Battle Angel Alita: Last Order 14

It’s more like “Lost Order.” Volume 13 of this series came out way back in June.

I’ve mentioned this before, but Viz seriously tampers with the patience and, frankly, loyalty of fans of Yukito Kishiro’s epic tale. With seven months between English-language editions, we’ll never see the conclusion … or by then, we won’t have the mental faculties to comprehend what’s going on.

Sigh.

In any case, volume 14 of Alita’s/Gally’s/Yoko’s excellent adventure — it really is one long tale, filled with honor, horror, bravery, humor, fantasy and grit — is set to be published Jan. 11. I love this story and I strongly recommend it.

See some earlier posts on this series here and here, which have links to even earlier posts. (I also suggest reading that first post of mine before starting “Battle Angel,” as it fills in a lot of the back story.)

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order Vol. 13, Part 3

Though Viz Media has been releasing the Battle Angel Alita and the Battle Angel Alita: Last Order series in a tiny format, Yukito Kishiro has managed to cram true art into those small boxes.

In fact, his art work can be magnificent. I always think of that drawing of Alita on top a Space Needle-like building, overlooking the Scrapyard below — an image writer-director James Cameron copied for his “Dark Angel” TV program.

In the most recent edition of Last Order, Kishiro lays out one of his most shocking scenes. In the first chapter of volume 13, we are shown the bestial Homme du Feu, as he tries to sort out his feelings for the gorgeous Olympe, his combat instructor and the only creature who’s ever shown him kindness. As the panels progress, and he recounts “a desire that was my torment,” the boxes themselves become angular, the type grows larger.

… Then a two-page tableau of surprising horror. I’ve been reading Kishiro for years, and I did not see this coming:

The giant crushing paw anchoring the right foreground, the small piercing white pupil-less eyes in the upper left, the dagger teeth and the destruction brought down on Olympe.

And then things get even worse.

Kishiro can turn scenes of mad violence into beauty. And does, often. It’s a rare and powerful skill.

See my earlier posts on volume 13 here and here.

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order Vol. 13, Part 2

I noted in part 1 of my posts on Battle Angel Alita: Last Order Vol. 13 that the main character, Alita, doesn’t turn up until near the end of this book, and then merely for a few panels. She’s only an observer here.

But Yukito Kishiro’s years-long series often takes side trips, exploring some incidental character’s at first seemingly minor backstory. As we follow these offshoots, we see how they affect the main plot, or enrich our understanding of why the people in Kishiro’s morality tales act as they do. In all cases, they enhance our appreciation for the cartoonist’s skills as storyteller and artist … and of humanity itself.

In the “Last Order” series, he’s told of an angry teen who became a killer; of a one-time space hero, worshipped by many, who becomes a dictator; of a nursery school and its sponsorship of a team of karate warriors; of a vampire who fought to save the human race and support King Arthur … and later do battle with Alita.

Indeed, the whole “Last Order” storyline is a branch from Kishiro’s original Battle Angel Alita series. He completed that series, moved on to another, light-hearted title, Aqua Knight. But then he returned to Battle Angel Angel. Starting from approximately four-fifths of the way along in that original story, he began a whole new track. (Which means, yes, he’s changed the happy, hopeful ending in the initial Battle Angel Alita storyline. Things have turned darker, for now. I imagine, though, James Cameron will come up with his own Alita story.)

My next post will rave once again about Kishiro’s art. See my earlier post here, which has links to previous columns about these books.

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order Vol. 13, Part 1

I’m just going to say this up front and be done with it: After Viz Media made us wait eight months for this latest installment of Yukito Kishiro’s Gunnm series — a decade after its publication in Japan, according to the copyright page — the main character appears in only a handful of panels. And then only to be seen munching on a fish. (Yes, yes, the title of this edition is “Sans Angel,” so that’s a large clue she’s not going to be making much of an appearance. But still.)

But even without her, there’s still Kishiro’s skill as a storyteller (and of course as an artist). He’s told of other star-crossed lovers — notably Gally, as the series’ protagonist is known in the rest of the world, and Hugo (Yugo). But he pulls it off again, with a fatal, too-passionate-for-life twist. It’s giving little away to mention “Sans Angel’s” key actor, Homme du Feu, a genetically engineered warrior-werewolf monster directed by the military industrial complex of Kishiro’s dense worlds, is unsure if he wants to eat his Farrah Fawcett-like combat instructor or make love to her.

As with so many of the great Battle Angel Alita love stories, this one is heart-breakingly sad, absurdly funny, repulsive, tragic and ultimately noble.

More on this book. See my earlier posts on this series here (the story of volume 12), here (the art of volume 12) and here (on Viz’s agonizing release schedule).
My first post on the Battle Angel Alita: Last Order/Gunnm books can be seen here: Reading this will help explain a lot in Kirshiro’s superb, dense, unparalleled series.

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order Vol. 13

Viz Media finally — finally — has released the next installment in the Battle Angel Alita: Last Order series (known as Gunnm in the rest of the world). The last English-language edition, volume 12, came out in October 2009; volume 13 won’t be published until January 2011.

The delays on this book are outrageous. There’s such a lengthy gap between editions of this continuing storyline I frankly can’t recall what the heck is going on. And that’s sad as Yukito Kishiro’s years-long tale of cyborgs, sports, class struggle and outer-space mayhem has been pretty great. The art, in addition, is superb. (See my very first post on Gunnm here.)

