The live-action anime imagined one of Japan's most beloved stories in a new medium, and many fans were left wanting more. However, there is just one problem with that. No sequel has been announced for Alita: Battle Angel.
Battle Angel Alita is a fun, cyberpunk OVA about an android named Gally; found in the dump by a cybernetics doctor. The anime is a solid effort in the cyberpunk genre, and whilst not the most engrossing it is definitely a good time.
The second of the comic's nine volumes was adapted in 1993 into a two-part anime original video animation titled Battle Angel for North American release by ADV Films and the UK and Australian release by Manga Entertainment. Manga Entertainment also dubbed Battle Angel Alita into English.
It is an adaptation of the manga, following Alita (Gally) from her discovery in the Zalem dump heap by Daisuke Ido up through and beyond her career as a TUNED agent.
Alita: Battle Angel. Rosa Salazar stars as the titular heroine Alita, an amnesiac cyborg girl who sets out to learn about her destiny after she awakens in a new body with no past memory of who she is. Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley and Keean Johnson also star in supporting roles.
According to Kishiro, only two episodes were originally planned. At the time, he was too busy with the manga "to review the plan coolly" and was not serious about an anime adaptation. It remains the only anime adaptation of Battle Angel Alita to date and there are no plans to revive it.
Alita: Battle Angel 2 has had huge fan support since the first film debuted way back in 2019. While a sequel is no closer to actually happening, director Robert Rodriguez hasn't forgotten about it. In December 2021, he said: "Jim [Cameron] and I talked about it recently and we're still very interested.
The story is continued in the third and final series Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle.
There have been no public statements from the studio on the possibility of a sequel, which is a positive sign. Alita: Battle Angel 2 might be released in 2024 or later if all goes well.
The final scene of Alita: Battle Angel sees Alita gearing up for a fated Motorball competition, determined to win and finally arrive in Zalem to confront Nova. Of course, instead of showing her inevitable success in an epic Motorball action scene, that's cruelly where the credits suddenly began to roll.
Last Order reveals that Alita has been a cyborg since she was three years old, while Mars Chronicle reveals that she has been a cyborg her entire life since "birth"....Alita (Battle Angel Alita)AlitaSpeciesFull-body cyborg (Battle Angel Alita, Mars Chronicle) Sentient android (Last Order, Mars Chronicle)NationalityCydonia, Mars9 more rows
Desty Nova in the film holds a high-ranking position within Zalem, apparently never having been exiled from the City, as well as being over 300 years old as opposed to an age range of 75 to 90 years old in the manga, as well as apparently not being an Anarchist as he was in the manga, this could be a virtual ruse to ...
Here's what Robert Rodriguez said about those big beautiful brown eyes: "It was always Jim's intention to create a photo-realistic version of the manga eyes that we're so accustomed to seeing. We really wanted to honor that tradition and see that look standing next to any human character.
Based on the nine volume manga ‘Gunnm’, ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ is the story of a cyborg struggling finding who she was before her current predicament, and who she is meant to be. Discovered as a dismembered core with a functional brain while scavenging in the scraps by Dr. Dyson Ido, a cyborg doctor and scientist, Alita is rebuilt, given a second life by Ido, and named so after Ido’s own deceased daughter. Alita wakes up to have no recollection of her past, spending some time adjusting to her life, especially the new cybernetic limbs that are part of her body now.
The good news is that ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ mostly delivers and is rightfully being hailed as one of the better manga adaptations, especially in the graphic aspects, and the dystopian setting. The CGI is top-notch, and in its best bits, ‘Alita’ is a delight to watch in IMAX 3D. Ironically enough, the screenplay is admittedly sloppy in parts and you often find yourself waiting for the next fight or the next CGI spectacle sequence to fill the screen, hoping to skim through the fillers. It is on the strength of its visual trickery, a beautifully realised dystopian landscape, and the earnest character development of its leading lady that the film soars, although it only does in (extended) bits and parts, unlike last year’s ‘Ready Player One’ that was a fun ride from start to finish, an obvious comparison along similar lines.
‘Alita: Battle Angel’ has been touted to be the latest entrant in a genre that has been particularly interesting to note and study for me. Within the wider realm of science fiction and intersecting narrowly with Dystopian and Futuristic cinema representations, Cyberpunk is an ever evolving subgenre with ever-changing connotations attached to it, the most common being ones where it associates itself with displaying an eclectic mix of high-end technology as a result of futuristic development, and contrasting that against the ruins of a world and a collapse of the prevalent social order left in the very wake of that futuristic development. As a result of this rather peculiar but plausible mix, more often than not, we find such films choosing the urban model of Asian cities as their filming ground.
