×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Forum - View topic
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Battle Angel Alita


Goto page 1, 2, 3  Next

Note: this is the discussion thread for this article

Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Anime World Order



Joined: 05 May 2006
Posts: 389
Location: Florida
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 6:57 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Yukito Kishiro's Battle Angel Alita is one of my favorite science fiction/adventure manga, almost certainly the best manga ever published in Business Jump magazine


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.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website My Anime My Manga
Shenl742



Joined: 11 Feb 2010
Posts: 1524
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 7:08 pm Reply with quote
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.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2530
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 7:28 pm Reply with quote
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.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
ittoujuu



Joined: 25 Sep 2009
Posts: 164
Location: SoCal
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 8:00 pm Reply with quote
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.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ptj_tsubasa



Joined: 04 Feb 2009
Posts: 129
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 8:24 pm Reply with quote
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?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
rinmackie



Joined: 05 Aug 2006
Posts: 1040
Location: in a van! down by the river!
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 8:44 pm Reply with quote
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.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
wandering-dreamer



Joined: 21 Jan 2008
Posts: 1733
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 8:45 pm Reply with quote
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?).
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Paul Soth



Joined: 06 Jul 2010
Posts: 140
Location: Columbus, Oh
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 9:03 pm Reply with quote
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."
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
TheRoyalFamily



Joined: 16 Apr 2010
Posts: 62
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 9:22 pm Reply with quote
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.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster


Joined: 07 May 2005
Posts: 357
Location: San Francisco
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 9:55 pm Reply with quote
ptj_tsubasa wrote:
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?


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. -_-
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster


Joined: 07 May 2005
Posts: 357
Location: San Francisco
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 9:58 pm Reply with quote
wandering-dreamer wrote:
I've never tried this one but I suspect it's because I keep getting Battle Angel Alita and Burst Angel mixed up.


OH GOD!!! BLASPHEMY!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!! Smile

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.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster


Joined: 07 May 2005
Posts: 357
Location: San Francisco
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 10:00 pm Reply with quote
Anime World Order wrote:
Quote:
Yukito Kishiro's Battle Angel Alita is one of my favorite science fiction/adventure manga, almost certainly the best manga ever published in Business Jump magazine


WHOA HOLD ON THERE LET'S NOT GET CARRIED AWAY WITH OURSELVES LEST YE FORGET ABOUT VIOLENCE HERO RIKI-OH


I *DID* forget!!! Oh, the shame!!! Yes, Riki-oh is fierce competition!!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
ptj_tsubasa



Joined: 04 Feb 2009
Posts: 129
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 10:03 pm Reply with quote
ptolemy18 wrote:
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. -_-


Huh, indeed. I'd completely forgotten about it.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 10:14 pm Reply with quote
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. Evil or Very Mad

(profanity edited by the poster)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
littlegreenwolf



Joined: 10 Aug 2002
Posts: 4796
Location: Seattle, WA
PostPosted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 10:39 pm Reply with quote
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.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail My Anime My Manga
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page 1, 2, 3  Next
Page 1 of 3

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group