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.
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