A deep dive critique into the cyborg fantasy that is Battle Angel Alita a.k.a. Gunnm! Alita fights a werewolf that wears shades, as you do, but is her love strong enough to save Yugo? Sorry for the technical issues guys, promise next week will have better audio! skip summary @ 6:26
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067: Battle Angel Alita vol. 2
Chapters 7 to 6,
'Tears of an Angel' and 'Guilty Dreams'
By Yukito Kishiro
Translation by Stephen Paul
Lettering by Scott Brown
Synopsis:
A dazed and passed out Alita wakes up on a bed of soft earth in a derelict warehouse, she finds a young man watching her, his name is Yugo. They both walk through the remnants of a fight, one that isn't over until Alita is attacked, luckily, she finishes the job. Yugo has no qualms about harvesting their corpses.
It's thanks to serendipity that Alita meets Yugo again as he works on Dr. Ido's roof by repairing the wind turbine. It's clear that Alita has a crush on the boy yet Yugo moonlights as a thief, stealing spines of unsuspecting cyborgs so that he can flog them onto the black market. He plans to raise enough funds so that he can fulfil his dream of living in Zalem, albeit he doesn't leave his victims for dead. Alita is unaware of this but she chooses to raise her own funds in order to support Yugo's dream. Alita becomes conscious of being a cyborg, and it pains her to know that she is too strong and too powerful to be able to safely hold Yugo in her arms.
Zapan, a Warrior-hunter who has a grudge against Alita, catches Yugo in the act of stealing spines, he kills off Yugo's accomplices, Van and Tanji, but Yugo escapes. To spite Alita, Zapan puts a bounty out on Yugo's head and Alita runs through a storm so to aid him. She finds Yugo in the same place they first met and Alita confesses her love towards Yugo. He tells Alita that one of his hands formerly belonged to his dead brother and he still has the scars from the surgery. By trading his hand for his brother's, he is able to honor him. Soon Yugo is confronted by his brother's killer. A Warrior-Hunter who is now after the bounty on Yugo. He killed Yugo's brother for attempting to illegally fly up to Zalem and now he plans to kill Yugo for doing something similar. Alita fights the warrior hunter, and although he mocks her electrically conductive arm, the warrior is defeated by a lightning strike. Sadly, Yugo was egregiously wounded before Alita could do anything to help.
Afterwards, Zapan and his cohorts ambush Alita, anticipating that she is protecting Yugo. Alita reveals that she has the severed head of Yugo and thus the payment of bounty goes to her. Zapan's audience quickly dissipates. However, Zapan is flabbergasted, he can't believe that Alita could behead Yugo. Zapan attempts to steal the head from her and finds that Alita has secretly connected Yugo's head to her own cybernetic vital organs. Effectively Yugo isn't dead, he's on life support!
With one stroke of her hand, Alita cuts off Zapan's face, for Zapan the hit isn't fatal but it is debilitating, sending Zapan to a great fall.
Since Alita has ownership of Yugo's head, it is her right if she wants to trade it in for her bounty reward, but what she does is have Dr. Ido give Yugo a new body and once acclimated to it, both he and Alita confront Vector. The man who promised Yugo a trip to Zalem.
Topics:
- The tenets of Alita, in volume 1 Alita states "What good is happiness if it's only given to you", in the prologue chapter of Volume 2, she states to Makaku "I believe that every human can choose her own way in life, we can choose to be ugly or beautiful".
- Fighting werewolves with shades.
- One plot twist involves Alita keeping Yugo's head on life support, this is a narrative technique called, "indirect dialogue". Where an author can deliberately choose to withhold information from readers so that it can have an emotional effect when revealed later.
- Alita hasn't developed a personal goal of her own yet and in the early chapters her character is defined by her relationship with Yugo. She also lacks a formidable antagonist.
- Having dreams and aspirations whilst being in a relationship.
Trivia:
- The Warrior-hunter that attacks Yugo says "return to substance" this line is inspired by Cartesian dualism and expresses the author's personal or fictitious philosophy of being "substantiast" That the body is formless and separate from the mind. Dualism becomes a prominent topic in Mamoru Oshiis Ghost in the Shell manga which we will make a podcast on in the near future.
- Kiriki makes an appearance in the concluding chapter and Zapan returns in chapter 9, both their previous appearances and respective debuts are in chapter 4 'Resurgents'
Other references:
- In the chapter 'Tears of an Angel' a factory sign reads "Factory Front 242" in reference to the Belgian Industrial band, Front 242.
- Zapan calls Alita an 'Iron Maiden', the title of the chapter, the name
is a reference to the torture device, which is a container full of iron spikes, it has a door with hinges and forces the victim to stand straight, if they are to lean or fall inside one, they will do severe damage to themselves. Like the infamous 'Chastity Belt' there is also no evidence of such device being used in the medieval era. In the footnotes of the manga an Iron Maiden is a type of killer android within the world of Alita.
- In the same chapter, 'Heaven's Gate' is the label of one bottle, this is most likely a reference to the German Metal band that were active during the 80's, their first album being 'Night of the Dog', released in 1984. The name is also a biblical reference, from Revelations 21:21 the New International Version states "The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass."
- In the chapter 'Guilty Dreams', Vector makes the threat "get out or you'll be Sashimi", Sashimi being sliced up raw fish, the etymology behind it meaning pierced or cut along with the kanji for meat or body. In the west it is often confused with 'Sushi' which is a pickled rice meal that is often served with fish and seaweed strips with vinegar.
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