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Battle Angel Alita : Last Order : Rebirth

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Hi! Incoming rant. This is how I understand things to have happened, forgive me, I have probably got all kinds of things wrong. Please correct me if you disagree. :)

Yeah, so I've probably been openly critical of Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, I loved the original series so much but the renewal just turned into a churn of what wasn't great about the the series in the first place, there was no sense of place, development, of things even happening or mattering... yeah, I gave up on Last Order a long time ago. It got pretty bad. The series decended into inexhaustable fights, fights that lasted what seemed like YEARS, with no change. My favourite things about the original series was that Alita's life went on, that each book was just a snapshot of the interesting bits, the bits that shook her world and changed her life. Last Order was a moment-to-moment chronicle of who was going to be punched in the face that week. Alita ended up not even being in it most of time. The series gets more and more extreme and irrelevant, I'm not even going to describe how weird it got, but shit man, it got low, reaaalllly low. At this point naturally I'm not paying for it, I'm not taking up valuable bookcase space with it, I'm downloading fan translations and being glad that trees didn't die for it. Then there was an announcement, that Yukito Kishiro was quitting the series because the editors wouldn't allow the use of the word "psycho". He wanted to push harder than they would allow, so he left the magazine and went to rival magazine Evening to continue his story. I didn't want him to push harder, I wanted him to calm the hell down and jsut tell me a story like he used to. That's it!

So, yeah. Kishiro hit Evening (a rival magazine), and I read some of the fan translated issues online the other week, on a whim, just to see what the guy was up to. And wow, I'm loving this. He seems to be pulling int the threads of Alita 2.0 into the old world he created, but still keeping it as something else. Alita herself seems to be transitioning from this crazy world she used to be in, back to the dusty grubby place she came from. It's weird and exciting to read. She's in limbo; the characters from the original series are now wondering where she went; the Last Order characters are still in the series but somehow tied in again with the original storyline.. She's not here! The world is reordering itself without her. The CG art style is gone, it looks more like "Angel Of Death" than it does Last Order. It feels like Last Order happened, but that it's some kinda crazy dream and that this, what's happening now, is what REALLY happened. More has happened in the last 3 issues than I can even remember of the last 5 volumes of Last Order. It's awesome! :D

Then the fan translations were pulled on request by the new publisher, so I don't know how it's going now, I have no way to know. Hopefully this means we can look forward to some awesome, timely officially translated trades in the future. And that my favourite manga is back with all the heart and blood and brains that it started with! :D But yeah, all I can say really is that a) if you're a fan of the original series and hated what the second part became, get online and check out the fan translations of the last 5 ish episodes. b) Fan translation allowed this to happen for me. As much as I've been reading these comics for nothing, I also wouldn't know about the change otherwise. I haven't bought Last Order for years because it's been diabolical. So yeah, thanks fan translation guys, you've given me the opportunity to check out the latest comics and they're awesome, thank you! c) I will absolutely be supporting this comic in print (or digitally!) as soon as the official translations get past the shit bits. The new stuff is brilliant. But I am not paying for the shit bits, I respect trees too much. d) I am completely bemused as to what caused all this in the first place. Is the editorial system so fucked up that a great comic with heart and soul can be so degenerated? The speed at which the series seems to have bounced back would depress me if I wasn't so thrilled that it had simply happened, how much cool shit could we have had over the last X years? Yukito Kishiro could have been making GOOD comics all this time, you dickheads.

ANYWAY, this brings me to the artwork, which is basically what I irresistably wanted to draw once I got to the end of the fan transtlated online stuff. I messed up Alita's jawline really bad, but hey, this is basically a self indulgent diary entry, let's be honest. XD I'm really excited about the future of this. You're off the leash Yukito! What have you got in store for us? I'm so excited to see it! :D :D
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ubergally's avatar
wow, this is so cool! I really like how you added the other characters!! :D