Forum - View topicJason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Battle Angel Alita
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Anime World Order
 Posts: 390 Location: Florida |
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WHOA HOLD ON THERE LET'S NOT GET CARRIED AWAY WITH OURSELVES LEST YE FORGET ABOUT VIOLENCE HERO RIKI-OH But you do have a point. Along with Adolf by Osamu Tezuka and Sanctuary by Sho Fumimura, Battle Angel Alita was one of the very first manga titles I ever read as a kid. (It's a little less crazy-sounding considering this was around 1996.) Kishiro really is a tremendous artist, but I think at this point he needs some editors to rein him in and get his story back on track...if it ever resumes in the first place. In that sense, I suppose he DID become like Frank Miller after all! If I were said editor, my first edict to whip Yukito Kishiro into shape and get Last Order back to where it needs to be going would be a note with the words "ROCKET HAMMER" written on it. |
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Shenl742
Posts: 1525 |
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I understand the criticisms against Last Order and I do think they're justified, but I really love it to death anyway. The tournament fighting may be going on WAY to long but they manage to be so bizarre and inventive they end up becoming weirdly sublime. And I really appreciate the non-fighting bits and all the backstories, and the detail in which the Alitaverse is are being expanded.
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2680 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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I've considered reading Alita so many times... But in the end I never do. I haven't even watched the OVA that ADV re-released a couple of years ago, though I did buy it, and appropriately enough is a part of TRSI's 12 Days of Christmas sale right now.
I'm not sure if I ever will start reading Alita, but it is a title that I do know of and have heard lots of great things about. |
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ittoujuu
Posts: 164 Location: SoCal |
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Battle Angel Alita was one of the first manga series I read all the way through, via the magic of my local public library (and, where necessary, the judicious use of inter-library loans). I was surprised that libraries would stock manga, since this was at the time when I'd go to Barnes and Noble and find copies of Ah! My Goddess and Blade of the Immortal for $16, hidden behind Superman compilation volumes.
I've always wanted to re-read it - not that I think my enjoyment of it was teenage nostalgia, but that I want to see if I like it now just as much as I did then. To me, it stuck out as a kind of rarity, as a sci-fi series that felt heavily character-based and didn't soapbox too much. I don't know if they'd consider releasing the original series in the VizBig format with color pages, but...that would be awesome. Either way, it's been long enough since I've read it, and no better excuse to buy the volumes, if they're still in print. |
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ptj_tsubasa
 Posts: 129 |
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Interesting. In the 2006 Finnish edition the page from the first chapter that's in this article rolls out like this.
Apparently Kishiro completely redrew it at some point. So I quess the one with Desty Nova is the original one, and he retconned him out and replaced him with another character in order to introduce him only later? |
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rinmackie
 Posts: 1040 Location: in a van! down by the river! |
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I read the first few volumes of the original series ages ago. Then it seemed to have disappeared, and Last Order took it's place. I never got to read the end of Battle Angel, so LO was a bit confusing from the start. I really liked the first series and LO was interesting at first, but it just got to be too much. And the fact that is seemed to take FOREVER for the next volume release, didn't help, either. It's a shame because I really liked the story concept but I can't see myself returning to it anytime soon.
As for Cameron's live-action version, I don't mind if he never makes it. I think he'd ruin it. Be nice if it got a decent anime series though, but I don't see that happening, either. |
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wandering-dreamer
 Posts: 1733 |
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I've never tried this one but I suspect it's because I keep getting Battle Angel Alita and Burst Angel mixed up. After seeing this article I really want to try it now even if it is on hiatus (and after reading the other article it strikes me as an odd request by the editor to change just a few words around, would anyone reading the story even care which word for madness they use?).
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Paul Soth
 Posts: 142 Location: Columbus, Oh |
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First manga I ever got into. And Last Order really has gotten over the top. I hope Kishiro isn't thinking of following all the way in Miller's footsteps right into the same batshit insanity that produced "The Spirit" and "All-Star Batman and Robin."
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TheRoyalFamily
 Posts: 62 |
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I've always passed this one up, but it sounds right up my alley. I'll have to look into it when I get some money.
And as for 1000-page omnibus One Piece? That would be the only way you could convince me to buy it. I liked it when I read in in SJ years ago, but I would never buy the individual volumes. Plus, it'd be nice to read a manga collection that took more than and hour to read (at that time/money relation, it's better to go watch a movie in the theater than buy a manga!) And a book that big would most likely be hardcover; I could live with that. |
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
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No, actually, the page I used as an image is a different page from the original Alita volume 9. There's a dream/virtual-reality sequence in there in which Alita/Gally envisions how her life might have turned out differently if she'd been picked up from the scrap heap by Desty Nova and Doc Ido instead of Doc Ido and.... and... and that old cyborg guy with the flat head whose name I can't remember right now. -_- |
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
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OH GOD!!! BLASPHEMY!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!! 
The more I think about Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, the more I think that it has a very similar ultraviolent sense of black humor to Frank Miller's science fiction comics. It's interesting, over-the-top stuff. |
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
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I *DID* forget!!! Oh, the shame!!! Yes, Riki-oh is fierce competition!! |
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ptj_tsubasa
Posts: 129 |
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Huh, indeed. I'd completely forgotten about it. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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Yay, a House of 1000 Manga that features something I've actually read!
Battle Angel Alita is fantastic. I even love the swift gecko-ending he was forced to write to it. Mostly because of how much Last Order has wound up sucking. I mean, okay, at first, it was excellent, expanding the universe and all that, and I didn't even mind the tournament idea. But it should say something about your series when the best volume in recent times was one that didn't have your protagonist in it (all hail Caerula Sanguis, may she kick Edward's sparkly ass!). I think it was in volume 12 where the spoiler[Mbadi ZOTT declares the ZOTT canceled,] at which point I went, "yay! finally!" and then spoiler[Alita is like, "No! we are continuing it for no good reason whatsoever!"], and I screamed "F**K THIS MANGA!!" and threw it across the room. Should the ZOTT finally f*****g finish, I will probably continue this series, but heaven help me I was sick of that stupid f******g unending tournament. 
(profanity edited by the poster) |
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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I love the Battle Angel Alita (not going to mention the Last Order stuff). I remember as a girl just forcing myself to read whatever manga my guy friends threw at me, never really connecting with any of it, and then someone suggested Battle Angel Alita, and I was completely hooked. The art for one was fantastic, and the story as well, but what really did it for me was Alita's personality and her emotional development. Yeah, maybe it did have shoujo elements like the author suggested, but I think it only gave it more depth. Without it, Battle Angel would have just been another boring blood fest of a manga I would have just ignored.
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