So awesome that Last Order volume 17 is out in Japanese! Got mine from amazon.jp. Glad to get it as amazon wasn't carrying Evening magazine where Kishiro sensei has been writing since the spat with Ultrajump who wrote FINISHED at the end of their last volume 16 when the story isn't over. Still isn't done in volume 17!!! Great to see some old faces.

投稿者:Harry 投稿日時:2012/5/12/04:04

Though I feel silly now as volume 16 was also published by Kodansha / Evening...

15 was the last translated by Viz. I wonder if they have a deal with Kodansha?

17 is great. For those waiting for something to happen, stuff happens!!!

投稿者:Harry 投稿日時:2012/5/12/21:00

from the book - "500 Manga Heros & Villains" by Helen McCarthy
Collins & Brown 2006

ALITA a.k.a. GALLY [1991]

Battle Angel (Gunmu a.k.a. Gun Dream) by
Yukito Kishiro stars a young android struggling
to find her identity in a harsh future. The floating
city of Zalem (Tiphares) hovers above the
Scrapyard, the dumping ground for all its
trash. The poor scavenge a living there, while
the elite live in Zalem. Everyone dreams of
clawing their way out of the dungheap and
reaching Zalem. Alita (Gally) is a broken
cyborg, dumped and helpless, until she is
found by cybernetics engineer Ido (Daisuke
Ito), who has fallen out of favor with the elite
and been relegated to the Scrapyard. He
repairs her, makes her a beautiful new face
and body, and keeps her around, treating her
like a daughter. Alita has a superhuman battle
skills. She was created as a Hunter-Warrior
purely to serve the elite, but her relationship
with Ido enables her to be a child, to learn
and to grow emotionally. She falls in love with
young Hugo (Yuko) who dreams of escaping
to Zalem but the relationship ends tragically
when he is killed by a bounty hunter. Going
through every stage of teenage rebellion and
confusion, Alita sets out on a journey to the
Western region of the Scrapyard to recover
her past by way of becoming a gladiator in a
futuristic arena. The devoted Ido closes down
his cyberpractice to search for his "daughters,"
hooking up with a young woman named
Shumira. Her brother is an established
champion on the motorball circuit where Alita
is the hottest new star, and together they set
up the ultimate challenge matching to bring Alita
home. When the manga started out in Business
Jump magazine, the story had been put together
in a hurry to expand a single Kishiro
illustration - in which the as-yet-unplotted
heroine appeared - into a manga. It ended
hastily in 1995, and Kishiro returned to the
story in 2000, publishing Gunmu: Last Orders
in Ultra Jump magazine. Viz Communications
published a translation in 1994.

(pages 89-91)
"500 Manga Heros & Villains" by Helen McCarthy
Collins & Brown 2006

投稿者:raza from オセアニア 投稿日時:2012/3/16/09:40

Message flagged Thursday, 23 February 2012 10:04 AM from the book "Manga the Complete Guide" by Jason Thompson.
Ballantine Books Del Rey. 2007.

Battle Angel Alita
------------------------------------------------------
Gunnm, "Gun Dream" (銃夢) . Yukito Kishiro . Viz
(1992-1998) . Shueisha (Business Jump, 1990-
1995) . 9 volumes . Seinen, Science Fiction,
Action-Adventure . Unrated / 16+ (graphic violence,
partial nudity)

An intense, furiously inventive cyberpunk
adventure set in a grubby future world of
cynical cyborgs and street trash. The amne-
siac Alita, rescued from a garbage pile by one
of the Scrapyard's rare Good Samaritans,
begins an odyssey of self-discovery by way
of bounty hunting, blood sports, and high-
tech wetwork, interwoven with philosophi-
cal explorations of the relationship between
brain and body and artistic depictions of
what happens when they get splattered all
over a motorball track. Kishiro's illustration
and storytelling chops improve as the story
progresses, but from the very start Alita is
packed full of nervy sci-fi concepts and
heartwarming drama, and the plot rockets
along at a most un-manga-like pace - our
heroine goes through more than a decade of
adventures, and at least half a dozen bodies,
in the span of these nine volumes. The
final hundred pages provide an abrupt con-
clusion that Kishiro subsequently discarded
in favor of the sequel series Last Order, and
this original ending was omitted entirely
from the large-format reprint series released
in Japan between 1998 and 2000. (MS)
****
Battle Angel Alita: Last Order
------------------------------------------------------
Gunnm Last Order, "Gun Dream Last Order" (銃夢
Last Order) . Yukito Kishiro . Viz (2002-ongoing)
. Shueisha (Ultra Jump, 2000-ongoing) . 9+
volumes, ongoing . Seinen, Science Fiction,
Action-Adventure . 16+ (mild language, graphic
violence)

