What once was an interesting sci-fi look at a class war has turned into a tournament fighter. Amazing what not paying attention to a series in over a decade can do.
Creative Staff
Story and Art: Yukito Kishiro
Translation/Adaptation: Fred Burke
What They Say
Despite all the political intrigue and personal vendettas, the ultra-violent, often fatal Zenith of Things Tournament limps to the finals. And now the competitors have decided to face off without any annoying rules or regulations…
Come watch Alita vs. Toji, Sechs vs. Zekka, and Zazie vs. Rakan! Meanwhile, the Jovian teams plots to take back their wormhole.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
We’ve reached the finals of the Zenith of Things tournament, with Alita, Sechs, and Zazie on one side, and Rakan, Toji, and Zekka on the other. With enough scores to be settled between all of them, they all agree to ignore the rules of the tournament and face off in a series of one-on-one fights, with whomever surviving being declared the winner. Alita squares off with Toji, Sechs takes on Zekka, and Zazie points her weapons towards Rakan. Alita seems to have an advantage against Toji, as does Zekka with Sechs, but Zazie and Rakan look to be about even. The question is whether or not all is as it seems.
This is the first volume of Last Order that I have read. In fact, the only experience I have had with Battle Angel Alita prior to this is the Battle Angel OVA from the early 90s that I probably haven’t seen in fifteen years. But I remember really liking what I saw in the anime, so I was interested to see what the manga had to offer. To that end, I was disappointed to see that Battle Angel Alita had been turned into a shonen tournament fighter.
The anime I remember tells the story of dystopian class warfare between land dwellers forced to scrape a meager existence and the elite who live in a highly technological city in the sky, with Alita (a cyborg construct of the elite fighting for those below) caught in between. That was a fascinating story. Sure, the anime was only two episodes and couldn’t really get into it in any real depth, but the idea was sound. But by this point in the manga, that story is long gone, and at least at this point, it’s turned into a tournament fighter. Even at the best of times, I’m not a huge fan of tournament fighters. Considering what I was expecting out of this volume, I wouldn’t say this was the best of times.
Still, as a tournament fighter, it looks to be decent. There’s some good action and intrigue through the entire volume, and it is all well portrayed on the page. Obviously, having not read any of the previous volumes, I was missing a lot of context here, but I was able to follow the fighting and the logic fairly well. There seems to be an amusing side-story too with a whole fleet of computers in space who are monitoring Alita for some reason. I couldn’t glean their entire purpose, but their interactions were pretty funny.
In Summary
I’m not big into tournament fighters, so I was disappointed to dip into the Alita universe here and see that it has devolved into that. If you have been following Battle Angel Alita all of this time, though (or if you like tournament fighters), then I don’t see a reason why you wouldn’t enjoy this volume. The action and dialogue are decent, and the abilities of the various fighters are neat (not to mention follow along in the nonsensical tradition of most fighter powers). It might not have entirely been my cup of tea, but I know plenty of people would find this entertaining.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: October 11th, 2011
MSRP: $9.99
Very intelligent review. I have been following this series from the start and it only recently became a tourney thing (by recently I mean the past ten volumes or so). Any of the original 9 in the series and the first several volumes of Last Order are all about what you gleaned from the anime, but much more in depth and a helluva lot of fun to read and think on. The tournament just ended recently and the plot should pick back up again.