Battle Angel Alita

Battle Angel Alita
File:BAA 1 cover.jpg
Genre	Cyberpunk, Splatterpunk
Manga
Written by	Yukito Kishiro
Published by	Shueisha

Battle Angel Alita, known as GUNNM (銃夢, lit. jū "gun" mu "dream", creatively read as ガンム ganmu) in Japan, is a manga series created by Yukito Kishiro in 1991 and published in Shueisha's Business Jump magazine. The title translates to "Gun Dream", and two of the nine-volume comics were adapted into two anime original video animation episodes titled Battle Angel for North American release by ADV Films and the UK and Australian release by Manga Entertainment. Manga Entertainment also dubbed Battle Angel Alita into English. The manga series is continued in Battle Angel Alita: Last Order.

Story

Battle Angel Alita tells the story of Gally (Alita in the American version), an amnesiac female cyborg. This cyborg's intact head and upper torso are found in a state of suspended animation by the cybermedic expert Daisuke Ido while he is out searching for useful scrap. Amazed by his discovery, Ido quickly returns home and works to revive her. Upon finding that the girl has lost her memory, Ido names her Alita, the name of his recently deceased cat.

The rebuilt Alita soon discovers that she possesses instinctive knowledge of the legendary Martian martial art Panzer Kunst, although she has no other memories of her previous life. Alita must learn to navigate, exist, and fight in the Scrapyard, whose inhabitants themselves live in the shadow of the tantalizingly close floating city, Tiphares. Her journeys take Alita across the Scrapyard and surrounding areas, as she tries to recall more of her past.

Characters

Main article: List of Characters in Battle Angel Alita

Battle Angel Alita features a diverse cast of characters, many of whom shift in and out of focus as the story progresses. Some are never to be seen again following the conclusion of a story arc, while others make recurring appearances. The one character who remains a constant throughout is Alita, the protagonist and title character, a young cyborg with amnesia struggling to uncover her forgotten past through the only thing she remembers from it: by fighting. Early on in the story, Daisuke Ido, a bounty-hunting cybernetic doctor who finds and revives Alita plays a major role as well, but midway through the manga he becomes marginalized as focus begins to increasingly shift to Desty Nova, an eccentric nanotechnology scientist who has fled from Tiphares. Nova is the mastermind behind many of the enemies and trials that Alita faces, but does not make an actual appearance until more than two years into the story, although he is alluded to early on. Finally, Kaos, Desty Nova's son, a frail and troubled radio DJ with psychometric powers, also begins to play a crucial role after he comes in contact with Alita. He broadcasts his popular radio show from the wastelands outside the Scrapyard, staying away from the increasing conflict between Tiphares and the rebel army Barjack.

Setting

Battle Angel Alita takes place in a highly futuristic dystopian world, reflected in its full Japanese title GUNNM: Hyper Future Vision. Besides renaming Gally to Alita, the North American version of the manga also changed the city of Salem to Tiphares, after Tiferet. Since Kishiro also used the name Jeru for the facility atop Salem, Jeru was renamed Ketheres in the translation, after Keter. To further develop the Biblical theme in the original series, Salem's main computer was named Melchizedek, "the king of Salem" and "priest to the Most High God" .

Tiphares

Tiphares (Zalem or Salem) is a floating city, suspended from space on a pillar construct and anchored to the ground by huge cables, which also serve as supply tubes. These tubes are extremely durable, able to withstand even Den's sword. Tiphares was a city meant to house individuals specially conditioned for the rigors of space travel. However, after the Terraforming Wars, centered around the Levathan class ships, Tiphares' connection to the surface was severed. When LADDER was established, Tiphares and its citizens were used as part of a genetic experiment, and as a source of human brains.

The Scrapyard

The Scrapyard is a sprawling expanse of buildings and other structures centered around a massive scrap heap directly below Tiphares. The mountain of garbage was once the tower that connected to Tiphares. Now, the heap consists of garbage ejected from the floating city of Tiphares. Outside the Scrapyard is desert, with some oasis-like locations called Farm Factories for resource production.

The Scrapyard reflects the cyberpunk ethos, as well as Kishiro's portrayal of a society without values. Many inhabitants became cyborgs working for the factories, some are victims of involuntary street surgery, while others use cybernetics to enhance their physical abilities. Firearms are outlawed; non-projectile weapons are permitted, and exist in great variety. Fights erupt spontaneously on the streets. Violent criminals lurk in shadowy alleyways and through the tremendous extent of the sewers. Public entertainment is of a violent nature; Motorball's fusion of racing gladiatorial combat is a prime example. These are condoned by the factory to pacify and distract the denizens of the Scrapyard. Interestingly, these are broadcast to Tiphares as well suggesting a darker nature to the Tiphareans. This becomes more evident in Last Order during the violence that follows Nova's public announcement of the secret of the Tiphareans. At that point, Casey Roscoe's men even talk of killing children for sport.

The only law is Factory Law: rules contrived to protect Tipharean interests in food and basic resources that are supplied from the factories below. For example, air travel within close proximity to Tiphares (this includes both man made objects and animal life) is prohibited. Anything that breaches this particular law is shot down by the city's defense system. For this reason, there are no birds in the Scrapyard. Bounty hunters called "hunter-warriors" are the enforcers of Factory Law in the Scrapyard, since there is no actual police force.

