Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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!!

(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!

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.

I love the 'Battle Angel Alita' novels. I really really love them. I love them so much so, that I consider the first novel, the best book I have ever read (with all the "best ever" fan praise I can give it). I love the whole series and was always happy with the way it ended. With news that Yukito Kishiro rushed the original ending for health reasons and that he was going back to the Scarpyard to tell what he intended in the first place, I knew 'Last Order' was going to be something special.

In every way, 'Last Order' delivers. The art, writing, characters, and everything else comes through in spades. Kishiro's pallet shows a wide range of painstakingly drawn details in the backgrounds and people. The pattern that seems to morph on a blanket that Alita wares is so gorgeously drawn, that I wish she wore it through out whole the book. Kishiro's writing is still very good, even if it does occasionally get into techno babble. The story has also lost some of the innocence and mystery when it first started, but Alita has grown a lot since then, so it makes sense.

Alita is as good as she ever was. Her character has matured and change so much, that she feels like a different person. Because of that, you can't put the book down. I just wanted to keep reading on to see what she would do next and where it would take her. Alita will really take you on a wild ride, so hold on to something. 'Last Order' is one great trip.

Last Order started out on an off key for many people, but the first four volumes continued to display Kishiro's electric artwork and the hope of more depth to Alita. However, even here many noted the shallow handling of the characters and the continual resorting to extended ultra violence. With volume five, Alita entered the ZOTT fighting tournament and the series has pretty much gone downhill from there. The art remained great, but the story and characterization were replaced by both endless pointless battles and volume after volume of over-extended back story focusing on secondary and tertiary characters, the vast majority of which had little to nothing to do with the main story or Alita's development. The title character of this series is literally not even in over a third of it.

The original Alita was a great story focusing on the character development of Alita and those close to her, whether she wanted them to be or not. It came to an abrupt, but reasonable, conclusion, due to Kishiro's experiencing an extended illness and needing to terminate the story. In Last Order, we are asked to pretend that the final volume of the first series did not occur and that this new story line is what the author intended to do. As of chapter 100 in Japan, Kishiro has become involved in a dispute with his publisher and he has stated that he cannot guarantee that he will publish one more chapter, leaving the whole thing hanging incomplete. This leaves two or three volumes to go in English before we catch up, but you should consider all of this before either starting to invest in this series or continuing to do so.

I have a number of series which are either dormant or in limbo that I do not regret investing in. The story, as far as it went, was worthwhile even without the conclusion. I cannot say that for Last Order. I continued giving Kishiro the benefit of the doubt and kept on buying the next volume hoping that he would straighten out this ever growing catastrophic mess, because I had seen what he had done in the past and the art was so good. However, nine volumes into this ridiculous, time wasting, never ending ZOTT fight has worn out my patience. Add to this the fact that Alita is barely or not in volumes 8, 9, 11, and 13 at all, which is about 30% of the whole bleeding series, and that's pretty much a show stopper for me. It is obvious that all of this other stuff is basically an excuse to extend the length of a series that should have already come to an end. The story has completely lost its focus, both on its main character and plot. I wonder if this dispute with his publisher, which is essentially over changing three occurrences of a word that means "crazy," has not been the excuse Kishiro needed to either buy time to figure out what he is doing and how to rescue his golden goose or is it to just ditch it while he can and move on to a new property that isn't so lost and caving in on itself.

Look at how glad people were with volume ten: five stars across the board. Why? Because they were so sick of the filler and were so happy that Alita was back. They thought this might actually start going somewhere. Too bad it doesn't. I should have given up on this four volumes ago, but kept on under false hope. Add all of the above together and I think that you can safely conclude that unless you are absolutely crazy about Kishiro's art, there is little reason to buy into or continue this series. If you do, the best way to approach it is as a series called "Kishiro's Eternal Cyborg Battle" in which a character from one of his previous manga makes an occasional appearance. What a shame; Alita was such a great character and deserved far more than this. When I want more Alita, I will go back to the original, which I collected in comic book form in the Eighties. As far as I'm concerned, Part 8 Number 9 is the real conclusion of this story, and Last Order is nothing but some nightmare Alita had while in the regeneration bulb before Figure released her. That is about the most charitable thing that can be said for the directionless, continuing to stall, pothole that Last Order has become.

The older Battle Angel series is what got me started on Manga and undoubtably it will end it. The art was fantastic, the story incredible and the various nods to actual scientific reasearch were all refreshing. Most of all, the characters were undeniably interesting. Especially Alita.

And that is why I picked up Last Order. As a veteran, I have to say that Alita is back! This story does all the justice of the first series and adds quite a bit to it.

But it is getting a 4 instead of a five because not only is the book printed in the rather difficult to get used to Magna form(its backwards folks) but I also felt these books focused just a little too much on the violence rather than the story. In the first series, teh violence was built into the story. Here, it seems the story is...you guessed it! Built into the violence. Not entirely a bad thing, just a little less fun overall.

I'm a big fan of Alita, I own all the books, including the first series before last order. It was a wise idea to continue the story of Alita, sadly the look of Alita has changed drastically in the last order series.
The environment, robot enemies, etc. are still very good but Alita is drawn now in a simpler way. In the first series Alita was drawn extremely real and incredibly expresive, something I had never seen before in any comic.
But in the last order series she looks much less expresive and you could see Kishiro has invested less time drawing her, I see this as a huge dissapointment, if you go throught the fist series and then jump to the last order series, you will easily notice this difference. I don't like that, it's a big let down.

Yup - this new volume of Battle Angel is more violent than anything, and doesn't really explain all the mechanics of just how Alita came to be in Tiphares, and what is going on.

But given that Alita herself only just became conscious of being on Tiphares, of the city itself being strewn into chaos, should the reader really expect all the explanations to come in one volume? The Battle Angel world is unfathomably large and complex, and I think it is appropriate that Mr. Kishiro has held off on these details until Alita & co's arrival in Ketheres in Volume 3.

Readers who find this and the second volume a bit lacking in storyline will be duly rewarded for sticking in there at volume 3 - as Mr. Kishiro opens up a whole new universe full of interplanetary politics, class disparity and a bit of political commentary on current day events, if one looks hard enough.

GUNNM is great, as always, but Viz's translation of this continuation is even worse than that of the original, if that's possible. The belligerent clone should not say "shucks" when she asks permission to kill her employer.

This is definitely a collectors item, but is it worth collecting? If you want Alita to last forever (which I do), then sort of. The print quality is great, like the paperbacks, but without the covers being uniform, it's almost pointless to collect them.

To clarify this, I just want to let everyone know this is not about the story, art, etc, just the binding/printing.

The book is the same size as the trade paperbacks are. It is in hardcover, but the pages were trimmed without the actual art being trimmed; which means some of the art gets cut off at the edges. The artwork/words also seem to sink into the middle of the book's spine (the bleed) if they get to close.

The print quality is fine, and the logos and identifying marks are all here, but the cover image is unforgivably poor. The colors are so dull, there are white specks in Alita's hair, and the image is not nearly as sharp as it should be.