Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
olokinprime
This is what I imagine Battle Angel visually should be, rather than what the live action movie delivered.
That is not to say that one is better than the other, but both adaptations had elements going for it. For instance, I would rather have Christoph Waltz's performance from the live action movie because of his more fatherly portrayal of Ido. The rest, this anime nailed it.
What the anime lacked was for time for its story to breathe. The anime was rushed with its 45-minute run time. It really needed some character moments to build on the relationships.
For a more than 30-year-old anime, it is still better animated than 60% of the seasonal anime running for the Winter 2026 season. That is crazy Madhouse quality.
Read at the sourceDrakestalker
The only existing animated adaptation of the Battle Angel Alita manga, Gunnm is a 2-episode OVA from the early 90s. It covers pretty much the same ground as the Hollywood movie, minus some future arcs that the movie rushed in earlier. It's not terribly interesting, but it's also not a significant time investment. To fans of the genre or the manga, this will be time well spent.
For what it's worth, as opposed to the movie, the city (Iron City, I think it's called?) can clearly be seen for the post-apocalyptic desiccated hellhole that it is, not the relatively poor, but vibrant and bustling hipster paradise from the Hollywood production.
In keeping with the ethic of being appropriately dark, the dog death scene is way more explicit here, as well. Be warned.
Also, just as I recently found…
Read at the sourceWitchFromMercury
Imo it wasn't that good. I know it came before but Alita is just a robot Sailor Saturn. I also didn't like the romance in this show since Hugo's a criminal but that doesn't seem to bother Gally at all. That makes me think she's a bitch. I don't have any sympathy for her. Hugo also seemed like a dick when he kissed Gally and said they're partners in crime now. Imo it's really tone deaf since he's a guy who rips peoples spines out to sell.
And I was really disappointed with the world. I thought it would be darker and more sci-fi but the world of BAA is more like Samurai Jack. It's very cartoony and the robot stuff is just a mish-mash.
I thought I'd read the manga but I doubt it. It's not my kind of story. I prefer a more serious one. Was interesting to see though how this inspired Texhnoly…
Read at the sourcetsubagakure
YUKITOPIA!!
Welcome to the stupendous and imaginary world of Kishiro Yukito-sensei!
GUNNM (Battle Angel Alita) proves to be a deep and breath-taking work, brimming with charming and intrinsic characters, a powerful and driving story, and a cosmogony as beautiful as it is gloomy, being, after a fashion, a dystopia of a fallen world, once one has delved into it. In Gally (or Alita) we found the drive and valour of a cyborg girl searching for her lost memories, the gore and goose bumps across the skin amongst extraordinary battles as she becomes a Hunter Warrior. Moreover, the nascent, ambiguous and poetic love between man and machine; the inhabitants and life, much blight, of Scrap Iron City; the reverie to attain a higher order of living above the floating, looming and cryptic Zalum; a p…
Read at the sourceherbeey
I went into this expecting robots, examination of the robot condition and a predictable plot. I did not get that. I therefore did not appreciate it until I was told that what this OVA is about is the setting.
The setting is visually striking - the rich are living in a city called Zalem high above Scrap Iron City (which is basically Zalem's dumping ground). This is set in Scrap Iron City. This story is about the effect that Zalem has on the people of this policeless city. Look out for the hints people give about what they think of the people around them, because not only is this central to the plot, but it's central to their characterisation.
The characterisation here is phenomenal for a 55 minute OVA. Utterly phenomenal. Many characters get an unpredictable arc, almost as if they're actu…
Read at the sourceLuquillo
Battle Angel is an action anime with sci-fi elements that manages to be a lot more than a bloody spectacle. It examines many themes: love, hope, freedom, obsession, and the thin line between good and evil. The anime succeeds in meshing all of these together with a coherent storyline, character development, and action without making anything seem artificial. What makes it so impressive is that it's pulled off in a mere two episodes with a 25 minute run time each; while you have many anime with 12 times the episodes completely incapable of doing this. Despite everything it does right though, there is so much room left for improvement.
