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Roundup: Reviews Are out for Alita: Battle Angel

Alita Battle Angel

Manga to live-action American productions have notoriously not been good. Yet the Robert Rodriguez directed and co-written and co-produced by James Cameron movie Alita: Battle Angel, based off of the 1990 cyberpunk manga series created by Yukito Kishiro, seems to be the first real exception to the rule.

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Battle Angel Alita, also known as Gunnm in Japan, is set in a futuristic dystopia in which Alita, a cyborg who has lost all memories, is found in a garbage heap by a cybernetics doctor named Daisuke Ido who rebuilds and takes care of her. She slowly remembers some part of herself, most importantly that she used to be a badass.

Cameron has said that this movie is more based on  “the spine story” of Yukito Kishiro’s original manga and that there is a focus on the first four books and the fictional sport “Motorball” from the third and fourth volumes. Regardless, it is fair to say that many audiences will not be familiar with the source material and will mostly be seeing Alita for the first time through this movie. So far reviews in are uneven, with many positive and some … very much less so. While I will be seeing the movie later in the week, I think that if Alita does well it does change the economic landscape of whether manga/anime can be successfully adapted into a mainstream blockbuster film.

The reviews, while not all glowing, to indicate that Cameron/Rodriguez have at least made a fun and beautiful film.

Will you be checking out Alita: Battle Angel?

(via, image: 20th Century Fox)

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Princess Weekes
Princess (she/her-bisexual) is a Brooklyn born Megan Fox truther, who loves Sailor Moon, mythology, and diversity within sci-fi/fantasy. Still lives in Brooklyn with her over 500 Pokémon that she has Eevee trained into a mighty army. Team Zutara forever.

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