Battle Angel Alita, Vol. 1

The gore is super gross, the villain hilariously vile, the world extremely sad and depressing, and a dog saves the day. In short, everything about this is great. Everything except the dialogue and story with their big troubled-little-boy energy and the extremely problematic portrayal of Alita as a highly sexualised child.
I can only imagine how transgressive this must have felt when you somehow got your hands on it during the 90s, probably via that one weird clerk at your local comic shop. Hell, even now I wouldn't want my mother to see me reading the panels where Makaku slurps brains directly from bodies like they are Go-Gurts—or almost all of the panels, really.

P.S. The Kodansha Digital Edition is absolutely gorgeous btw., and really lets the art shine. Also there's a list of sound effect translations at the end? Probably highlights how long I haven't read any manga I guess, but that's hilarious. It's six straight pages of stuff like “115.1 - mrrk mrrk (moko moko)” or “152.6 fwip fwip fwip (kyun kyun kyun)”.

Story: 8.0 / 10
Characters: 7
Setting: 8
Prose: 6

Not nearly as good as the movie.

I love “simple” pen and ink drawings that say a lot! This is a good series for its straight to action and non-belabored backstories. It has heart and action.

Interesting start to the series. I'd like to see more about where it goes though - as while it's got a unique look and style - the fact that James Cameron wants to make a movie out of this is kind of making me look for the “James Cameron” movie in this - and I haven't found it yet.