Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, Vol. 1 - Angel Reborn [Paperback]

Yukito Kishiro (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 23, 2003

Here is a new entry from the legendary series that has already been published in 11 languages. After a four-year wait, Alita is back, making her way through an apocalyptic universe. Picking up from the middle of the previous book, Angel's Ascension, our heroine encounters a new group of bizarre characters and revisits many of her old friends and foes. Reconstructed by Doc Ido, a talented cyborg physician, Alita has lost all memory of her former life. But there's one thing her body has not forgotten - it still instinctively recalls the Panzer Kunst, the most powerful cyborg fighting technique ever known. Bounty hunter, singer, killer: as the secrets of Alita's past unfold, every day is a struggle for survival, and her fighting talents are stretched to the limit. Can Alita alone stop the war chaos between the robotic denizens of the M.I.B. bureau and the Tipharians?

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

When he was only seventeen, Yukito Kishiro was nominated for Japanese publisher Shogakukan's Best New Comic award. Creator of other popular VIZ Media series Aqua Knight, Ashen Victor, and Battle Angel Alita, Kishiro is known for his strong characters, original settings, and intricate, lifelike artwork.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: VIZ Media LLC; Original edition (July 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569318247
• ISBN-13: 978-1569318249
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #614,033 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

When he was only seventeen, Yukito Kishiro was nominated for Japanese publisher Shogakukan's Best New Comic award. Creator of other popular VIZ Media series Aqua Knight, Ashen Victor, and Battle Angel Alita, Kishiro is known for his strong characters, original settings, and intricate, lifelike artwork.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars REborn, July 21, 2003

By 

Maurice Alouf (Winfield, WV United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, Vol. 1 - Angel Reborn (Paperback)

Being a HUGE fan of the original Battle Angel Alita series I was insanely happy to learn that Yukito Kishiro decided to go back and rewrite the last portion of the story.

I was very happy with the original story line, but I learned that Kishiro was ill during the creation of the last part of the story and felt the quality wasnt as good as it could have been.

Anyway, there is a new Battle Angel comic on the market and I couldnt care less about why.

This new story line picks up when the mad scientist Desty Nova defeats Alita (using much trickery) and decides to regenerate her using his theory of Karmatron Dynamics and Nanotechnology.

In the new story Alita awakens in a new body and in Tiphares, the city above the Scrap Yard! She finds that a civil war has broken out in the city due to the fact that the Secret of Tiphares is no longer a secret. There is a war between the two related parties to the Secret, and robots programmed to keep the secret a secret are racing all over the city killing everyone in their path.

(To find out the Secret of Tiphares check out the original Battle Angel Alita series, you will not be sorry)

The story so far is fantastic! It is just as deep and intruiging as the original. Lots of new and fun characters are popping up and the action is definitly intense.

The artwork is extremely beautiful, but I would have to say less detailed than before. this is not necessarily a bad thing though, as the story takes place in the clean and sterile City above the Clouds.

I have to say that the absolute high point and main reason for reading this (if you are not sure you want to) is for the sections of the story about Alita's child hood. In the original story it is only known that Alita is a few hundred years old and that she was a great warrior from Mars.

This story actually opens up with a traumatic scene from Alita's tragic childhood on the Red Planet. Truly amazing. Not much of her past is shown in this part of the story, but more is on the way!

I can hardly contain myself!!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alita I love you. Why have you changed?, September 2, 2003

By 

jazz_of_prodigyzone (Sofia, Bulgaria) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, Vol. 1 - Angel Reborn (Paperback)

(4 and 1/2 stars for this Alita-is-back experience. Sure becomes 5.)

>> What's the news?
Master Yukito Kishiro has grown even better!!! I thought t h a t
was impossible. Some new drawing and rendering techniques
are introduced to the new series style.
Backgrounds are more exciting than ever. Kishiro has complicated
detail and decoration. Exquisite work! Thank you, master!

>> What else is new?
Book format is smaller.
It reads from right to left - like
in Japan. It has some airbrush rendered pages
in the beginning of each chapter.

>> How about Alita herself?
Unfortunately, Alita has changed.
Now SHE is more mature. She looks somewhat less
vulnerable and emotional. More coldhearted and even diabolic
at times. She is different. Her body is more muscular. What is most
embarrassing - her lovely face has changed. And that was what
I liked the most about her. : sigh :
I guess her creator is somewhat out of love for her.
He decided to replace the adorable graphic actress with
a new one. Anyway.

>> What's the story?
The story in this volume brings us back
somewhere in the middle of VOl. 9 from the first series.
It interchanges the 'well known end' with a new 'beginning'.
Alita is revived by Desty Nova with a new, stronger body.
She finds herself again on Tiphares where she discovers
that total pandemonium has already taken over harmony and peaceful living.
There is a war going on - a final war between children and adults.
Alita meets a new friend and fights some ferocious enemy -
her own better warrior-self - this time it's number 6. Sechs.

>> Conclusion?
After all it's Alita, but somewhat changed.
It's like a dream. Everything looks familiar and yet it's different.
You feel a light ache every time you set your
eyes upon her lovely face. Something has gone for good.

I guess, I'll need some time to believe
the new Alita is as deserving my love as the old Alita.

But hey - I'll follow her for sure.

Despite some disappointing facts concerning only the
most eager and passionate Alita fanatics, the book
is sure worth buying.

Alita stays on top of my manga list. Forever!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars She's Back - And Twice As Bad!!!, May 15, 2004

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, Vol. 1 - Angel Reborn (Paperback)

Nova, the villainous researcher who spent much of the first Alita series foiling the efforts of the beautiful cyborg is back. This time with a different agenda. Equipped with the barest fragments of Alita's brain he remakes her, this time with an even better artificial body, the Imaginos. Alita awakens to a world in chaos - Nova has reveled that citizens of Tiphares have had their brains replaced with chips, and the overprotective guardian machines turn on the populace to conceal the secret.

Still created and drawn by Yukito Kishiro, this new series has all that magic of its predecessor. Battle Angel Alita remains a fine example of Manga that uses are to expand the imagination at the same time it entertains. For all the spellbinding action and violence, the driving factors behind the series remains the intangibles that separate human from non-human, and life from imitation.

For all that Alita is 'made' rather than born, she is clearly more human than the chip-brained adults of Tiphares, who see themselves as the perfection of the species. In the beginnings of a complex plot that pits adults against their children, Alita once again displays both her power and her compassion, We are also granted glimpses of Alita's origins - the promises of explanations that were never forthcoming in the initial series.

In a world where sequels are cheap and easy, it's nice to see the effort Kishiro and VIZ publishing have put together to create something even better than its origins. You won't be disappointed.