Battle Angel Alita – Spoiler Free – Not Recommended
TLDR
Story – 2/10 – 2 x 0.275 = 0,55
Art – 8/10 – 8 x 0.2 = 1,6
Characters – 3/10 – x 0.225 = 0,675
Enjoyment – 1/10 – 1 x 0.3 = 0,3
Total: 3,125
Story – 2/10
...
It's such a sadness...
Battle Angel Alita’s story is a mess, a huge mess. It is difficult to describe how such a story can be so flawed. The story doesn't make sense, has many leaps of faith, and is poorly written overall. What started as an interesting premise completely forgot its purpose. This manga is anything but a coherent story, being just a collection of random things happening to Alita.
Romance is also a big part – or at least the prospect of romance – of Battle Angel Alita. Characters know each other in one volume, and they are already falling in love in the same volume. Alita’s main crush – Yogo – appeared out of nowhere, was never developed, but still played a major impact in the story for no absolute reason. Understandably, a story about cyborgs should have a part about love and human feelings, but this is simply not the way to do it. Moreover, she repeats so many times she is human that you completely forget that she is a cyborg.
There are also some time-skips, and although they aren’t poorly executed, they just make up for a case of bad writing: there are things that only make sense IF there is a non-declared time-skip: with one exception right in the beginning (a two-year time-skip), time-skips must be intuited.
But not everything in Battle Angel Alita is downright bad. For once, the world-building is quite interesting, and significant aspects of the lore are mentioned in the manga. In that sense, it is a very lore-rich story.
The ending is also poorly executed.
Art – 8/10
Art is Battle Angel Alitas's main strength – and probably the only one, for that matter. The art is very functional, stylish, impeccable, and a joy to read. The character design is beautiful, making it very easy to recognise characters from one another. There are also good panels, although no awe-inspiring ones. If only the story and characters were better…
Characters – 3/10
With one exception – Ido – the characters of Battle Angel Alita are downright bad. The main character is in fact incredibly annoying, looking like a teenager during its teenage angst phase, changing opinion on a whim; characters appear and disappear out of nowhere. It's just a mess.
Enjoyment – 1/10
Enjoyment must be definitely very low for Battle Angel Alita. This is a Not Recommended without a shadow of a doubt: the story and the characters make for an explosive mixture that renders the manga a painful and frustrating experience. Battle Angel Alita may, according to some criteria, be considered a classic (it says so on the cover of the manga), but quality is not one of them. It is a terrible manga that only has a good world-building and lore. It is also interesting to note that a manga that relies so much of its energy on the human concept of love has such a robotic approach. There is also no reason to read the sequel for the time being since it is based on a non-canonical version of the ending of Battle Angel Alita, and I definitely won’t reread it.
Alternative TitlesSynonyms: Ganmu Japanese: 銃夢 GUNNM More titlesInformationType: Manga
Volumes: 9
Chapters: 53
Status: Finished
Published: Nov 1990 to Mar 1995
Demographic:
Seinen
Serialization:
Business Jump Authors:
Kishiro, Yukito (Story & Art) Statistics Ranked: #2512 2 based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #186
Members: 90,833
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Your Feelings Categories Aug 14, 2023
Alita Battle Angel...it's an awfully underwhelming manga. The entire story hinges on the foundations of a scientific dystopia, but rather than doing any worldbuilding or exploration, only the bare minimum is given for the story to progress. There's a mysterious structure floating above that everyone believes to be heaven: filled with riches, glory, and happiness. Other than that, it's just generic bounty hunter missions--akin to the adventure guild missions in medieval litRPGs. There's no sense of cyberpunk-like activities despite it being heavily hinted at; it feels like the sci-fi aspect was only to enable Alita to become a cyborg.
Alita herself is a reasonably unimpressive character. ... |