A continuation of Kishiro's Battle Angel
Alita - or more precisely, an alternative
ending, since it substitutes a sprawling
space epic for the somewhat rushed con-
clusion that took up the final hundred
pages of the previous series. Revived in the
sky city of Tiphares by her archnemesis,
the flan-gobbling mad scientist Desty
Nova, our cyborg warrior heroine ascends
to the stars and discovers that the heavens
are full of asses that need whipping. Kishi-
ro's artwork is better than ever, with strik-
ing graphic design and hyperkinetic martial
arts sequences that could make angels
weep, but after a strong start and some
promising stabs at Swiftian social satire,
the story settles into a cycle of overex-
tended fighting tournaments punctuated
by big chunks of exposition. It doesn't help
that the quirky supporting cast of the origi-
nal series is quickly phased out in favor of a
bland set of replacements, although Alita's
bloody-minded, smack-talking doppelganger
Sechs does a fair job of stealing the show.
(MS) ***

---------------
(pages 24-25)

投稿者:raza from オセアニア 投稿日時:2012/3/16/09:38

Hello!to say thank you for this interesting article! =) Peace, Joy.

投稿者:Maypeloyali 投稿日時:2012/1/26/08:09

from the book 100 Anime - BFI Screen Guides by Philip Brophy. BFI Publishing 2005.

"Battle Angel Alita (Gunnm)
Japan, 1993
Hiroshi Fukutome, Rin Taro
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A 'Pinocchio effect' - the desire to create a living being from an
anthropomorphic doll - is sutured within the Japanese culture of puppets
just like Pinocchio's own invisible strings. Astro Boy is the seminal
modern text, rewiring Pinocchio with Asimov and Zen and envisaging a
post-human child as the logical extent achievable through robotics.
Anime could be regarded as a medium of puppetry with its myriad
alignments of machines with humans, mechanics with consciousness.
This would explain why so much cinema history and film language falls
off anime's corpus like an ill-fitted costume.
Battle Angel Alita is a whirlpool of puppet mythology that sucks in
European and Japanese currents, forming a transcultural blend of
animatrics. Gally (Alita in the English versions) is neither born, conjured
nor invented: she is assembled bit by bit from parts scavenged in a huge
cyborg junkyard by Dr Ido. Her conglomerate status is a reflection of the
myth-recycling which brings her story to life. Set in the obligatory
dystopian future, created from an ecological wasteland that grants human
life scarcely a foothold to eke out an existence, Gally is both a mystically
resilient life force and an undying testament to the Pinocchio effect.
Constructing robotic form and designing intelligent function in Japan
has naught to do with the European heritage that chains Icarus to
Prometheus to Frankenstein to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in a single
God-fearing cold sweat. Making robots is how post-humans breed in a
non-Judeo-Christian incubating system. The serious industrial pursuit of
robotics, the aesthetic crafting of anthropomorphic semblance in any
machine, the animistic belief in life force in all things, plus the
acceptance of spiritual, mystical and hidden energies within dolls,
figurines and idols - these form the sedimentary layer that holds Battle
Angel Alita as a socio-cultural tradition as much as a cine-generic
invention.
The world Battle Angel Alita depicts and how Gally fits into it are
then issues of more importance than the precepts of her animatronic
being. Gally attains cyborg consciousness in the world from which she
has been assembled: a cruel terrain populated by renegade machinery,
dysfunctional robotics and aggressive devouring forces. Scrap Iron City is
bereft of civilisation as we know it and deadly conclusive laws of the junk
jungle govern all life forms. Yet this society is no more than humanity
devoid of its positivist stance and progressive flag-waving. It is arguably
the essence of humanity - especially when one sees that the upper
classes of human and cyborg alike are now secluded in a gigantic
suspended metropolis kilometres above the ground. A metallic disc
structure the size of a continent, Sky City Zalem tapers into a central
colonic chute that literally excretes all form of waste from the ruling
classes, dumping it onto the spread of Scrap Iron City below. If you are
what you eat, you are also what you defecate, and from this
technological excreta Gally arises. Initially unbeknown to her and Ido, she
harbours psychic-martial abilities which are a compression of the disused
energies the ruling classes have left fallow below them. Gally thus
becomes a deadly Pinocchio who dreams not of being human, but of
becoming post-human.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
OVA (2)
Genre: Cyborg Action
Dir: Hiroshi Fukutome, Rin Taro; Prod: Kazuhiko Ikeguchi, Joichi Sugito;
Scr: Akinori Endo; Anim: Futoshi Fujikawa; Chara: Nobuteru Yuki;
Score: Soichiro Harada, Kaoru Wada; Sound: Yasunori Honda;
Manga: Gunmu; Wr/Art: Yukito Kishiro.
"
(pages 43-44)

投稿者:RAZA from オセアニア 投稿日時:2012/1/23/09:26

So, I was reading my biology textbook today. It seems that, in the two decades since Kishiro-seinsei wrote the first chapters of Gunnm, our view of neuroglia has changed. Instead of a gluelike substance that just holds the neurons together, it's now seen as vital for the protection, maintenance and feeding of the neurons themselves. Therefore, despite the Deckman's warnings, burning a code onto Gally's neuroglia probably did cause some brain damage.

