Housing segregation in everything.
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Yukito Kishiro
Translation: Stephen Paul
Lettering: Scott O. Brown
Editing: Ajani Oloye
Kodansha Comics edition cover design: Phil Balsman
What They Say:
After her stint on the Motorball circuit, Alita returns to The Scrapyard with Ido to live out the rest of her days in peace. But it’s not long before Zapan—a bitter enemy from the past—wreaks havoc on all that Alita holds dear. Zapan has an insatiable thirst for vengeance that can only be quenched with Alita’s demise, but does he stand a chance against Alita’s mighty panzerkunst? And in the wake of their earth-shattering battle, Alita faces a tragedy that may be too much for her to handle.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Ah, finally, Alita gets into the rampant societal inequality inherent in the relationship between The Scrapyard and Zalem. It’s always existed in the manga in some form, but hasn’t really been explicitly addressed until this volume.
To get there though, Alita had to basically die. Doing the killing is former foe Zapan, who once has the shit beat out of him by Alita way back in volume one. He’s been living in squalor (even more squalor-y than the general Scrapyard living conditions), and in some sort of relationship—whether that be imagined or real is up to reader discretion—with a woman named Sarah. She serves him food at the soup kitchen, and he’s become largely despondent. He doesn’t know why he exists anymore, but he still has a vague want of vengeance toward Alita for humiliating him prior.
But he realizes this. I love how Kishiro does this with the antagonists in Alita. Kishiro puts them into a situation where they can only be seen as evil. They’re trying to kill Alita! But they have their own motivations, and when Zapan gets that chance to kill Alita, he doesn’t. He hears her music (she’s a musician now!), he sees his own reflection, and he realizes the inanity of it all. He had a life, sort of. He lived and he saw Sarah, and maybe that was enough for him for now. He falls to Alita, only to be brought back…
…By some crazy doctor, also from Zalem like Ido, named Desty Nova. He lives only to experiment, it seems. Anything he does, whether it be inherently evil or evil-seeming or not, is justified by the knowledge that will be gained by trying. He is a “ends justify the means” kind of person. He also inputs just the right amount of mysterious intrigue for both Alita and Ido that’s perfect for keeping the story going as more than just volume-long feuds with random individuals (Makaku, Zapan, and so on).
Desty Nova brings Zapan back from the brink of death, his brain mostly destroyed already and revived by using nanomachines, and merges the brain with the former body of Alita, but with all the restrictions turned off. It’s a single-minded robot with power that seems nigh unmatched, and all it wants to do is kill Alita.
The matchup between Alita and Zapan is framed as good against evil, and it is to some extent. But the evil is more of Desty Nova rather than Zapan, who seems more like he’s being controlled by a being that is inherently evil in its actions where Zapan tries to fight against it. Zapan is not an evil being, just tending toward evil action, as he is when he wants some sort of retribution of consequence toward Alita for ruining his life. But from Alita’s standpoint, Zapan is the one trying to kill her, so who is really evil? This is complicated by the way in which Zapan and Alita even managed to get here, which put Alita in more of the legal grey zone, even if she stood on a moral high ground. Kishiro is navigating interesting philosophical means with the first half of this volume.
Zapan himself is torn because he killed Sarah, his love, but did not mean to. He only wants an outlet to lash out at, and he chooses Alita through more a series of circumstance that mostly aren’t Alita’s fault. It’s the relationship toward Sarah that later humanizes Zapan near his, and by extension almost Alita’s, demise. He just wanted to live his life.
Which is later exemplified in Yolg in the latter half of the volume. The inherent good that Alita is supposed to represent is actually better represented in the simple-minded brute, Figure Four.
This is also where Alita the manga gets into more of the relationship between Zalem and The Scrapyard. Zalem uses The Scrapyard’s residents to live their cushy life, which damn if that isn’t the truest to life thing I’ve read in manga a while. Zalem brings Alita back to life after her encounter with Zapan, but in doing so makes her a slave to their bidding. She’s to find Desty Nova and bring him back to Zalem, and otherwise do whatever they say.
She’s required to do whatever they say, and not talk back. But in meeting Figure Four and Yolg, she speaks out more. These two represent the lives of The Scrapyard to her, and all the joy they can experience despite living in such squalor. Yolg has a family. Figure Four just wants to return to his own homeland. And Alita finds silent companionship with them, in her own search to find Ido. She says outright that Zalem lives on the shoulders of The Scrapyard. “Who’s growing your food, making your clothes, processing your waste, and shedding blood to fight for you? We surface dwellers are!!” Alita knows what it takes for Zalem to exist, and she knows that life thrives on The Scrapyard despite it.
In Summary:
Man, Battle Angel Alita is very cool. This is exactly the kind of philosophical arguments I love to read about, and these are exactly the kind of economic injusticies that go on in the real world that make my blood boil. And Kishiro was already writing about them way back in the early 90s. I can’t believe I hadn’t started reading this already, because this is extremely my thing. I didn’t know how the sports manga volume would be topped, but…this is exactly how. Discussions of philosophy and economics.
Content Grade: A+
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A+
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: April 3, 2018
MSRP: $29.99