Beginning with its setting; the world this story takes place in is very interesting. Scrap Iron City is a cesspool of a community. It's filthy, dangerous, and…
Read at the sourceDuckmanTheTyrant
I was recommended this title by a good friend of mine and decided to purchase this along with Voices of a Distant Star after trading in some anime DVDs I didn't want anymore, and am really, really glad to have seen Battle Angel. My only regret is that I didn't pick that title up in my early years of anime fandom since I clearly remember seeing a VHS display for this at the local Hollywood Video back in the day.
STORY
Battle Angel takes place in a hellhole known as Scrap Iron City. Above Scrap Iron City is a much fantasized floating paradise named Zalem. Scrap Iron City is seething with vile criminals, and the most vile ones attack people and take their organs to sell in the black market (particularly spines, which are the most valuable). Due to a lack of police, an organization simply kn…
Read at the sourceShura-shurato
Not for the fainthearted!!! This short anime ova from 1993 is one of the BEST short story i´ve ever seen for a cyberpunk anime. And more of it that most of the ppl in the story are shrouded in mystery by past and the survival of the fittest sci/fi genre.Even more so is that the main charachter Alita(Gumnn in japan) is almost totally unknown in the anime by past, and present, Tiphares the mystery city, cyborg-enhanced criminals, doctors with a sort of ápproval'mark on their forehead... too bad that are no further animeplans to continue it but the manga is satisfying!
Read at the sourceangelsreview
Ok, who is the person that decided to give her a name like ‘Gally’? Someone really didn’t have any idea how to create a name. Gally isn’t like a normal girl, she just laughs when someone says she weighs a ton. It’s interesting how she is extremely strong and yet the only thing that was found was her head and part of her chest. She also seems to sweat which I really don’t think that cyborgs need to do so. There are a lot of inconsistencies that make this feel a bit off.
Ido is a freaken jurk. Pretty much when Gally asks to be a Bounty Hunter, he tells her that all she needs to do is stand there and look pretty. It seems that all he really wants her to be is just eye candy at his medical business. And then, he just accepts her as a bounty hunter without any question.
The artwork is vinta…
Read at the sourceHybridMedia
As you may know already or not, it is based on the manga written by Yukito Kishiro, about a cyborg that lost all her memories and is taken care by cybernetics expert Daisuke Ido and he names the cyborg Alita (or Gally by the original Japanese translation), after his dead cat. Now I would talk about the many adventures that she has throughout but I am only covering the anime, which is only 2 episodes. Keep in mind that I don’t usually read much manga and I do want to acknowledge both versions and know the differences between them and hopefully not sound like an ignorant jackass.
The plot summary in first episode called “Rusty Angel” is pretty much the beginning of the story like in the manga, only it seemed kind of rushed with the discovery of Gally being over less than a 3 minutes but I…
Read at the sourcehanzer
Horrible mutilation of an amazing manga. They completely destroy one of the most incredible story arcs in the first installment, and the second arc is just a shell of what it was. Top it off with blatantly rushed animation, and poor voice acting on both the japanese and english audio tracks and it leaves you with an adaption that is so bad its inexcusable.
Do yourself a favor, if you're interested in BAA, read the manga. Its one of the best. Don't waste your time on this.
Read at the sourcektulu007
Battle Angel seems very cliche on the surface. I know what you're thinking a story about a cyborg mercenary in a post-apocalyptic future, cliche? Well, yes. Even when the manga came out in 1990 the post-apocalyptic future involving cyborgs was cliche and had many examples including Appleseed and Bubblegum Crisis being two examples. However, Battle Angel stays original in many ways. It opens with the protagonist, Gally, being found broken in a junkyard by Doctor Ido. He takes her to his laboratory and repairs her. She has no memory, yet another cliche but it works so I won't say too much about it. She sees him sneak out one night and return bandaged. So she follows him the next night and discovers that he's a mercenary. She promptly decides to become one herself. That's only one aspect of t…
Read at the sourceshadowsuki
This was one of the first anime I ever watched, so I'll also have a soft spot for it, but the bleak post-apocalyptic technological world is a perfect dystopia is excellent and indicative of the paths Japanese animation would take in the future as well as the influence that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the country and the animation industry in particular.
The music and animation style has dated somewhat but is 'classic' anime as in at the beginning of its infiltration of the Western world. It doesn't take away from the series at all.
Read at the sourceEtyen
In my honest opinion the anime and the manga are a masterpiece, reflecting many people's lives.
