I got this graphic novel from Net Galley in trade for an honest review

This review is also posted in my blog : https://onewordtoomuch.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/battle-angel-alita-volume-1-rusty-angel-battle-angel-alita-gunnm-1/

My Ratings : 5 out of 5 stars

Review

I love manga ever since in junior high but I’ve never read manga with the science fiction or robotic (mecha) style. Well, I’m not too interested with mecha because they usually have exaggerated body parts which I don’t quite like. This is the first manga I’ve reviewed and I like the story. I was intrigued when I first watch the movie trailer of “Alita the battle angel” and come across this book on Net Galley, so I have to read this one.

See the trailer of the movie below :


The setting is somewhere in the distant future, with a futuristic setting. Here’s the situation where human are not entirely human but some of them are diffused with robotic parts or they are entirely robot. Alita was found in the dumpster and given a new body by her rescuer, Ido. She became attached to Ido, which I find it’s kind of cute. It’s like a love relationship between a father and daughter.

Things begin to get interesting when Ido are actually a hunter-killer and Alita wants to follow his footsteps. She has some cool moves but she encounter a bad cyborg named Makaku. Makaku likes to kill other cyborg and eat their brain. This is her biggest yet enemy that destroys her body again and here’s the part where she gets a makeover with the Berserker body.

I like the story where Alita has a tendency to act like human, even though she’s a robot. Fusing the emotion of a robot into human is somewhat unique. The idea of a distant future with cyborg and human implanted with robotic parts is quite fantastic. This could only come from an advance mind that could imagine how far we as human being could go.

Drawing style is superb, with no exaggerated body parts. The features of the humans are well balanced and the robots are very detail. The fighting scene between Alita and Makaku is also very fast moving and alive. There are parts where Makaku extending his tongue and you could just see the spit details that make you cringed inside. Some gory scenes are also included. Background scenes are well detailed, with the crumbling rocks and city. It really depicted a dying world.
Recommend for those who love reading manga with a science fiction theme, mecha style and strong woman character.

I liked the concept of this book but i felt that some chapters of the manga were structurally messy and the story was not fully linear at points. I liked the main female character a lot and connected to the role of the creator but the villain did not feel as if he was fully fleshed out and was lacking a certain something.

'Battle Angel Alita, Volume 1: Rusty Angel' by Yukito Kishiro seems like a timely release with an upcoming movie coming out. It's also a really good read.

Daisuke Ido likes looking for cyborg parts in the junk heaps. When he finds the head of a cyborg, he rebuilds her into Alita. Alita has little memory of who she was before, but she knows she must fight. After a crushing defeat, she is rebuilt into an even fiercer weapon and goes out to get revenge on the scary Makaku.

It's definitely a classic series with a deep dystopian SF feel. The world is populated, but it seems as if most people have been turned into partial cyborgs.

The art is some of the best I've seen in manga and I loved the detail. Many of the chapters also included a few introductory color pages, and these were really well done. I'm glad I finally got to read a chapter in this classic series.

I received a review copy of this manga from Kodansha Comics and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this manga.

If there is a manga I've loved, is this one. I remember when I first opened its pages and found that half angel half cyborg laying on ruins... it blew me away. In "Battle Angel Alita" we follow the satory of a combat cyborg from another plante called Alita, who gets picked from a pile of debris by a scientist named Ido, who decides to reconstruct her and does much more than just that as he begans to be a paternal figure for the sweet Alita. Because she is a gentle sweet creature until she has to defend Ido and herself and something like muscle memory springs fort and shows us how brutal Alita can really be. But she is not only brutality, as all she does is tempered by her concience and her beliefs.

Alita is just one of these series I love. We follow the story of this cyborg trying to reconstruct her life, remember her past and find her humanity alongside her place on the world. And all the chacraters she finds on her journey, be they good or bad, are so full of life and so real, that is just amazing.