Sometimes in the future, a giant Utopian city, Zalem, is floating above the Earth. Zalem throws its trash down on Earth, and scientist Daisuke Ido finds a damaged, abandoned cyborg in the pile, and repairs her into a girl, Gally. She meets a young boy, Hugo, who wants to earn enough money to escape to Zalem. While defending Ido from an aggressive cyborg, Gally displays incredible fighting skills nd becomes a bounty hunter. Chiren is a woman who desperately wants to return to Zalem, and thus offers sex to Vector, who wants to use Gally in one of his gladiator fights. Hugo tells Gally about how his family was killed by Gime because Hugo's brother planned to fly off to Zalem. Gime appears again and slays Hugo, but is killed by Gally. Ido revives Hugo as a cyborg. Hugo climbs up the cable connecting Zalem, but is badly damaged by its defensive ring. Gally holds his hand from the cable, but the falls and dies.
This two-episode OVA is a rather rump adaptation of the popular manga "Battle Angel", and such a condensed approach which encompassed only the first chapter of the comic-book left a rather rushed impression, since many details were left unfinished for some other adaptation. Nonetheless, it is a quality piece of anime, displaying both high-tech elements and emotions, embodied in the tragic figure of Hugo who yearns for reaching the floating city of Zalem above the Earth, thereby advancing into the modern version of Icarus, a person who dreams to reach for the impossible heights in order to escape from the impoverished world around him, only to get badly burned. Other characters are also given enough room (Ido finding cyborg Gally and reviving her almost seems like a modern form of adoption of a daughter) and there are a few stylistic ideas with a punchline (for instance, in one scene at a dirty bar, Chiren extinguishes her cigarette on a cockroach climbing her table, signalling her feisty persona). As Zalem stands for the upper class, and Earth as the lower class, the story could have developed more in that direction, since some of the action and battle sequences end up in sometimes extreme violence (a cyborg killing a dog, for instance, and Gally using its blood to draw herself "fighting" stripes in order to take revenge on the said cyborg). Despite an abridged story, which is just half of deal, "Battle Angel" has aesthetic images and polished designs, never allowing for the cyberpunk to completely take over the human side, whereas its touching ending gives it more weight than expected.
Grade:++
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