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Zekka is such a fun and ridiculous character. The guy not only can thumb-wrestle at supersonic speed, he can also kick your rear end while thumb-wrestling you at the same time, can literally eat plasma balls, and can go supersonic...while standing still. He doesn't have any noble or deep goal; he just wants to wreck poo poo, with his goal being able to destroy a loving planet by himself as the ultimate symbol of manhood. He's a crazy character that oozes personality and charm. You can tell the dude is every ridiculous idea Kushiro had for a fighting manga character rolled up into one package and that Kurshiro loves writing him. I cannot wait to read more about him and his delightfully insane skills. The twist that Alita is actually a bio-chip is interesting. I find that it ties back into the whole idea about what makes us human; it's not what body part is mechanical or not; it's who we are. Alita may technically be an android now, but she's still Alita; bio-chip Alita has Alita's values, ethics, and memories. The only thing that's different is the medium her self is stored in. Unfortunately, Alita put way too much value into her organic brain, making her have a breakdown that basically killed her. Hell, even Super Nova seemed to only care about Alita's brain, ignoring that biochip Alita has tons of KARMATRONIC potential as well because she's exactly the same as brain Alita and has a combo of BAA Alita's memories and new actions she's done in LO. The biochip reveal feels like an asspull at first, but it was hinted at by various characters and it fits Nova's “for the hell of it” MO. What better way to see how Alita's karma works by changing a fundamental biological aspect of her? Alita's resurrection might've been kinda sappy, but I like it. She may think she's only helped a small amount of people and her altruism is self-centered, but her actions have tied many people, good and bad, to her. She is very important, no matter what form her brain is in. Alita dying for good would upset many people that she's affected; Sechs would lose his One True Rival, Koyomi would lose one of the last few people from her childhood, Tiphares would no longer have the cyborg that showed them that surface-dwellers and cyborgs aren't bad, the sacrifices people have made because of and for her would be in vain, and the old Ido would basically be gone forever, as she's the one of the few people that still remembers him well. Plus, with the Fata Morgana, she's inherited the dreams of Arthur Farrell and everyone in the Bradley Shelter, so there's a lot more riding on her than in the past. She's basically the only person that can wrest Arthur's dream from people like Mbadi and put it back on track. Way, way back in BAA volume 1, I noted that Alita was different from everyone else in her behavior and outlook on life. It turns out I was right on the dot, as Caerula gave it the Fata Morgana to her because she was an outsider compared to the rest of the Alitaverse. She's not wrapped up in space politics, actually cares about others, dislikes it when people look down on others, and genuinely tries to do the right thing. Her goals are simple, but that's what makes her the best for having the key to the central computer. I like the two new Novas introduced in this volume. Nova X is funny, crazy, and sees flan as the uniting force that can bring everyone together. His intro was pretty drat funny, what with him managing to convert Tiphares' kids into flan fanatics. However, I'm under no illusion that Nova X wants to save Tiphares and the Scrapyard for the sake of it's people; he just wants all the chaos that happens in the Scrapyard and Tiphares to continue so he can study it for KARAMTRON DYNAMICS. Super Nova, despite his pimpin' look, is pure evil. He's not funny at all and makes BAA Nova look harmless in terms of evil. The dude has the science of breaking people down to a T and seems to think himself as the only true KARMATRON DYNAMICS researcher, as seen when he blew up Porta Nova simply because he said that each Nova now has a different point of view in regards to KARMATRON DYNAMICS research. However, for a studier of KARMATRON DYNAMICS, Super Nova is kinda bad at it; he was willing to sacrifice 20,000 brains in the Incubator for Alita's. Surely their KARMATRONS would be useful for his studies. To me, it feels that the two Novas embody different parts of Desty Nova. Nova X is an extreme version of neutral Nova; loves flan a lot, eccentric as hell, but not the type that would cause the damage that BAA Nova did. Super Nova is more or less the worst parts of antagonist Nova from BAA kicked up to 10 with all of the endearing parts stripped away. I like how Nova himself has become a literal pest in Tiphares. It's so ridiculous that it perfectly fits Nova and what he does. A battalion of Novas wrecking havoc on the surface would be hilarious, though. Speaking of the surface and Tiphares, Mbadi's plan definitely feels like it's confirming my theory that Tiphares and Earth's surface are the remnants of an old experiment that is only continuing to work because nobody in Ketheres nor space bothered to abort it because of what Yoko did. Mbadi seems to have used it as a place to gain more biochips from geniuses to put in his head from the G.E.N.E. Project, but that is over. Like any good dictator, Mbadi sees people as pawns to advance his schemes instead of actual people. It doesn't matter that Tiphares and the Scrapyard have plenty of people with their own lives and dreams in them; what matters is that they're politically inconvenient and need to be removed so that LADDER can do something else in there. Ping Wu's speech near the middle of the volume reminds me a lot of the “not everything is as it seems” point LO has had so far. Wu thought that he was in a time of progress and improvement for humanity, with things like the immortality formula being released and Mbadi seemingly being the hero that'll help lead the future well, but instead the immortality formula made things much worse for people and Mbadi turned into a symbol of all that was wrong with the new order. This volume was very enjoyable, from the plot twists to Zekka's antics. So far, it's one of my favorite ones in LO because it has a good mixture of “oh poo poo!” moments and batshit insane fighting the series is known for. I have one question: can Zekka knit at supersonic speed, or is that a superpower only Elf and Zwolf have?
