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Battle Angel Alita: Last Order Manga Put on Hiatus

According to Kishiro, an editor asked him to revise dialogue in the original Battle Angel Alita manga while he was in the middle of finishing the 100th Last Order manga installment before its deadline. Kishiro was still drawing the Last Order installment on the evening of June 7 when the editor called him about changing three lines in the original manga for its imminent new reprint.

The three lines have a deckman saying that a female criminal is a mutant who went crazy or "hakkyō" (volume 1), the character Zapan saying he himself went crazy (volume 4), and a hunter warrior cursing someone as a "psycho" (volume 3). There were concerns about the terms' association with mental disease, although Kishiro noted that similar words for going crazy or madness such as "kurutteru" and "kyōki" are permitted.

Kishiro asked the editor if he realized that imposing this request might mean Kishiro will miss his deadline for the 100th Last Order installment and will refuse to allow more reprints of his manga, and the editor said yes. Kishiro decided to make dialogue changes and finish the current installment on time, and the first reprint volume and the 100th Last Order installment shipped on June 18 and June 19, respectively. However, he then announced Battle Angel Alita: Last Order's hiatus and added that there might never be a 101st installment.

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 this month.

[Via Eastern Standard]