Geographical setting

The series seems to take place in the United States. In the map presented in the eighth volume, the locations and geological formations closely correlate to particular cities. According to this map, the site of the Scrapyard/Tiphares is at Kansas City, Missouri, and the Necropolis is Colorado Springs, Colorado. The surrounding Farm Factories that support Tiphares also correspond to real cities; Farm 21 and Farm 22 are Sweetwater, Texas and Garden City, Kansas respectively. Radio KAOS is at the site of Dallas/Fort Worth. Figure's coastal hometown, Alhambra, is a real place in Southern California, and Desty Nova's Granite Inn is said to have been built out of a military base--assumedly the NORAD main technical facility at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

Time period

Although for the longest time the exact time period of when Battle Angel Alita takes place was a total mystery, it was later revealed that the latest events take place 591 years after the launch of Sputnik 1, which was in 1957. In fact, that is the dating convention used by the characters in the story; years are given as ES (Era Sputnik). Given that it has been about fourteen years since Daisuke Ido discovered Alita in the first graphic novel, that means the entire Battle Angel Alita manga takes place mostly between ES 577 and ES 591, or 2533 and 2547.

Manga

The manga was first published in Shueisha's Business Jump magazine. It was then serialized from 1990 to 1995 in nine tankōbons. In the US, Viz originally released the story in a 25 page comic book, it then followed the same volume format as its Japanese counterpart.

Num	Japanese Name	English Name
1	Gunnm: Rusty Angel	Battle Angel Alita
2	Gunnm: Iron Maiden	Tears of an Angel
3	Gunnm: Killing Angel	Killing Angel
4	Gunnm: Ars Magna	Angel of Victory
5	Gunnm: Lost Sheep	Angel of Redemption
6	Gunnm: Rainmaker	Angel of Death
7	Gunnm: Panzer Bride	Angel of Chaos
8	Gunnm: War Chronicle	Fallen Angel
9	Gunnm: Conquest	Angel's Ascension

• On April 4, 1997 Gunnm the novel was released by JUMP j-BOOKS, a part of the Japanese publisher Shueisha.
• On December 23, 1998 GUNNM Complete Collection, a Japanese special edition, was released in six volumes in a larger B5 format. They contain the original story, but with a different ending accommodating for the continuation of the story in GUNNM: Last Order. Included are also rough sketches, a timeline and the three short stories published earlier as GUNNM: Gaiden.

OVA

Main article: Battle Angel OVA

Film

James Cameron is directing and producing Battle Angel, a live-action adaption of the first three volumes of the manga series. Cameron has plans to make a trilogy if the first film is successful. Alita will be a CG character performed by an actress. Filming will be made with the new digital 3D system Cameron has developed for Avatar, and will also include new devices for interacting between actors, director and the digital characters and environments, such as a real time virtual camera and virtual retinal display technology (VRD).

Video game

• GUNNM: Memories of Mars, an action RPG video game for the PlayStation by Banpresto.

Related works

• GUNNM: Last Order, also known as Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, a continuation published monthly in Ultra Jump.
• GUNNM: Gaiden, a collection of side stories of GUNNM;
• Haisha, also known as Ashen Victor in the United States, a prequel set a decade before the beginning of Gunnm. It primarily tells the story of a Motorball player and it sets the evolution of the game into what it becomes in the main story.

Trivia

• Above the entrance to Ido's workshop, there's a "Max Headroom" sign not unlike those shown on the Max Headroom series.

• There are a few references to Judas Priest in Battle Angel Alita and Last Order.
  • The support character Sechs has the words "Blood Red Skies" and "You won't break me" written on the undersides of his new boots during the ZOTT tournament. This appears to be a clear reference to the song "Blood Red Skies", which seems to mirror themes of struggle in a torn world.

• There are also several references to another rock band, Blue Öyster Cult, scattered throughout the series.
  • The name Desty Nova is quite similar to "Desdinova", a character from Blue Öyster Cult songs.
  • The new body presented to Alita by Nova late in the manga is called the Imaginos, which is also the title track of a Blue Öyster Cult concept album.
  • The character Zapan bears the Blue Öyster Cult logo on his forehead.

• In volume 1, a bottle of liquor named after heavy metal band Heaven's Gate can be seen, same logo and all.

• Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie appears in the first volume among the cyborgs seats in Bar Kansas in the original series.

• "Running Wild" is spray painted in the wall in the Motorball arc of the original series this could refer both to the German band of the same name or to the Judas Priest song from which Rolf Kasparek decided to name his band.

• The character Kaos seems to have been inspired by the protagonist of the concept album Radio K.A.O.S., by Roger Waters. Both are sickly young men with the ability to communicate via radio waves.

• Megadeth's mascot Vic Rattlehead appears in the cyborg audience of the motorball competition.

• In Angel of Victory, the band logos for the Scorpions and Megadeth can be seen on billboards at the beginning of the race in the chapter titled Headbangers Ball.

External links

• Yukito Kishiro's homepage
• Shueisha's Ultra Jump

• Marco's Gunnm FAQ
• The Kudos! List, a collection of pop-culture references within Battle Angel Alita.