Anime Review :: Battle Angel [1993]

My next incoming review for Oh,Tetsuo! was (well, and still hopefully is) Key The Metal Idol. A sort of bygone cyber relic that passed me by growing up that I just never really got around to finally watching. By the fifth episode, however, when the lead character had said her name (spoilers: it’s "Key") in the third person at least six hundred times and I was treated two and a half hours of wasted conversations about pop stars with no tangible plot development outside of the absurd premise, my patients were wearing thin. I decided to take a quit trip back (and thankfully a short one at that) to one of my absolute favorite little pieces of cyberpunk bloodbath goodness, just to make sure I haven’t lost my mind. I mean, afterall, maybe I’ve been so spoiled by the slicker animation, better voice work, and cohesive plots of modern anime that I’ve just lost all love for the murderous robo-girls of the 1990’s.

Battle Angel [OVA] [1993]
Director - Hiroshi Fukutomi
Language – English Dub
Runtime – 70 Minutes
Genre – Action. Drama. Cyberpunk.

For those unfamiliar, Battle Angel is a two-part OVA based on a manga series titled Gunnm, and… I’m not going to go into the details of the story in its entirety. Not for lack of wanting to, in fact the more copy I put in this post, the more fantastic artwork from the series I get to post along with it. No, it’s just that trying to explain Gunnm to explain the Battle Angel OVA is sort of like trying to catch someone up on the entire history of the X-Men books to get them ready to see the movie. It’s unnecessary, the world the story takes place in gets explained away about five minutes into the film, and knowing about the period that Marrow was an X-Man or the brief but important story of Maggot doesn’t really enrich the experience of watching Hugh Jackman say “bub.”

Like the slew of recent Marvel movies, Battle Angel is a film adaptation in the strongest possible terms.

So we've covered that it's good hatin’ material for purists, let's get down to business (see, blah blah blah, and I get to put more artwork in.)

While scavenging through a dump for parts on the outskirts of Scrap Iron City, cyberphysician Daisuke Ido comes across the shredded remains of a cyborg body that is miraculously still alive. Ido takes it home and transfers the still living… aspect of it into a new cyborg body and names her Gally. (It’s never really covered in the anime whether it’s her brain or ghost or whatever sci-fi philosophy we’re actually dealing with that’s “still alive”)

Within no time (no, seriously, we’re talkin’ about 5 seconds of screen time) Gally is up and about being chipper and charming and taking an interest in Yugo, a young lad who does maintenance work for Ido. He takes little interested though, as he’s far more concerned with one day making enough money to go to the majestic floating city of Zalem that hangs over the slums of Scrap Iron City. A place it’s soon made clear that Ido himself and his colleague Chiren were once residents of, and a place that Chiren herself too has designs on getting back to by any means necessary.

Another abrupt jump-cut later Ido, who’s already managed to be quite a mysterious character in a scant 10 minutes, is spotted sneaking out at night by Gally who tails him to find out that he’s secretly a bounty hunter, and, seemingly not all that great of one at that. Luckily, in the midst of a foiled attempt to stop a murder, Ido himself is saved by Gally who, as luck would have it, is a ruby-eyed murder machine. Gally herself takes up the cause after finding out about her new abilities …and the fun begins. As, aside from trying to recover the lost memories of her past, she just… REALLY loves killin’

From there heartstrings are tugged at, clusterfucks are developed, hope is squeezed out of you, and heads are torn off. But hey, it wouldn’t be fun for you if I told you the ending.


It’s hard to properly rate Battle Angel.

The artwork is magnificent, and Gally is one of the most likeable… murderous robot girls in the history of anime (marvelously voiced by Larissa Murray(?), I might add, although, I can’t tell if that’s the proper ADV credit or the notoriously awful UK/Aus release Viz had. Blame IMDB.) The action is stunningly choreographed and the story has far more feel than the usual hack-and-slash fodder. Imagine everything good you’ve ever read about Kite. It’s like all of that except actually good.

A wonderful juxtaposition of the struggles of heaven and hell on earth.
…but also a short and sometimes sloppy one.

For all the ungodly drab series that were treated to at least 12 episodes it seems almost criminal that Battle Angel was doomed to be shorter than a feature film, and, because of that, choked a little and not allowed to grow naturally with heavy reliance of abrupt jump-cuts and a few too many monologs that explain away the plot.

Sort of a random reach into the vault, and definitely 15+ as far as the kids go (three boobs and some occasional on-screen gore), but while it’s got quite its fair share of flaws, it’s most certainly a mini-classic by cyberpunk standards.








Not that I’d ever endorse torrents, especially of material who’s American copyrights are owned by the mighty ADV, but, ya know, there maaaay or may not be a dual audio copy floating around on Demonoid.

…just sayin’.