Review of Battle Angel Alita Volume 1 Fight 002

Alita decides she wants to be a bounty hunter like Ido but along with different motivations for what they’re doing they have different level of success. One actually ends the chapter with life-threatening injuries.

Issue: Battle Angel Alita Volume 1 Fight 002

Name: Fighting Instincts
Published: 2017 by Kodansha Comics

Blurb:

Creators:

Writer: Yukito Kishiro
Artist: Yukito Kishiro

Characters:

The Good: Daisuke Ido, Alita
The Bad: Endorphin Junkie, Izuchi

My Reading:

In the last chapter we learned that Ido was a hunter and that these hunters were essentially the police force of Scrapyard. They hunted down criminals determined by The Factory to violate the laws of the city. With Ido as her creator, Alita decides that she too wishes to be a hunter and to track down criminals.

Ido is extremely upset by this turn of events. He wanted Alita to be a thing of beauty, not to throw her life away as a hunter but she demands that she’s no doll to be dressed up by him. So she runs off to The Factory to be registered as a hunter and we learn that this is something Alita has to do for her own sake. She needs to be her own person in order to feel that she is contributing to society. This even seems to be something that was ingrained in her from the centuries before she was found by Ido.

Meanwhile, in the city we see a couple of new criminals show up who’re looking for brains. They don’t care what kind of brains – human or dog – but the smaller one, Izuchi, is trying to keep his big buddy supplied with endorphin. It seems the big guy needs to keep up his levels of the opioid since he’s a big time junkie. when no one voluneers to give him a brain to eat, the junkie grabs a bystander and pops his skull like a nut, slurping down his brain and enjoying the endorphin.

Back on the outskirts of town, as Alita is registering to be a hunter we see Ido wandering along the riverfront. He would gladly do anything for Alita and he now feels bad that he tried to control her. And he figures out that fate must be driving her to be a hunter since she’s already got the Panzer Kunst fighting skills that we saw in the last chapter. Regardless, he has to keep working as a hunter because he is also pursuing his own selfish pleasure…he actually enjoys killing the criminals.

As Ido heads back to the city he runs into Izuchi attacking a pack of wild dogs. Obviously he’s a criminal that Ido can hunt to fulfill his desire. But it’s not much of a hunt as Ido takes him down with a single swipe of his hammer.

And as Alita leaves The Factory, she runs into Izuchi’s bigger partner. He’s eating someone else’s brain and is obviously a criminal as well so Alita goes into action. She fights hard and performs some neat Panzer Kunst maneuvers breaking through the big guy’s arm and sending him reeling. But even missing an arm, this cyborg is tough. As Alita flips away after an attack, he slams her down essentially breaking her in two. As Ido mentioned in the last chapter, Alita’s body was not designed for combat and now she’s paid the price. The only question is whether she’ll survive the encounter.

What did I learn:

• Ido was building Alita for beauty not for combat so while she knew combat moves she was vulnerable to attack.
• Ido is using his hunter career as a way to satiate his hunger for killing…kinda like Dexter.
• This manga is not afraid to depict graphic violence.

My Thoughts:

Things are really getting interesting now, with Ido essentially a Factory sponsored serial killer and Alita becoming a hunter as well. With 2 bounty hunters, it seems the direction of the book is definitely moving towards a kinda a western theme where the two seek out bad guys in each chapter. Unbeknownst to them, they both take on members of the same gang but while Ido handily removes the head of Izuchi, Alita has a bit more trouble with the big endorphin junkie. But beyond the fighting the two are learning important things about each other that will come in handy if they are to team up as a bounty hunter duo.

My Rating: B+

This comic can be found on Comixology or at your local comic book shop.

Daily Ramble 283.3 | Comics – Manga – Battle Angel Alita Vol 1 Fight 002