The ending of the film doesn’t leave an iota of doubt that the studio and makers intend to develop the legend of Alita into a full-fledged film franchise. As a standalone film, ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ might be seen as a universe building exercise but not without its fair share of exhilarating moments pandering to fans and people oblivious to the manga alike, the latter much like myself. ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ derived its storyline from the first four volumes of ‘Gunnm’, and the remaining volumes are to be adapted in upcoming sequels, given the film performs well at the box office.
One of the key differences between the movie and anime is that Alita’s past is barely touched upon in the OVA. The anime features no flashbacks to Gally's (Alita's Japanese name) past battles on Mars, no mention of the lost martial art of Panzer Kunst and she doesn’t recover a Berserker body from a downed ship. The Alita found in the anime rarely reflects on her origins, but Alita: Battle Angel focuses on how her past will come to define her future.
Alita: Battle Angel's Grewishka Is Three Different Manga Characters In One. The Battle Angel anime introduced the character of Grewcica, a giant cyborg who is a composite of two similar villains from the manga named Makaku and Kinuba.
The movie also borrows the moment Alita paints under her eyes with the blood of a stray dog Grewishka kills from the anime; in the manga, she slicked water from the sewer on her face instead.
The original manga ran for nine volumes while the anime consisted of two OVAs, titled “Rusty Angel” and “Tears Sign.”. The anime is a faithful adaptation of the first two volumes of the manga, but the story and characters were condensed for the sake of brevity. Let’s take a look at the source material and see how close Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: ...
The movie also presents a different backstory for Alita’s iconic Damascus Blade. In the Battle Angel manga, it took the form of two separate blades attached to her wrists during her Motorball games and was later shaped into a single sword.
He would go on to co-write a 186-page script and pen over 600 pages of notes, but Alita: Battle Angel fell by the wayside when he began development on Avatar. Once he committed to writing and directing four Avatar sequels, it seemed he would never get around to Alita.
In the Battle Angel movie, its Alita who recovers it from a downed ship, but Ido initially refuses to transfer her to it; it’s only after her first cyborg body is destroyed in battle does he complete the operation. In the manga, the Berserker is Alita's first body, recovered by Ido during a past expedition.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Alita: Battle Angel holds an approval rating of 61% based on 322 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, " Alita: Battle Angel ' s story struggles to keep up with its special effects, but fans of futuristic sci-fi action may still find themselves more than sufficiently entertained." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100, based on 49 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 78% and a 59% "definite recommend".
Alita: Battle Angel had its world premiere at The Leicester Square Theater in London on January 31, 2019, and was released in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan on February 5, 2019, marking Chinese New Year.
Hugo later introduces Alita to Motorball, a Rollerball -like racing sport played by cyborg gladiators. Secretly, Hugo robs cyborgs of their parts for Vector, owner of the Motorball tournament and the 'de facto' ruler of the Factory, Iron City's governing authority.
Alita opened a week early in 11 international markets (including ten Asian countries as well as the United Kingdom), where it grossed $32 million in its opening weekend. It opened at number two in South Korea with $10.9 million, first in Taiwan with $4.2 million (where it was Fox's fourth-biggest opening ever), $4.2 million in the United Kingdom (with a 42% being from 3D shows), and $2.9 million in Malaysia (where it was Fox's second-biggest opening ever). In its second international weekend, the film grossed $56.2 million from 86 markets, bringing its international gross to $94.4 million. It was the weekend's second-highest-grossing film with $84 million worldwide, behind the Chinese film The Wandering Earth.
Box office. Alita: Battle Angel grossed $85.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $319.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $405 million, against a production budget of $170 million. It is Robert Rodriguez's highest-grossing film.
Principal photography began in October 2016 in Austin, Texas, mostly at Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios, and lasted until February 2017.
With James Cameron as potential director, the film was to be produced with the same mix of live-action and computer-generated imagery that Cameron used in Avatar. Specifically, Cameron intended to render the main character, Alita, completely in CGI. Cameron had stated that he would make use of technologies developed for Avatar to produce the film, such as the Fusion Camera System, facial performance capture, and the Simulcam. In May 2006, Variety reported that Cameron had spent the past ten months developing technology to produce the film.
Such is the premise of Battle Angel Alita, set in a post-apocalyptic world where people without access to Zalem, a floating city of presumed luxuries, are forced to live in a society filled with garbage that’s dumped from above.
Conclusion As previously mentioned Battle Angel Alita is a very solid anime with great aesthetics, a decent story and some likeable characters with very clear motivations. For those of you that are fans of the genre there is plenty to enjoy, and if not necessarily a fan then there is no harm in giving this OVA a try.