T5W#554-Top 5 Ways the Alita: Battle Angel Movie Surpasses the Battle Angel OVA

Alita: Battle Angel is easily one of the better Live Action Anime offerings out there, which is certainly something for a project that languished in development hell for over 20 years before it’s 2019 release.  Me personally, I knew of the title, both Anime and Manga, but had never seen or read them until recently.  And while I would still love to read the Manga sometime, if I didn’t make it clear by Monday’s review: The OVA is not great.  In fact, I think it’s pretty bad.  So bad I wonder how it convinced anyone to turn it into a movie (maybe James Cameron read the Manga idk.).  Anyway, looking at the OVA for the first time was plenty of incentive to rewatch the movie again for the first time in years and guess what, IT’S STILL AWESOME.  So awesome it puts the Battle Angel OVA to shame.  I know those are strong claims but I stand by it and on todays Top 5 Wednesday, I present my evidence with the Top 5 Ways the Alita: Battle Angel Movie Surpasses the Battle Angel OVA.  BTW, for clarification, I have not read the Alita Manga.  So for this Top 5’s purposes, I’m only looking at comparing the OVA to the Movie and nothing more, though I theorize a lot of what’s lacking in the OVA is in the Manga but I digress.

 
#5-Visually Superior

The Battle Angel OVA hails from the Golden Age of Anime OVAs, the mid 80s to late 90s.  And yet it doesn’t really look any better than most TV Anime at the time.  Iron City feels deserted most of the time and everything just looks dull.  The movie on the other hand is far more vibrant, lively and interesting.  The bustling population, the random activities on display.  You can tell this is a massive dirty metal metropolis with a long history and its all begging to be explored thanks to the visual brilliance of director Robert Rodriguez.  More importantly, it feels like a world that could belong in an Anime with the same exuberance and excitement, two things the OVA sorely lacks.

 
#4-Motorball

Ok, I get it.  The Motorball sequence in the movie is the equivalent of the Pod Racing scene from The Phantom Menace: it looks awesome but it’s also a scene that could have been shortened or omitted altogether.  That said, I freaking love it. Motorball is so intense and crazy it could be an Anime all of its own and Alita freaking owns the track when she steps up.  By comparison, the OVA teases gladiatorial fights that I don’t think we ever get to see and if we do, it’s not much.  Like everything else, it’s just a tease for something that’s probably shown in all of its glory in the Manga.  At least the movie delivers proper Motorball.  Even if it is a side objective, it’s just adds to the overall fun of the movie.

 
#3-Ido and Alita’s relationship

This is one area where the movie flat out dominates the OVA by adding a few small but pivotal moments.  The movie reveals that Ido had a daughter named Alita, who was killed by Johnny Rico from Starship Troopers.  The body he gives Alita was meant for his daughter, hence why he has such a strong paternal attachment to her.  He very much acts as a both father figure and mentor to Alita and the two have genuine chemistry.  The OVA never gets this deep with Gally at one point accusing Ido of wanting to keep her as a doll.  Leaving out Ido’s family history does a massive disservice to the OVA and I’m wondering if this was ever revealed in the Manga. 
 

#2-A Better Tragic Love Story

In the OVA, the romantic subplot between Gally and Yugo is kind of an afterthought in Part One before becoming the full focus of Part Two.  Even then, it’s an entirely one sided romance.  Yugo is so obsessed with getting to Zolem that Gally’s feelings barely register: it’s either Zolem or nothing.  Hugo’s story still retains a great deal of his Zolem focused tragedy but actually takes time to build a legit romance between him and Alita.  From the get go, Hugo is both Alita’s first friend and guide to the world she’s found herself in and he is legitimately falling for her with every encounter.  The fates of Yugo and Hugo are ultimately the same but there’s more heart in the movie than there ever is in the OVA.
 

#1-The Movie isn’t afraid to “Let them fight”

Near the top of my list of complaints about the Battle Angel OVA is how brief and few the action scenes are.  Theyre over before you know it and have that pesky trope of cutting away before something cool happens only to cut back after the fact and you don’t know how things got so bloody.  Man the movie has bigger stones because for a PG13 rated flick, the action is no holds bared and brutal.  We get to see Alita punch a cyborg to death in her first fight scene and there’s never any shame showing any blood or dismemberment.  Plus the energy, the choreography, the imagination on display.  This is Anime brought to life as only a master filmmaker like the guy who gave us Desperado can deliver in space.  Rurouni Kenshin might be the gold standard of Live Action Anime Action scenes but Alita: Battle Angel is a pretty close runner up.