Alita: Battle Angel Eyes

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About

Alita: Battle Angel Eyes refers to a series of jokes about the facial features of the titular character of 2019 action film Alita: Battle Angel. The decision to keep the character's eyes abnormally large in the spirit of the original manga prompted memes about the character's appearance following the release of the trailers and the film.

Origin

On December 15th, 1990, the first chapter of Battle Angel Alita cyberpunk manga (known in Japan as Gunmm) was published in Business Jump magazine.^[10] The series follow cyborg Alita who has lost all memories and is found in a dump heap by cyberphysician Daisuke Ido. In the manga, Alita has large eyes in line with the traditional Japanese manga and anime art style.

On December 8th, 2017, 20th Century Fox uploaded a since-deleted trailer for its upcoming action film Alita: Battle Angel based on the manga. The trailer attracted significant attention due to the peculiar appearance of the titular character Alita, portrayed by Rosa Salazar, who had been given abnormally large CGI eyes.

Following the trailer. several outlets, including The Verge^[2] and Kotaku^[3], mentioned the "unsettling" appearance of the character. On Twitter, the large-eyed character became the subject of memes (examples below).

Spread

Later trailers for the movie, released on July 23rd, 2018,^[4] and November 13, 2018,^[5] were followed by similar reactions, with multiple tweets making fun of the character's eyes appearing online.

On February 14th, 2019, Alita: Battle Angel premiered in the United States.^[6] At the time around the release of the movie, memes about the facial features of the character rose in popularity on Twitter, Reddit and Instagram, with many examples utilizing the Literally No One: format. For example, on February 7th, 2019, Reddit^[7] user pizza_and_cats posted a Drakeposting meme which gained over 59,5 upvotes in two weeks (shown below, left).

The trend was covered by Screen Rant^[8] and The Daily Dot.^[9]