Battle Angel is an original video animation (OVA) whose brevity works against it. While it’s called a movie, this is really a television series that never made it past two episodes. It’s interesting and I’d like to see more but can I really recommend a story which stops before it begins?
Below the floating metropolis of Zalem is Scrap Iron City, where cyborgs are common but the streets are rife with crime. Cyberphysician Daisuke Ido (voiced by Shunsuke Kariya) comes across the remains of a female cyborg and rebuilds her. Gally (voiced by Miki Itô) begins living a normal life, even developing a crush on Yugo (voiced by Kappei Yamaguchi), a neighborhood boy. When the young woman learns her father makes money on the side as a bounty hunter, she joins him. Is Gally’s desire to capture violent criminals remnants of her past life?
Battle Angel features an interesting world. The mystery surrounding Gally’s origin is compelling, the villains are promising, and you can tell the show had much potential with its action-oriented premise and inherent drama. The animation is also quite good. Finally, I was grateful to see some elements that I typically see in OVA’s absent here. There’s no fan-service or up-skirt shorts of the female protagonist and no lame perverted humor either. There’s a lot of sex for a story lasting only an hour and ten minutes but none of it features Gally and I could see Chiren (Mami Koyama) playing a bigger part in the story later on so it’s fine to have her act naughty. That’s the problem though. So much of this picture is speculation.
Some time ago, I saw and reviewed a film adaptation of Frankenstein that was actually a TV pilot. All of the setup and interesting premises had no payoff. It infuriated and disappointed me. Battle Angel is sort of in the same boat. While it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, I didn’t feel like I got anything juicy out of it. So much time is spent setting up the world, Gally, the bounty-hunting elements, and the villains she and her father are going to confront that we get little character development. Just as the initial shock of this weird world starts to wear off and you wonder who these people really are, the film ends. It’s labeled as a film so that’s what I’m calling it but actually Battle Angel is nothing more than an extended, well-produced trailer for the manga.
In the end, I’ll lean in its favor. Battle Angel looks good. It’s interesting. You have to do homework to get the full experience. There are worse thing than being enticed to read manga. If you like Japanese comics and animation is already up your alley, check it out. (On VHS, March 8, 2016)
