Alita, ángel de combate

Any serious anime fan will have a special place in his heart for Gally. She is *the* textbook example of the innocent anime girl. Where this work shines is in Gally's character development through her experiences where she discovers a personality of her own after being reanimated. Her gradual acquisition of her defensive affection with the Doctor and her innocent but deep attachment with Yugo are impressive. No fan of good film acting can criticize this "cartoon" as inferior to live action.

All this applies to the Japanese version with subtitles. The English dubbing is awful.

This was simply an amazing piece of artwork. This movie had the potential to be right up there next to Akira and Ghost in the Shell. Unfortunately there's just way too much left out, leaving you with a feeling that you've been conned out of a great movie. Gally (the main chick / hero) is the most beautiful anime babe out there. Overall, it's a movie an anime fan will like, but will long for more.... Find the comic books for more.

This is the one that taught me not to judge an anime by its cover. I expected an hour of mindless violence along with a weak story line. Instead, I found myself in a very deep and well developed world for the short time spent in it. It was all story, and an incredibly imaginative place perfect for the story.

It was definately too short. It could have had a great and long lasting series life if they had chosen one. But it was none the less, an enjoying ride, and not a moment of wasted time.

Can't help but think that the English title "Battle Angel Alita" is probably just a wimp out for "Lolita". Remind me, eyeballs should be *smaller* than fists, right? That said, Battle Angel is thankfully free of teeny sex, although the ubiquitous brief glimpse of nekkid adult lady is pubic hair free, which I always find quite disturbing.

The animation is fine, although the scale of characters varies wildly, with Alita shrinking to almost Tinkerbelle proportions in some shots. Also, gravity seems to have a particularly tenuous hold on our little protagonist (even for anime!) and she does spend a fair bit of time just staring wide eyed.

Voice talent in the English dub is par for the course for anime, i.e. pretty dire. Alita at least has a distinctive cutesy mock-English timbre. The baddies are all instantly identifiable by their voices, which is frankly insulting and doesn't help to convince sceptics (or me, to be honest) that anime is more than a kiddie cartoon gone rabid.

There's some attempt at characterisation among the protagonists, but a fifty something minute runtime isn't enough time to expand on one fall/redemption story, let alone three or four. In fact, the whole thing is wrapped up and ended very abruptly in the last few minutes. It feels forced and unfinished, and smacks of series pilot.

Still, it was clearly a classy bit of animation before the translators got their hands on it. As usual, I'm left with the feeling that it's an opportunity wasted, and that a subtitled version would probably be much more enjoyable - as is definitely the case with Akira.

After watching the terrific movie Alita: Battle Angel, which I felt fell apart towards the end, I decided to watch this to see if the story was the same. It is, and it's also an hour long which means it runs through that story like lightning. There's very little in the way of character development; just lots of plot.

Turns out it's a pretty similar story, and from what I've read the anime and the movie are both fairly true to the original manga but make some changes. Unlike the movie, the anime holds together because it doesn't start throwing in a bunch of stuff that seems crammed in. But it also lacks emotional punch because you're not given a chance to really get to know the characters.

It's not as good as the live-action movie, but it is entertaining enough.