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Battle Angel Alita/Gunnm: LO Manga's Return Planned
posted on by Egan Loo
Manga creator Yukito Kishiro reported in a Wednesday blog entry that he met with the editors of Kodansha's Evening magazine and Shueisha's Ultra Jump magazine to arrange for the return of his Battle Angel Alita: Last Order (GUNNM: Last Order) manga. Kishiro had put his manga on hiatus last month after the 100th installment ran in Ultra Jump (pictured at right).
According to Kishiro, a Shueisha editor had asked him on June 7 to revise dialogue in the original Battle Angel Alita manga for a new reprint (pictured below). However, Kishiro was in the middle of finishing the 100th Last Order manga installment before its deadline. Kishiro asked the editor if he realized that imposing this request might mean Kishiro will miss his deadline for the Last Order installment and will refuse to allow more reprints of his manga, and the editor said yes. Kishiro did make the dialgoue changes and finished the current installment on time. However, he then announced Battle Angel Alita: Last Order's hiatus on June 24 and added that there might never be a 101st installment.
On Tuesday, Kishiro met with the editors of Evening magazine. While he has met with the Evening editors several times before, Tuesday's meeting was the first one at Kodansha's headquarters in Tokyo's Gokokuji area. He discussed with Evening's editor-in-chief the possiblity of moving not only Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, but all of his works to Kodansha.
However, he met with the Ultra Jump editors one more time on Wednesday to see if he could resolve the issues he had there. He gave a final offer of settlement to the Ultra Jump editors: the legal department must apologize to him for questioning the three sections of dialogue in the new reprint of Battle Angel Alita, and Shueisha must recall the new reprint edition and revert the revised sections to their original form. The Ultra Jump editors told Kishiro that they could not make any promises, but they would try to discuss the offer with the legal department.
Kishiro said that if the final settlement offer goes through, he will return to Shueisha and resume the Battle Angel Alita: Last Order manga in Ultra Jump. If the final offer does not go through, he will switch publishers to Kodansha and resume the Battle Angel Alita: Last Order manga in Evening. He expects that the outcome of the discussions between Ultra Jump's editors and Shueisha's legal department will be revealed by next week.
Viz Media publishes both the original Battle Angel Alita manga and the Last Order manga in North America. The 15th Last Order volume shipped in Japan on June 18, and the 13th volume shipped in North America in June as well.
[Via Ko Ransom]
