Micah Lloyd
Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
phanthinga
From the get-go I'm already know there's no way a 2 episode OVA anime can do justice for the series which is considered a classic of the sci-fi manga genre but the amount of potential though out the OVA still make me mad because how much awesome it can be if the studio take it seriously.The anime not a complete failure in any mean cause the animation is good and the world set up is damn near perfect so I hope in the future Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron will bring me a Alita Battle Angel live action movie true to its name.
Boba_Fett1138
You can really tell by watching this film that the source material it is based on is really excellent. The story is a fine and compelling one, that is filled with fantasy elements and is set in a sort of future post-apocalyptic world. Because of this fact, I'm also positive of it that the James Cameron version of this movie called "Battle Angel" is going to be absolutely great.This animated movie version is also a good one but unfortunately also heavily flawed.The biggest problem with the movie is that it's very short, with as a result things get rushed. Also every sequence feels incredibly short. Every time you think you're going to get to see a big long fight sequence, it's already over again. It also makes the storytelling disjointed at times. Villains are keep getting introduced throughout the movie, until you finally start to loose interested at who is actually supposed to be the biggest and main villain of the movie. Some characters really made a redundant impression and they did not got the treatment they obviously deserved. The movie is also over before you know it, with a sort of an incomplete ending that will also give you an unsatisfied feeling.The storytelling and build-up really isn't the greatest within this movie, although that isn't anything too uncommon for a Japanese anime, it still is a bit worse than acceptable in this case. The movie really gave me the feeling it had so much more potential, if it only had a better budget and production time span. It now unfortunately never reaches the level of true excellence and certainly is not among the top Japanse anime's.Nevertheless the movie has plenty of qualities that make this a watchable one. The story is one of them, even though it's potential isn't fully used. The imaginary futuristic world and concepts within this movie are just so fine. It also has a fine love-story, that however also gets very rushed in the movie. The short action within the movie was also fine, which was mainly thanks to those awesome looking cyborgs with each their own special fighting powers and weapons. The movie is also filled with plenty of gore.It's a certainly good watchable movie but still I would wait for the James Cameron movie version if I were you.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/
chromeballz
The movie is based on a manga by Yukito Kishiro, which is generally seen as one of the better manga's out there.For the unknowing: A manga is essentially a comic, japan-style. Most of the drawing is in black and white, quite in contrast to the western style comics. The drawing style however is a lot more realistic, save for the faces, than western comics. The faces are caricatures of how they would really look, but, this makes that feelings are conveyed a lot better than any western comic ever can. As it is stated in a Gunnm (or Battle Angel Alita outside of Japan) review, you can see in an instant how Alita is feeling, and the same goes for a lot of other characters.Here comes the difference between a manga and an anime: Manga is Japanese style comic, Anime is Japanese style animation (mind you, NOT cartoon!). The difference is often forgotten, but should be pointed out.Anyway, back to the anime: Gunnm is a 60 minute adaptation of the first 2 graphic novels of the comic. The movie is roughly divided in half, although the story flows through entirely. I can say beforehand: the movie is a very WEAK adaptation of the books. Nothing more, nothing less. It has been westernized too much. The character Chiren doesn't even appear in the books, and the big guy Alita defeats twice has an entirely different role (and not for the better).The movie has been westernized to much in the sense that is has been simplified. Add a character tehre, make it quasi a double love story, add some fights and you're done. The entire path of discovery of Alita is left out (her fighting style, the Panzer Kunst, is essential to what thrives her to live on and discover where she's from, but the concept is entirely left out of the movie).On itself, you can call the movie okay, but when you've read the books, it simply doesn't reach the level of the latter.All in all, the animation is good, even very good. In terms of visual quality it ranks up right next to Ghost in the Shell in my books, while not being as realistic and dark, the fluent movement is very good while still remaining in the spirit of anime (watch the documentary on the Animatrix DVD to know what i mean with that).The English voices are very much out of place, they are way too excited for the situations they're in, as if they were doing voices for any pokemon movie. That's what really brings down the movie, please try and watch it in Japanese with English subtitles if possible. English just doesn't cut it, but that goes for virtually every anime every dubbed in English.To sum it up: This movie is a good 1 hour watch, and some may even want to watch it more. However, there's a lot of things that bring the movie down, especially when you;ve read the manga first.If you watched this movie, buy the manga (starting with the first one of course, there are 14 translated graphic novels as of today) and read it, you'll be hooked. If you do it the other way around you'll only be disappointed.
f_alcon
The price of a dream - and some dreams can be "too" expensive.Only having viewed the English-translated version, it is perhaps the reason for a low rating from this viewer.It made the overall film poorer than the story material hinted at......and other comments seem to suggest the subtitled version would be better.But some plot elements remained unexplained, leaving an unfinished feel.It also leaves the thought "is there a series to follow?".A pity there was no more (at this stage at least, anyway).
