Gunnm last order/Battle angel alita last order

[scav]

I consider this manga as the best seinen ever and it doesn't even have a thread here



to avoid confusion first of all
Gunnm or battle Angel Alita = first part
Gunnm last order or battle Angel Alita last order = sequel


Battle Angel Alita and Battle Angel Alita: Last Order is one of the great classics of modern manga. First published in Shueisha's Business Jump from 1990-1995, and re-serialized in 2001 to now, Battle Angel tells the story of a scrappy young cyborg woman named Alita (Gally to the Japanese), whose unconscious torso is found one day in a mountain of garbage in polluted, dystopian urban wasteland of a city called "The Scrapyard", by a cyber-doctor named Daisuke Ido. Ido reassembles her and she awakens with no memory of her past, and he names her "Alita" and takes her under his wing almost as a surrogate father.

Yet Ido has a dark secret: by day he is the friendly local cyber-doctor, treating cyborg illnesses, but by night he moonlights as a hardened bounty hunter. One day, when Alita sneaks out to follow him, he is threatened with mortal danger, awakening within her memories of an ancient and powerful martial art -- Panzerkunst -- a fighting style developed specifically for cyborgs.

Thus begins the long saga of Alita's quest to remember her past, even as she constantly strives, from one battle to the next, to discover herself as a person living in the present day to day struggles of a dark and nihilistic future existence, and to reify her own future destiny. Along the way, of course, is a parade of delightfully gory hyper violence, gloriously-drawn post-apocalyptic future wastelands, shiny futuristic tech, tons of little footnotes drawn from cutting-edge modern science and literate cultural references, and a curiously quirky sense of dark humour.

Truly, Battle Angel and the lighter, funnier, less brooding sequel Last Order, is one of the classics of great sci-fi and fantasy manga, up there with Berserk, Ghost in the Shell and Akira. I, personally, have been reading the books since I was in high school, so it occupies a special place in my heart (as well as my bookshelf!) that no other manga does, except for Hayao Miyazaki's epic sci-fi masterpiece Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind.

Last Order has come back full-force from a hiatus caused by disagreements between Yukito Kishiro and his publisher, and is currently coming out monthly, serialized in Kodansha's Evening magazine.

[jamesem92]

I haven't yet finished the first BAA, but I have to agree it's one of the best I've ever read (if not the best so far!).
I'm looking forward to reading more of it and starting Last order, although I had no idea it was more light hearted (and find it tough to imagine), I'm taking it you think it works well?

[scav]

haha last order is really lighter than the sequel but at some parts only. Overall it stay a dark manga.