movies

mononokehime
-story/cast
-raves/reviews
batte angel
-story/bckgrnd
-media
graveofthefireflies
-story/bckgrnd
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the story

The story takes place in the far off post-apocalyptic future where mankind is split into two sides: the idealic world of Zalem which hovers above the Earth, and Scrap Iron City that is made up of all the refugees from the floating paradise and only recieve the garbage that gets sent down from above to live on. Ido, a scientist who was cast out of Zalem, finds the remaining parts of an android girl lying in the wrecks. He takes her back to his shop and rebuilds her as Gally, a young girl that he treats as his daughter. Gally has a thing for their resident fix-it guy, Yugo. Yugo has been secretly working for a local godfather who is a liason for Zalem so that he can get leave the wastes of the city once and for all. Gally learns that Ido is really a Hunter Warrior who are the local guns-for-hire. With her android strength and power, Gally becomes one too. She then discovers that Yugo is the mystery slasher who has been going around town stealing people's spines to gain credit for getting to Zalem. Gally puts her own feelings up front and tries to help Yugo. To give the rest of the stort away would ruin the tearful ending. Battle Angel is a grand action movie with a strong sense of the humanities.

excerpt from "pathways"

The Scrap Yard. Home to the rubbish and refuse -- both human and non -- of Tiphares, a utopia above the clouds. This is the world of Yukito Kishiro, and the deeper into it I delve, the more amazed I become. For in the Scrap Yard, what is left of humanity must find its own way, free of the society which floats like a promise overhead. In a wasteland where meaninglessness and mortality are the givens, Kishiro weaves the most basic of humanity's philosophical dilemmas into a bloody tapestry of choices made and alliances forged.

Battle Angel Alita delivers all the elements that today's comics fan demands, combining the powerful exuberance of Todd McFarlane's Spawn, the lusty innocence of Adam Warren's Dirty Pair, and the beautifully detailed rendering of Ryoichi Ikegami's Crying Freeman. But Alita has her own unique charms as well...

Battle Angel Alita, Kishiro's knock-out manga creation, tells the simple tale of Daisuke Ido, a hunter-warrior who digs a three-hundred-year-old human head from the rubble of the Scrap Yard, then sets about trying to create something beautifu l from it -- an unsullied human life.