This got me wondering. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the brain damage's effects don't manifest for five years after you've been stamped. If the average life expectancy of a Hunter-Warrior is only 3 years, then there's no reason for them not to burn the hunters' brains: the hunters will be dead by the time they show evidence of parkinsonism or whatever. On the other hand, Gally's alive and kicking a decade and a half later, maybe more (can't remember the exact chronology). Perhaps some of her later psychoses are actually due to brain damage?

投稿者:Daniel Snyder from 北米 投稿日時:2012/1/20/21:51

http://youtu.be/QLyG5uM2hrk

投稿者:1 投稿日時:2011/12/27/18:31

http://www.mediafire.com/?736x174bwl36og3

Found this on a old old hard drive. Don't know if Yukito still has the files or not.

It is a guide to make a pair of Desty Nova Glasses.

投稿者:Old Guy 投稿日時:2011/12/16/10:19

Now if someone could translate them that would be very nice.

投稿者:Old Guy 投稿日時:2011/12/16/10:19

Yes this is still on the Japanese page -

http://jajatom.moo.jp/yukitopianfolder/down/down01.html

I made some ages ago (without any translation). You just print the glasses out cut out each piece and glue the same numbered section to the same numbered section folding along the dotted lines iirc. I'll see if I can find the ones I made a while ago, but after all the parts are made just look at the pictures to see how they join together....

投稿者:RAZA from オセアニア 投稿日時:2011/12/20/09:21

Is anyone else frustrated by the series? I have been a fan for a long time, like 6 years maybe and I loved the original series. But with this no series, it takes so long to come out in English and the story progresses so slow. I haven't even bought the last two volumes yet, I'm waiting for enough time to pass so something significant happens in the story line. The original story moved at a much better pace. I think the who last order series should have only lasted 20 volumes max, how long do you think it will take? Eh I don't know im just a fan whose slowly loosing faith, but still loves the series. Any thoughts?

Sincerely,

A frustrated fan

投稿者:Frustrated Fan from 北米 投稿日時:2011/12/15/14:45

Agreed. I only buy them now because it's made by Yukito Kishiro. If anyone else was making "last order" I would have given up a long time ago.

投稿者:RAZA from オセアニア 投稿日時:2011/12/16/09:50

I also hold out hope for the "Battle Angel Alita" live action movie. If it ever gets made, whether it's good or not, I hope that some anime company will decide that the original series is worth redoing and anime of...

投稿者:RAZA from オセアニア 投稿日時:2011/12/16/09:58

He wants Avatar as a MMO, but with 2 factions... I could be wrong but I think the movie assets (characters, story, etc) are not enough for bringing lots of gameplay to a game. If it were a Battle Angel MMO, well now, that seems to have plenty of assets to lend themselves well to an MMO. in my opinion.

I can imagine plenty of Boss scenarios, variations of gameplay modes (Rollerball; Tournaments of Team Death Matches for PvP & open world PvP; story arcs/quests leading to different cities on Earth, on Mars, on Tiphares, etc). Relatively recent games to draw inspiration from include and are not limited to: Borderlands; Fallout; RAGE...

Well, if Guild Wars 2 gets successful, I'd draw inspiration from it also. DCUO, was interesting for me by introducing me to console action gameing controls to the MMO genre, but the content is not nearly enough to keep me in the game. Warhammer Online (my 1st MMO) drew me in via PvP done in the style of Battlefield Objective based gameplay with potentially 2 large factions at war, but it changed so much and hit the streets with lots of bugs, that I left it. Looking forward to Guild Wars 2 for it's unique approach to player roles in a group. SWTOR, after seeing gameplay videos... I'm not particularly excited about it.

I saw a photo with the article about James and his Avatar MMO idea, and he's wearing the Gally/Alita shirt.... got me to dream for a moment.

What aspects of the Manga do you think would lend itself well to a game of the MMO genre? What might such a MMO be named?

My guess: Martian Memory. Discover the ancient story linking Earth to Mars and the galaxy. As well as the current struggles of all the inhabitants everywhere.

If Yukito and James can't agree on a MMO plan, perhaps adding an are within the Sony Networks upcoming Home. PSN's Home seems as though it'll have great marketing potential as well as be as creatively fun as dreamed of.

投稿者:Martian55 投稿日時:2011/9/30/08:30

Here's someones blog on what they want in the movie -

http://www.makigumo.com/news.php?id=147

投稿者:raza from オセアニア 投稿日時:2011/10/1/10:11