Internet Apocalypse

I saw the Manga movie of Battle Angel Alita when I was still in high school and it was then that the film became firmly cemented in my mind as one of the most amazing cyberpunk universes of all time. I've just finished reading one of the graphic novels about her that a friend has very generously sent over to me and it just left me totally gobsmacked.

A Little Background

Alita is a cyborg. Her head and torso are discovered in rubbish dump beneath the floating city by a scientist called Ido, who takes her home and fixes her up. Alita has no memory of her life before she is found by Ido, but as she adjusts to her new home in the city, it emerges that she has abilities in combat that are unusual, even for a cyborg.

Battle Angel Alita is based in a city where the useful, wealthy or just plain lucky members of society have fled to a floating city in the sky called Tiphares (Zoram in the movie). The city that sits below the floating utopia of Tiphares is left to rot and ruin, completely overrun by crime, drug abuse and violence. As this is set far into the future, most of the most prevalent criminals are cybernetically enhanced and therefore unstoppable by normal humans. To counter the lawlessness, the governing body of the sprawl known as "the factory" uses bounty hunters to bring in the heads of vanquished thugs and villains. Alita puts her awesome combat skills and abilities to use as a bounty hunter and that is pretty much the beginning of the story.

Awesome!

Why is Alita so awesome? So far, I haven't found out much about Alitas background before she became the cyborg you grow to know and love in the stories. However this mystery is an essential part of what makes her character so interesting. She is plunged into a cyberpunk city of sin with a wealth of colourful characters, most of whom aren't totally "good" or "evil" but instead doing a mixture of moral and immoral acts in order to survive. I really like that in characters that I am trying to connect with in stories. This is because, not only is it more realistic than just having a metaphorical Dumbledore or Yoda or any other totally pure character, but also because you just never know if your main character will be screwed over by them on the next page, or if they will be saved by them from the brink of death, albeit for a tidy sum of money or other aspect of personal gain.

Maybe this story, this world just appeals to my pessimistic side which tells me constantly...

"There is no 'Good', just varying degrees of Evil."

There ARE bad guys in this world and some of them are addicted to BRAINS. Yes! One of the more awesome aspects of this crazy cyberpunk future is that some of the massive killing machine cyborgs are addicted to the adrenaline found in human brains and this need drives them to horrific murders for their own personal gratification. It also means that brains and spines are hot property on a black market flooded with other human body parts and this trade in human tissue can also lead characters into interesting and sometimes terrifying situations.

I think if i reveal much more about the Alita universe I might give away too much or spoil it for the future initiated fan so I'll leave it at that, with an additional recommendation that Battle Angel Alita should most definitely be checked out.