Battle Angel

6 reviews - 21.0 total score (Explanation of the rating system)
avg. score: (3.5)

6. Gyro

Zalem, the gigantic and mysterious mid-air city, covers the sky. Underneath, junkies and cyborgs live in the ruined city known as "Scrap Iron City". Within the giant pile of ruble cast off from the city in the sky, begins the story of a girl...

One day in the Scrap Yard, Dr. Ido finds the partially destroyed body of a young cyborg girl. After being rebuilt by the doctor, Gally has no memory, so she fights to recover her true self that is hidden somewhere inside her.

The of story Battle Angel (Gunnm in Japan) has a nice blend of fast-paced action and emotional drama. You see, at its core, Battle Angel is more of a love story. It just happens to star an ass-kicking female cyborg. The mix of action and drama is pulled off almost perfectly. The only problem is that it's too short and seems a little rushed.

The characters are excellent. This is because they all possess realistic traits and flaws. No one seems artificial, and it's easy to get attached to them. The designs are very cool, too, especially Gally, who can go from sweet and innocent to totally bad ass in a flash.

The animation is also very good, especially during the action scenes. The art style does a great job capturing the feel of Scrap Iron City.

Excellent story and characters make this a great two part OAV series. I only wish that it were longer. The manga it was based on was 8 volumes, so Battle Angel could have easily been a series.

5. Mechaman

This was one of the first anime series I watched. It made a strong impression on me then, and it's still one of my favorites. It has many of the things that I like about anime: attractive character designs, great action scenes, moral ambiguity and a somewhat sad story. Unlike most people, I think the story works very well on its own. Not everything is told, like the past of Alita or what kind of a place Tiphares really is, but it's not really necessary. What the show has is more than enough to tell its tale of young love, hope and dreams with style.

4. Yogi

This show is another one which has an extremely inconclusive ending. It feels like the first two chapters in a larger story, which it IS. Read the Manga. In any case, the story itself is fairly grim and gritty, involving an amnesiac robot which somehow is one of the most powerful fighters around. However, it is clear that no matter how good she is, she’s still living in a pit of slum and villainy, with little hope to rise above her station. You want to find out what happens to her later, how she does, but the show ends abruptly. Still, what’s out there is pretty good.

3. Olmanek

Anyone else feel like they missed something after watching this OAV? For the hype surrounding this series I'm really very disappointed, apparently, the manga is brilliant, which would have to make this a wretched abomination if true. Utterly forgettable characters, little to no plausible storyline, important actions taken by characters which had no lead up or real explanation, I'm so very disappointed, the ending was, well was that really an ending at all? The credits came far too quickly, it very obviously skimmed over much of the original storyline, where anyone could see that huge parts of the storyline, probably interesting and important parts, were left out and skipped stopping the watcher from feeling empathy or interest or understanding. Watching a squirrel in a coma is more interesting than this, avoid at all costs.

2. Iodine

One of the most famous cyberpunk titles, Gunnm deals with the devasting effects of an uncrossable social divide in a dark, violent world where dreams of betterment tend to bring destruction rather than reward. Our setting is Scrap Iron City, a place built on the refuse of paradise and inhabited by desperate rejects. Here, the gruesome replacement of body parts with articifial components is commonplace, and our heroine is herself a cyborg. Though based on a longer manga, the focus in this short OAV is on the budding relationship between Gally and Yuugo, a pair of characters who show far more soul and sincerity in the gutter than most celebrated action heroes ever manage. Gally is especially well realized, a tough, but innocent girl who can't stop trying to combat the endless horror around her, even going against those she loves to do it. The social commentary is quite blunt, but combined with the cyber-slumworld setting and wonderfully human characters, the result is a wrenching, tragic love story.

This is an older title, as the animation clearly shows, but the designs are complex and have a style all their own. The atmosphere acheived by the juxtaposition of Gally's brutal, cutthroat home with the unreachable city of perfection in the sky is quite an accomplishment. This image and the idea that goes with it characterize the entire OAV. There's quite a lot of graphic violence in accordance with the nature of the story. Gally is a mercenary and spends a lot of time taking other cyborgs apart. Yet nothing ever feels gratuitous and certainly not all the intensity of the series comes from the fighting. Sadly, the story was never continued in animated form, but the OAV does provide a definite conclusion to the arc it tackles and works very well on its own.

1. Tempy

It isn't difficult to see why Yukito Kishiro, the author of the Gunnm manga (translated released in English as Battle Angel), and Gunnm fans did not like the Battle Angel OVA series. Although the art and animation are very good and true to the original, the 2 short episodes encompass 2 volumes (12 issues!) and are extremely compact. Many characters had to be dropped and another had to be made up to tie the leftovers together. The designs are wonderful, and there are good action sequences, but everything feels just way too short and hurried. Many scenes of tragedy and sad reflection had to be skipped, and the OVA comes nowhere near the vast, violent and tragic world Kishiro created. It's still worth watching though, and if you feel like wanting more afterwards, make sure you get the 9 volumes of manga. Note though that the English translated manga changed several names: the title Gunnm becomes Battle Angel Alita, our protagonist Gally becomes Alita, Zalem becomes Tiphares, etc. Having had to hurry up the ending due to illness, Kishiro has recently started creating a new manga series in the Gunnm world.