Monday, March 22, 2010

Entry 4 - Battle Angel Alita

This week for the manga section of the class I chose to read Battle Angel Alita: Last Order. The manga is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story set in a barren dessert. Robots and cyborgs amongst humans is very common. This in fact seems to be a theme throughout the manga; the difference between humans, cyborgs, and robots. Gally, the main character, has an interaction with a group of humans she finds. The group asks her to save them from a robot, but calls her cyborg and gives her commands as if she is purely machine. She corrects them by saying that she is not a robot she is a cyborg, and considers herself human. She feels and thinks and has a brain.

The manga itself is very well rendered and I enjoy the illustrations and style. There is definate violent aspect to the comic. There is a lot of blood, decapitation, and viscera. And its quite detailed. I don't especially like or dislike that factor, it just really makes a lot of it intense. It can be somewhat disgusting, but I feel like its really part of the style. There is a sense of cruelty expressed by many of the characters. For instance one of the most poignant, but beautiful scenes is Gally's first memory as a girl being told to walk to a crashed space ship through a mine feild. However she is hurt and cannot walk there, so another cyborg girl, Erica helps her. They walk many steps and some how make it, but are then saved by a cyborg soldier. However the walk there is very well emotionally expressed. My favorite part is near the end of the walk when they realize they will probably die. Erica tells Yoko (Gally) that they should look at the sky when they walk so they will go to heaven.

They only thing I don't really like about the manga is that sometimes it is hard to understand. A lot of scientist theoretical talk, kind of sometimes comes across as babble. The story also seems sort of vague in many ways.

The fighting sequences are really greatly illustrated. I like the style, and how well the dynamics of motion are portrated. It can be confusing to look at, but also very fluid. You can look at the frames for the fights for a really long time because many times they are showing a lot of stuff in one scene.

Overall I really enjoyed this manga.