Yugo's dream of reaching Tiphares (which may represent one's goals in life) swiftly coming to an end and after risking his life, and eventually lose it, in order to obtain what he dreamt for, he realised that what he really needed was at arm's reach. However he ended up losing even that - something which happens often nowadays. On the other hand, Alita, who had nothing in life (she was raised from the actual scrapyard) learnt to appreciate life and those things she experienced everyday. This can be seen clearly when she asks Yugo why does he really want to visit Tiphares. Her question is full of pity, somehow knowing that he would lose everything on his road to obtain his dream. This feeling ca…
Read at the sourcekekekeKaj
Hmmm, a half decent action anime that consists of 2 parts. It's a bit short, but it's not too bad. The animation is ok... the face of the doctor is longer than that of a horse, but apart from that there isn't anything seriously out of place. "Battle Angel Alita" had nice background music going for it, which lent it some good atmosphere. The story had some good ideas, but is somewhat incomplete. Heh, that's the main trouble with "Battle Angel Alita" actually. It felt like a chunk was missing between the two parts that it comprises, with the relationship between the characters suddenly taking a giant leap forward going from one episode to the other. Although it's probably meant to be that way, the result is that it simply felt like they were too lazy to actually flesh out the character inter…
Read at the sourcethecollected
This is the first anime I have ever seen. My lackluster review will be because of the fact that it was so long ago, yet I can say with certainty that it started me on a love affair with anime that has not slowed down.
The bounty hunter concept was new to me at the time, I must admit, just as the sheer horror and shock of it all was a refreshing dose of novel imagination. The story is lacking, yet I believe you will feel the same when you watch it and think it was something exceptional and worthwhile.
Maybe I'm just a fool or like to go against the grain and put my support behind a obscure anime that probably only retains popularity by it's cult following.
Or maybe, I am you.
Wandering around aimlessly though life with an anime on your mind that still makes you tingle when you think…
Read at the sourceArchaeon
Every so often an anime is released that receives mixed reviews, not because it's good or bad, but simply because the context is ambiguous. Battle Angel Alita is one such example of this.
The series began as a manga by Kishiro Yukito in 1990, and after a short time the OVA was produced and released to Japanese and Western markets in 1993.
This is where the ambiguity comes in. To many who have read the manga, the story appears to be incomplete at first glance, especially given the numerous changes that have been made in the OVA. To those who haven't read the manga, there seems to be nothing too wrong with the plot, aside from the odd inconsistency that is. Where the ambiguity occurs is in the consideration of the plot - is it good or not? If you've read the manga then you can readily pic…
Read at the sourceBishounen_Hunter
Oh, if only all anime titles could be as magnificent as this little gem. Sure there may be little flaws here and there and it's an incomplete story but it's definitely a gem nonetheless. Battle Angel is a vintage classic that any true anime connoisseur worth his or her grain of salt should already have as part of their collection. If you have never seen or heard of Battle Angel Alita and you are into anime, sci-fi or both...then this comes highly recommended.
This show came out in the early 90's [I want to say...1992?] and yet the art still looks fabulous, even by today's standards and very few anime has that kind of bragging rights. Plus there is no CG in this one, it's just straight-up quality hand drawn stuff.
I absolutely love the ending song [Cyborg Mermaid]. It's both very desperat…
Read at the sourceDeathHormone
Quick Review:
I haven't saw this for ages but what I remember of it, I thought The story was quite diffrent and nice, I really enjoyed this OVA, I heard there was a manga, and this only covers the first 2 chapters, I haven't read the manga, but after watching this, I want to read it.
Give it a try, if you want the infomation at the top of the page sounds good to you, check it out!
Read at the sourceRangFlash
This 2 episode anime OVA is not great. In fact, it could use a lot of work.
Why? Well let's start with the good.
Well, I do like the themes and the concept of the story. It's a post-apocalyptic world where the poor are literally forced to live in the garbage dumps of the rich. While the aristocrats live in a rich, floating city, the poor are forced to live in a brutal, criminal ridden underworld where murderers, assassins, and bounty hunters thrive.
The art and animation are definately great. The character designs seem to have heart and soul in them, unlike many of the newer animes today, in my opinion... There's just something about these earlier animes, where the imperfections and flaws don't really seem to detract from the style. Certain liberties that artists are given visibly cont…
Read at the source