When I asked a Viz representative at the American Library Association conference in Chicago last summer about these massive release gaps, he hesitated, then offered that Viz was current with publication of the story’s serialization in Japan.

I really think he was guessing.

See my posts here on volume 12’s story and here on the art. To come: a review of volume 13 — after I go back to reread volumes 11 and 12. Grrr ….

Battle Angel Alita Last Order 12 — The Story

On one level, the ongoing story for Battle Angel Alita: Last Order is pretty simple: Alita and her team are fighting their way up the table to win the Zenith of Things Tournament. The grand prize has changed a few times over the course of this long tale, but in volume 12, released in America two weeks ago, it became sovereignty over heavenly Tiphares and the slums of the Scrapyard below for the winners.

But this years-long Gunnm tale has seen countless twists —enemies became allies, allies were torn asunder, huge battles were mounted, individuals fought for honor — with backstories and unexpected side trips all over the place. The adventures have been powerful, thrilling, tragic and sometimes even pretty funny.

And there’s a lot of talk, much of it about free will and destiny (and sometimes about flan). By volume 12, Alita has grown to womanhood (with, for some reason yet to be explained, a tail), but there’s a jarring recent development — cyborg Alita has discovered that, somewhere along the way, her brain was replaced with a bio-chip. So her soul-shredding question: Is she still truly human?

Alita is fighting to win the ZOTT and free Tiphares and the Scrapyard. But she also is struggling to understand her own destiny. In the final panels, as Alita appears to be calmly floating in a graceful cartwheel, she wonders: “I feel as if I’m falling from a great height … in a curious state of suspension and deep loneliness …. If I’m moving faster, accelerating in this descent … what awaits me at the end?”

I posted a preview story on this book’s release, with background on the character and story, in August.

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order — The Art

If I have one complaint about the excellent Battle Angel Alita: Last Order series, it’s the size: Viz Media publishes the books in tiny paperback proportion that does a disservice to Yukito Kishiro’s marvelous art. (See my earlier post, “Alita Returns in October.”)

In France, the earlier books in his Gunnm series were printed bande dessinée style, in a 10-by-seven-inch format. Those giant pages gave space to Kishiro’s magnificently detailed drawings. (The one image that immediately comes to mind is that of the tiny heroine, Alita — or Gally, as she’s called in the Japanese and French versions — standing high above the city atop a Space Needle-like structure … an image James Cameron “borrowed” for his Dark Angel TV series, before he announced his intention to make a Battle Angel Alita movie.)

The Viz versions sometimes require the reader to look and look again to take in everything that’s going on in the panels, some only one and a half by two inches big. That’s especially the case in volume 12, just released last week in America, which features a battle royale among hundreds of would-be karate competitors in a giant sports event, ZOTT, the Zenith of Things Tournament.

Think how breathtaking the artist’s drawing of the repair work being done to the outer space ZOTT arena would look, or his rendering of Toji’s vision of Planet Karate, if given more room in this edition.

Kirshiro’s drawings are often complicated, but so, too, are the Gunnm stories. More in the next post ….

Alita Returns in October

The 12th installment of what’s being called in the United States Battle Angel Alita: Last Order will be out in October. If you’ve not been following Yukito Kishiro’s decades-long story of Gally (renamed, by some marketing person, no doubt, as Alita for English editions), which started in the Gunnm series, you’re missing one of the most breath-taking stories ever — in sequential art, in graphic novels, in all story-telling.

Gunnm (pronounced “gun-moo,” Japanese for “little gun”) concerns Gally/Alita, a female cyborg found in a trash heap and brought back to life by Doc Ido. As Gally grows up, and slowly discovers more about her super powers, her own questionable past as well as her purpose, she meets, loves and fights all manner of good and evil. But no enemy is truly all bad, and no ally is completely trustworthy.

The drawing is exquisite — the men are handsome and comic-looking, the women can be gorgeous and grotesque; tableaus are beautiful in their peace, shocking in their violence. Oh, have no doubt: Kishiro’s future world is filled with carnage, both in its sports, in which Gally ultimately becomes a participant, and its squalid everyday affairs. Lots of characters die, and almost always messily. Shot, blown up, chopped into pieces, crushed, smooshed against walls, dropped from tall buildings. Life here isn’t ever safe for anyone.

And yet the stories can be funny and at other times so touching as to break your heart. In Angel’s Ascension, arch nemesis Professor Desty (note: not “Destiny,” but close) Nova tricks Gally by entering her dreams, where he weaves a long fiction in which the two are devoted friends. He succeeds in fooling the young girl into being unaware of her own powers, but in one scene we realize he has trapped himself, as well: The two are sitting on a rooftop, watching the skyline and blowing soap bubbles, when Gally casually asks if he’s ever been in love. Nova thinks about it. “If one can truly believe in happiness, one can only have this prayer,” he ultimately replies, putting a protective arm across her shoulder. “Let this moment last forever.” Wonderful stuff.

Kishiro finished the Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita stories in the 1990s and had moved on to other ideas. But he was pulled back to Gally and, instead of picking up the tale where he’d left off, he started a new storyline, branching off the main Gunnm story just shy of its (I think) marvelous conclusion. With the Last Order series, he is creating a new ending for Gally and her friends and enemies, as well as a new destiny — not just for her but for all humankind.