The ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ trailer.

Haven’t read this particular anime, but: I like the look of Alita: Battle Angel. It has a hard-to-define arua about it that suggests that there may be actual thought behind the film. Or possibly I’m just being seduced by the appearance of actual sunlight in a cyberpunk movie?  Dear God, can we handle this brazen confounding of tradition?

Don’t get me wrong. Blade Runner‘s aesthetic dominated for a reason. But we know that every director out there’s seen Tears in Rain.  Sometimes, let there be natural lighting.

7 thoughts on “The ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ trailer.”

  1. I’ve read the manga too. There are some great arcs they can adapt after the first main one, and some they can just skip by. It looks promising. I’m skeptical of the choice of giving “realistic” anime eyes to Alita… and only Alita. Just weird.

    1. Yes…. I think it is the eyes. Clearly based on the actress, but firmly lodged in the Uncanny Valley.

        1. Same. They give her an inhuman quality that emphasizes her artificial nature. Now admittedly, at least half the cast shown on-screen is clearly using artificial body parts. But they’re still nominally “homo sapiens” as opposed to android.

          Never read the manga. Saw the OVA quite a while back, and thought it was only alright. But I’ve heard good things about the manga, so hopefully this will turn out well. Cameron’s been wanting to do this for a *long* time.

          Hopefully he’ll do a better job with the story for this than he did with the story for Avatar…

  2. BA:A has an odd quirk to its production. The author ended the story back in 1995, when he was very ill and thought he might die. He recovered and continued drawing/writing new material. His original ending was so bonkers (quite possibly drug addled from his medication) that he more or less threw out the original final chapter, and just wrote his new stuff starting from the end of the previous chapter.

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