Scan barcode
A review by archytas
Battle Angel Alita Complete Collection by Yukito Kishiro
4.5
I read this as part of a reading challenge, for which I needed to find a book that has a movie based on it coming out in 2019. I loved Avatar, and knew that I wanted to see Alita: Battle Angel, so this was a no brainer. I'm a graphic novel person, but I've never really gravitated to Manga before, other than a brief infatuation with [b:Planetes, Volume 1|879090|Planetes, Volume 1 (Planetes, #1)|Makoto Yukimura|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391393368s/879090.jpg|2191952]. So it is genuinely with surprise that I need to report I fell for Gunnm *hard*, while the movie left me feeling pretty *meh*.
It wasn't a love-at-first sight thing. The first storyline of Gunnm left me yawning a little, and not terribly invested in this world. The plot felt mostly like an excuse for fighting, and some of the more annoying manga tropes - a sexy female lead with no other women in sight, and a visual style that is all about whipping hair and big eyes, and world-building that seem unnecessarily weird, just annoyed me.
But from the second story arc, my infatuation grew. A story arc which comes across as painfully emo and irritating in the movie, is much more mature (and yes, darker) in the manga, the very ridiculousness and immaturity of the love interest driving the plot into more poignant, not less, territory. It takes a certain flair to introduce a love interest who hijacks and rips peoples spines out for money, and the shifting moral universe that Alita/Gunnm has to navigate moves to centrestage at this point, driving character development and audience engagement for the rest of this collection. As the action scenes decrease in frequency, Kishiro gets more innovative with panel layouts, and the simplicity and power of the art became a real draw for me. The book starts to draw (heh!) a much wider range of female characters, and the growing cast gives the sense of shifting understandings of goodies and baddies, what survival choices are acceptable and which are not, and even what strategies to create change are useful and which are not - and how you recover from a bad choice, and a devastating outcome.
And yes, it is still manga. So somehow this is explored through plots which are totally cheesy (but never predictable!), worldbuilding which is both very detailed and yet based on whacky ideas about technology, and not infrequent boobs (and abs) shots. The fan service was more mild than I expected, though, more gender equal than I expected, and not particularly irritating to me. YMMV. Oh, and a lot of whipping hair.
I honestly could care less if there is a sequel to Alita: Battle Angel, but I've already bought [b:Battle Angel Alita: Last Order (Omnibuses)|43514539|Battle Angel Alita Last Order (Omnibuses) (5 Book Series)|Yukito Kishiro|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1546995015s/43514539.jpg|67677477]. I haven't felt this invigorated around graphic storytelling for quite some time.
**Read for 2019 Reading Challenge #1. A book becoming a movie in 2019
It wasn't a love-at-first sight thing. The first storyline of Gunnm left me yawning a little, and not terribly invested in this world. The plot felt mostly like an excuse for fighting, and some of the more annoying manga tropes - a sexy female lead with no other women in sight, and a visual style that is all about whipping hair and big eyes, and world-building that seem unnecessarily weird, just annoyed me.
But from the second story arc, my infatuation grew. A story arc which comes across as painfully emo and irritating in the movie, is much more mature (and yes, darker) in the manga, the very ridiculousness and immaturity of the love interest driving the plot into more poignant, not less, territory. It takes a certain flair to introduce a love interest who hijacks and rips peoples spines out for money, and the shifting moral universe that Alita/Gunnm has to navigate moves to centrestage at this point, driving character development and audience engagement for the rest of this collection. As the action scenes decrease in frequency, Kishiro gets more innovative with panel layouts, and the simplicity and power of the art became a real draw for me. The book starts to draw (heh!) a much wider range of female characters, and the growing cast gives the sense of shifting understandings of goodies and baddies, what survival choices are acceptable and which are not, and even what strategies to create change are useful and which are not - and how you recover from a bad choice, and a devastating outcome.
And yes, it is still manga. So somehow this is explored through plots which are totally cheesy (but never predictable!), worldbuilding which is both very detailed and yet based on whacky ideas about technology, and not infrequent boobs (and abs) shots. The fan service was more mild than I expected, though, more gender equal than I expected, and not particularly irritating to me. YMMV. Oh, and a lot of whipping hair.
I honestly could care less if there is a sequel to Alita: Battle Angel, but I've already bought [b:Battle Angel Alita: Last Order (Omnibuses)|43514539|Battle Angel Alita Last Order (Omnibuses) (5 Book Series)|Yukito Kishiro|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1546995015s/43514539.jpg|67677477]. I haven't felt this invigorated around graphic storytelling for quite some time.
**Read for 2019 Reading Challenge #1. A book becoming a movie in 2019