 | | ▪ | RELEASED BY: | | VIZ MEDIA | | | ▪ | AUTHOR / ART: | | YUKIHITO KISHIRO | | | ▪ | FORMAT: | | JAPANESE / B&W | | | ▪ | PAGES: | | 200 | | | ▪ | RATING: | | OT | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 04/14/2009 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 04/09/2009 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | SCOTT CAMPBELL |
Battle Angel Alita: Last Order is the second part of a series that is a sophisticated science fiction tale packed with action, black humour, and philosophical, historical, and cultural references. Master manga creator Yukito Kishiro returns, accompanied by his most celebrated character, cyborg sweetheart Battle Angel Alita. Meet Kishiro's latest bevy of bizarre and tormented characters and catch up with your favourite foes in the continuing series! In volume eleven, the intensity of Alita’s dire situation comes to the forefront of the story. What is Alita's fate? A doomed opponent in battle with Sechs may reveal some clues. Meanwhile, senseis and students fight for supremacy. Their mystical techniques can slay a tiger and even a dragon. But moves of such power may only be used against an opponent who is truly worthy. This series continues to impress with its many positive attributes, from great art to innovative characters, and everything in-between. Alita is just a good series – most people with a certain level of maturity would be able to get something from it because it is such a well-rounded piece of work. Battle Angel Alita is a slice of post-apocalyptic cyber-punk at its best – if you liked classics like Akira or anything from the “Blame!” universe, you will love this series even more than the average manga reader. Even if you haven’t seen or liked those other series though, there is STILL a very good chance you will enjoy Battle Angel Alita. The first series was fantastic, and it is wonderful that there is a second series still going like this so that we can continue to enjoy her endeavours and conflicts. There’s nothing quite like a truly involving story, and Battle Angel Alita has always been just that. The story is of course the important part that really holds it all together, but the art is what sells us in the beginning – and Alita sells itself well! The visuals are varied, unique, and imaginative throughout the series – it doesn’t stop or tire. Everything from the characters, to the settings, to the backgrounds are done up in painstaking detail that will consume your eyeballs and spit them back out with more of a sheen than you could give them with Turtle Wax (if there’s any confusion, that’s intended to sound like a good thing because it is). The mechanical designs of things, and all that make Battle Angel Alita as cyber-punk as it is, are hugely enjoyable and are a big part of what makes the series so special. It’s like how Star Wars has a lot of innovative characters and mechanical things that only exist in that “universe” that it has created for itself – Battle Angel Alita has much the same feel in that it has a big universe created all around it and lets you experience something so terribly unique from what we know in our own world. It’s imagination like that which draws a reader in and refuses to let them go – that’s the kind of offer I’d like not to be able to refuse myself! Knowing a bit about the author is sometimes an interesting piece of information in relation to understanding where the story/art has come from. At 17, Yukito Kishiro won one of Shueisha's manga contests, but opted to go onto art school instead of ploughing straight into the manga industry. Yukito Kishiro is also the author of Ashen Victor, Aqua Knight, and Battle Angel Alita (the original series).
IN SUMMARY:
Battle Angel Alita: Last Order is a fantastic addition to the original story arc. The art is just as amazing, and the plethora of new characters mixed with the old is much appreciated. Science fiction fans and post-apocalyptic genre fans will love this series to death – just try not to take it THAT seriously! |
