, in my opinion, and what was used for a basis of the movie and ancient OVA, the Yugo arc. This is where Alita loses her innocence and we find out just how bad life is for the Junkyard under Zalem, the last of the floating cities. Hell, the last city, really. Yugo has a dream of reaching Zalem and Vector has offered him a chance to do it. 10 million chips (money in the Junkyard) and Vector will get him to Zalem. To make that money, Yugo has several jobs, doing maintenance work, helping people with other things, and stealing spinal columns. Yeah. Yugo is very naughty boy. Zapan has become Alita’s creepy stalker and discovers that Yugo is part of the gang stealing the body parts. Yugo gets away from Zapan but a bounty is put out for him. Alita promises to help him, betraying the Hunter-Warrior job, but some others catch up with him. Alita ends up cutting off his head and uses her own life support system to keep him alive. Zapan suspects something and gets his face cut off for trying to interfere with the bounty.

Ido is able to put Yugo in a cyborg body but they have to keep him hidden. Together, Alita and Yugo go to Vector to get him to Zalem. Vector admits that he can’t get Yugo to Zalem, except as body parts. He doesn’t know why they want them but he sends them a whole body’s worth of parts every month. He wasn’t going to do that to Yugo, he just made up a number so high, he didn’t think he’d be able to pull it off. When Alita and Yugo get angry, Vector calls for his guard to kick them out and the battle begins.

And that’s where this volume ends. Nice cliffhanger. I did enjoy this volume, even if I felt like the beginning is kind of slow. Like, introducing Alita is rushed but then it slows down to deal with Makaku. I don’t know why that was done. Probably the author buying himself some time to develop his larger story. Throughout this whole series, I get a sense that the creator was kind of making things up as he went along, leading to some very tedious reading. However, there’s a lot of world building I haven’t mentioned and I strongly suggest you pick this up if this sounds even remotely interesting.

Rating: 4 out of 5
Suggestion: If you liked the movie, you should enjoy this manga and get some surprises, too.