Trash bin of history
Welcome to Yukito Kishiro’s post-apo. The city of scrap rises from the ground with a heavy, rusty, iron mound of rubbish, as if poured from floating modern Zalem in the sky. Remnants fall from above, sometimes even people – like the title android Alita. Since when has such a deal been maintained? What end of the world is responsible for him? You won’t find out for a long time.
There is a desert all around, so the inhabitants of the City cannot see life outside of it. There is nowhere to run, only to try ascension, though it is a very precarious undertaking. It will be much easier to grab as much of the available resources as possible – the strongest and the most brutal rule in the dumpster. There is no authority that can control them. Instead, there are headhunters who hunt those who have exaggerated even by the standards of this fallen world.
Dziewczyna przez świat nie może iść całkiem sama
The story of the heroine of Kishiro does not start heroically. A doctor finds her on a routine trip to the garbage can. She takes home and takes it as if she were a “lame duckling” or a homeless puppy. He even names her after her cat. Organizes a new body. Delighted by the delicacy of the girl, he wants to surround her with beauty and protect her from the evil that he faces every night.
From the very beginning, Alita is doomed to others – she will not regain the ability to move herself or understand the city around her. She has lost her memory, so she needs a new identity and time to understand who she wants to be. A “rusty angel” often thinks about his body, which is something independent of it, created by other people, and at the same time the only way to function normally. Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell also has similar thoughts and problems . After all, the major is military property. They both understand that physicality is, on the one hand, a necessity, and on the other, their only way to feel the world and enjoy life to the fullest.
Berserker
The beautiful Alita doll is a completely misplaced association, this girl is a fighter. He decides to understand himself and the world through struggle. Many of the heroes of this manga define themselves in a similar way. They say – I’m an egoist, I want to fight because I like it. For Alita, the combat art of Panzer Kunst is a substitute for memories – she does not remember her name and origin, but she instinctively knows how and where to hit an opponent. Finally, in Junk City, justice seems only achievable with a fist.
In the first part of the manga, Kishiro Alita will reach for independence and immediately make enemies. He will fight someone who embodies the darkest side of the garbage dump with its dirt, aggression and loneliness. This is a well-written, wonderfully drawn origin story. The heroine will fall in love with the second. I am not the only reader to whom this thread seems uninteresting and shallow, but give it a chance – it will be the basis of Alita’s most important decisions and will determine her path to the comic’s finale.
A ghost in a charming armor
Alita is a lovely little girl with a good heart. This is where her attributes of a typical shojo heroine end . He fights like a thoroughbred soldier, takes responsibility for himself, allows himself to be angry and aggressive. He tries to understand his past and post-apocalyptic present full of pain, violence and injustice.
Written in a similar period, Ghost in The Shell and Alita are based on strong main characters, but treat them very differently. Masamune Shirow does not shy away from the site fan Yukito Kishimura, even if he shows a naked chest in a brutal fight scene, he wants to emphasize the fragility of the character rather than increase sales. Alita rotates in the male world, but she is not anyone’s doll to dress or undress.
Yukito Kishiro’s manga hasn’t aged a bit. Of course, visually, it often represents the crazy cyberpunk style of the 80s and 90s, epic, often even decorative grotesque. Some plot or world-creating solutions will probably not seem too original or too simple. At the same time, the way of building and leading characters is timeless here. Mangaka does not use Alita to prove anything to the reader, he just tells him the story of a certain person – not always consistent, but invariably stubborn and strong.
JP Fantastica has prepared a really exclusive edition of this manga. We have a great new translation by Paweł Dybała, a very experienced Japanese adapter, into ours. Pay attention to his afterword for the first volume, I will try to tell more about Alita’s language in the next reviews. The enlarged comic format allows you to really enjoy the drawings. At the same time, the whole thing is well in the hands and should withstand many years of reading.
