ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL (2019)
Everyone has a favorite movie hero, right? Well mine is Alita, from Yukito Kishiro’s manga series 'Battle Angel: Alita'. She is a strong female character in both senses of the word: strong because she’s brave, independent, tough, smart and compassionate, but also in the enjoyable ‘I-can-punch-your-head-off’ way. The series is set in a 26th century dystopia, and revolves around the city of Scrapyard, grown up around a massive heap of rubbish that rains down from Tiphares, a mysterious city floating above. ‘Surface dwellers’ are barred from Tiphares, and must make lives for themselves amid the scrap. Alita is found in the garbage heap by cybernetics doctor and part-time bounty hunter Daisuke Ido, who rebuilds her body and takes care of her. She remembers nothing about who she was or how she came to be in the Scrapyard, but she does discover a talent for killing which leads her to join Ido as a bounty hunter.
The story continues over as Alita attempts to rediscover her past and struggles to reconcile her identity as girl and killer, human and machine, individual and soldier.
First of all, Alita is no balloon-breasted manga stereotype — while she does have an unnaturally ‘perfect’ body and is beautiful in a childlike way, she is very rarely drawn in an overtly sexual style, and spends most of her time fully clothed, often in a trenchcoat and suitably stompy boots.
Secondly, though tiny and feminine (at times, anyway) she is supremely strong, still a powerful cultural dream in a world where violence against women is epidemic. Refreshingly she rarely relies on guns, instead using a cyborg martial art — sidestepping the ‘bigger than yours’ approach to women kicking ass.
Thirdly, the series further departs from convention with a powerful female protagonist that never uses her beauty, sexuality or other feminine wiles to get the upper hand and is never raped or nearly raped or avenging somebody else’s rape.
I’m not saying that Battle Angel Alita is a feminist work, or that it will be everyone’s cup of tea — it is violent, in parts, but nothing too graphic - it is a 12A. Nonetheless, when the chips are down she is often saved by her resourcefulness and her connections with others.
Another thing I love about Alita is that although she is a powerful and inspiring female character there is nothing maternal about her impulse to protect others. Her power is not rooted in her female identity because her ‘femaleness’ is superficial. And in my opinion the real triumph is that she is not like a man either. She has masculine and feminine qualities, but neither is she purely androgynous.
{I'm also happy because yesterday I finally found/bought it on DVD in CEX}
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