Battle Angel Alita Last Order Vol13 [Paperback]

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 volume after volume of both endless pointless battles and 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 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 this directionless, continuing to stall, pothole that Last Order has become.

For all who don't know, "Sans Angel" is Old-English/Latin for "Without Angel". This is another volume that focuses mostly on action, but actually has a very touching, if short lived, love story between a Gynoid (translated "android" here, but it is gynoid in the original Japanese) named Olympe, and a beast of a man, Homme De Fu, AKA Ygrec, made by the Genetic Designer after Zekka's DNA.

This volume is all about Karatekas verses the Seeded Venus team. I think Alita gets one line in the whole volume.

First off, I have to say the artwork in this volume is the best I have seen in any of the Last Order volumes. I don't say that lightly. The story, like I said, is light, but very sweet. Ygrec, on the Venus team, is fighting for the freedom of the Gynoid/Android he loves. He has a desire to "devour" Olympe, but he cannot say why. This is likely a metaphor for pent-up sexual frustration on his part, but it is clear it is also love.

The beasts (besides Ygrec) of the Venus team are horrifically and amazingly drawn. The battle I didn't find too interesting, but Rakkan the rapist (who attacked Alita in Vol. 12 unsuccessfully) is absolutely hilarious and disturbing! The "booby trap" he gets into is a riot!

There's some nice blood in this volume, something we haven't seen for a while since it's been mostly androids and cyborgs in the past few volumes.

All in all, while the story has nothing to do with Alita, I found it very touching and worthwhile. The fight isn't bad, either, and the violence is right up there with some of Kishiro's better gory scenes.

I gave it 4/5 because the fight is a little boring, and it takes up most of the volume. But I have to recommend this one, it reminded me a little of "Tears of an Angel", from the original Battle Angel Alita series. A little.

Once upon a time I was excited about Battle Angel Alita: Last Order. I liked the idea that one of my favorite Manga characters would have a second chance, and her fans would have a second chance to learn about the far forgotten past of this character. As it turned out, we did get to see some of that, but it has been buried under an avalanche of tedious, repetitive fights by characters who were newly introduced, just to fight each other. The main storyline involving Alita has been ignored or forgotten in favor of telling the history and showing the battles of killer karate cyborgs.

I just can't bring myself to care anymore. I've held on, hoping and hoping that this detour would allow the creator to think of how to end his central story, but it seems that he has become more and more involved with characters that are not Alita, or Lou or Desty Nova or anyone that provides a link to the Battle angel series that started this whole thing. It seems like the manga-ka should have created a secondary series to tell about the ZOTT battles if that's what he really wanted to do, but he has instead shoehorned it in, removing what this series was supposed to be about, the title character Alita.

Now I realize that the title of this book is sans angel, meaning without angel, but if that's the case 4 other books in this series should have also had that title. And as far as the combat, I can't tell if I am reading a different battle or more of the same battle that started 8 books ago. The battles all seem to go the same way with the same resolutions, and a new challenger stepping in. It seems the typical formula for most shonen manga, but I had hoped not for this one.