Battle Angel (a.k.a. Gunnm), 1993.
Directed by Hiroshi Fukutomi.
Featuring the voice talents of Miki Itō, Shunsuke Kariya, Kappei Yamagunchi, Edward Glen, Mami Koyama, and Shigeru Chiba.
SYNOPSIS:
In the dystopian scrap yard of the 26th century Daisuke Ido finds the head and chest of a female cyborg named Alita. Once he puts her back together she displays extraordinary fighting skills, though she also has no memory of who she was. Alita becomes a bounty hunter, chasing down criminals and clashing with other hunters.
The 1993 Battle Angel (originally titled Gunnm) is the first and only animated adaptation of the comic series by Yukito Kishiro that introduced Alita, a cyborg with a human brain discovered in a scrap yard by cybermedic expert Daisuke Ido. After outfitting Alita with a metal body, Ido introduces her to Scrap Iron City – a corroded and largely abandoned metropolis. Above, the floating city of Zalem rains its detritus down but allows no one up. Alita suffers from amnesia, though she displays amazing combat skills. Unlike the manga series and Robert Rodriguez’s live-action adaptation, Battle Angel chooses not to focus too much on Alita’s past. This proves to be an effective choice given its aggressively short fifty-four minute runtime. Overall, Battle Angel is certainly the most fleet version of the Alita story.
Despite the fast pace, the mood of the film is contemplative, mournful, and eerie. That’s not to say that there aren’t bursts of action where Alita squares off and slices up cyber-enhanced bounty hunters three times her size, but there is a sense of sadness and yearning. Alita’s friend Yugo longs to ascend to Zalem after his brother was executed for trying to do the same. Both Ido and his ex-wife Chiren were once members of the elite in Zalem, but have since fallen to earth. Some viewers will be disappointed that we never get a chance to explore Zalem. It’s not unlike the off-world colonies in Blade Runner, which are referenced but never visualized. Likewise, Alita is given the moniker “Battle Angel” by Vector, who wants her to compete in the violent sport of Motorball, however, the film never actually takes us into the Motorball arena.
The film smartly dials in on the character of Alita and reveals the world as she sees it, rather than devoting time to sprawling world building. Alita is depicted as both naïve and capable of visiting bone-splintering violence when necessary. In this way, she’s not that different from heroines like Leeloo in The Fifth Element or River Tam in Serenity. The relationship between Yugo and Alita works in short hand and remains rather chaste throughout. The main conflict between the two revolves around Yugo’s obsession with Zalem. In one argument, Alita goes from smashing her fist through a concrete wall and demanding “should I kill you or free you?” to kissing Yugo. Strangely, these rapid character shifts work. However, the dynamic between Alita and Ito is the most interesting. On one level it echoes Geppetto and Pinocchio, and on another it feels a bit more like Frankenstein and his monster (although one could argue to two aren’t that different.
Segments of Battle Angel do play like a horror film, from the early images of Alita’s eviscerated body with wires spilling out of it, to characters fleeing down dark alleys stalked by bio-mechanical killers. Of course, it never becomes a fully-fledged body horror or slasher film, but it does successfully establish the idea that Scrap Iron City is a perilous place where the only really lucrative business seems to be in the forcible redistribution of organs.
The 2-D animation is beautiful and holds up well. There are some truly wonderful and evocative images. Massive streams of flotsam and jetsam tumble down at sunset. Yugo scales the pipelines with his newly mechanical body. Alita discharges energy bolts to flay the skin off a hulking bounty hunter. While the broad plot points of Battle Angel map closely to the live action iteration, it feels distinct tonally. The art style and animation alone make the film worth a look. While subsequent films like Ghost in the Shell and countless other cyberpunk anime shows and films have touched on similar subject matter, Battle Angel remains a worthwhile watch for its strange slant on the Pinocchio story as well as the character of Alita.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Sam Kitagawa
