ife in the shadow of Paradise is a frustrating thing. Most of the degenerate inhabitants of Scrap Iron City spend their time looking up longingly at the floating city of Zalem, when they're not making their living by picking through its daily-dumped refuse.
But cyberneticist Dr. Ido, who somehow came from Zalem in the undefined past, isn't tempted by its mysterious pleasures. He seems perfectly content with healing the damaged androids who come through his shop -- including a battered amnesiac whom he picks out of a trash heap.
He names his foundling Gally, and treats her as his own daughter. But she's not quite content with the role. She wants to make her own decisions, live her own life, and come to terms with her own mysterious past, which emerges only in her amazing, instinctive fighting abilities. She gets plenty of opportunities to test these skills -- Scrap Iron City is a violent, grotesque place inhabited primarily by criminals and the bounty hunters that prey on them. In particular, the thriving black market in spines, the only part of the human body that can't be synthesized, leads to an endless series of gory crimes.
And when Gally's not trying to cope with spine stealers and brain-eating addicts, she's dealing with her own humanity, her affection for a local boy whose only dream is of buying his way into Zalem, and her father Ido's rivalry with a fellow fallen Zalemite who seems bent on revenge.
Busy, busy, busy
Battle Angel isn't a wholly new release -- it came out in 1993 in a subtitled format -- but it's more than worth the second look. The two segments on this tape, adapted from a wildly popular manga series, pack a great deal into a small space. The sequences are crowded and abrupt, traveling quickly from pitched hand-to-hand battles to Gally's melancholy contemplations of a possible future in Zalem with her friend Yugo. But the narrative's frenetic speed is rarely a problem. Gally is an instantly engaging character, and the hectic pacing of her busy life is thrilling rather than jarring.
And the beauty and clarity of the lovingly detailed animation makes up for any minor flaws in the storytelling. The dark, strong colors and heavy shadows give Battle Angel a distinctively chilly tone. Even the dubbing, so often a problem with anime adaptations, is done reasonably well, even if it does make Gally sound like something of a ditz.
This is far from the entirety of the manga series, which Viz Communications is still releasing, book by book, in the United States. This partial adaptation does leave many questions unanswered, including the truth about both Gally and Ido's histories. But even on its own, it's a visual and textual wonder to watch.
