Post 10 (week 10)

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For this week, I read the first installment of Alita: Battle Angel. I was first caught by the sci-fi style of this particular manga. I couldn't tell when it was created, the style of vehicle and armor of the enemy soldiers reminded me of the military design in the Fifth Element, with the usage of non-linear storytelling painting a complicated picture of Alita. I'd found the crazed professor funny, seeing his reaction to the flan with such fervor made me realize i was a bit hungry myself. It was almost like a pheonix, rising from the ashes so to speak. The faded memory backstory with the slow rebuild of the protagonist makes this a building climax of an character builder. With a newly built body, a cluttering of memories, and an unburdened free will, it leaves you wanting to know what is going to happen in the next edition of the series! One thing I feel has transferred well for some manga to their anime forms is the dramatic reveal, with alita there was a massive amount of buildup and the playing of some shadows in the hallways creating a low key lighting situation.

It took some time to adjust, with the manga reading from right to left but once I'd gotten the hang of it I was able to keep pace. I was astounded by the quality of detail in this manga, it was shaded and rendered to a high quality of detail from panel to panel. Something I had picked up on my second re-reading was the use of black and white backgrounds to differentiate between the past and present, with the past being cast with a black background while the present had a white background. For me, the use of the black backgrounds contrasted against the frames of the story and further focused you in from panel to panel, experiencing less eye wandering across the page.

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