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Jan 19, 2015 08:04
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closeted republican posted:I have one question: can Zekka knit at supersonic speed, or is that a superpower only Elf and Zwolf have? 
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Jan 19, 2015 08:14
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drat, I totally forgot! I guess Zekka ain't all that.
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Jan 19, 2015 13:42
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closeted republican posted:Zekka is such a fun and ridiculous character. The guy not only can thumb-wrestle at supersonic speed, he can also kick your rear end while thumb-wrestling you at the same time, can literally eat plasma balls, and can go supersonic...while standing still. He doesn't have any noble or deep goal; he just wants to wreck poo poo, with his goal being able to destroy a loving planet by himself as the ultimate symbol of manhood. He's a crazy character that oozes personality and charm. You can tell the dude is every ridiculous idea Kushiro had for a fighting manga character rolled up into one package and that Kurshiro loves writing him. I cannot wait to read more about him and his delightfully insane skills. A man whose motto is "gently caress up anyone who looks at you funny, ride around all over the place on a big bike, get all the bitches and OBLITERATE ALL LIFE IN YOUR PATH" can only be the best of characters.  quote:The twist that Alita is actually a bio-chip is interesting. I find that it ties back into the whole idea about what makes us human; it's not what body part is mechanical or not; it's who we are. Alita may technically be an android now, but she's still Alita; bio-chip Alita has Alita's values, ethics, and memories. The only thing that's different is the medium her self is stored in. Unfortunately, Alita put way too much value into her organic brain, making her have a breakdown that basically killed her. Hell, even Super Nova seemed to only care about Alita's brain, ignoring that biochip Alita has tons of KARMATRONIC potential as well because she's exactly the same as brain Alita and has a combo of BAA Alita's memories and new actions she's done in LO. You kind of have to wonder about that. Is Alita truly the decider of her destiny -- the actor of her karma -- or is she more or less a kind of ordinary, somewhat self-centered girl who just happens to occupy a singularity of fate? Think about it : how many times in the story has Alita's fate not been the result of her own actions, but rather been the beneficiary of good luck? Alita herself so much as said that in volume 8 or 9, that multiple times she would have not survived had it not been for the interventions of others. Ido rescued her from the scrap, Ed protected her from that junkie who wanted to blow her face in with a pipe gun, Lou saved her from AR-2, she blacked out when fighting Toji, and countless other iterations. Does Alita truly have agency in the story, or is she a pawn of all the KARMADYNAMIC POTENTIAL that has converged and built up around her, carried along like a leaf in a river?
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Jan 19, 2015 15:41
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Only science can answer that question. This is why Destiny Nova is the true hero of the story.
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Jan 19, 2015 16:43
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  It also kind of ties into the question that has run throughout the entire story: what does it mean to be human? The overarching thesis in BAA is that "it does not matter what you are, your choices make you human". In volume 10, we see that Alita's faith in this wavers, and leads to her downfall. In Bioshock, Andrew Ryan's mantra is "A man chooses, a slave obeys". But this seems to be a false dichotomy. In other words -- what if that choice is illusory? If Alita is truly the pawn of fate -- the executor of Melchizedek's Last Order -- then it doesn't even matter what choices she makes; her karma is inextricably bound up in events that were set into motion long before she even came into existence, and is unrelated to the question of whether or not she's human. If that is the case then Desty Nova's quest is completely meaningless. What, then, of humanity?
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Jan 19, 2015 16:55
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tonberrytoby posted:Only science can answer that question. This is why Destiny Nova is the true hero of the story. What if Nova and Zekka teamed up? Zekka can make the destruction and Nova can study the resulting KARMATRON interactions. DrSunshine posted:A man whose motto is "gently caress up anyone who looks at you funny, ride around all over the place on a big bike, get all the bitches and OBLITERATE ALL LIFE IN YOUR PATH" can only be the best of characters. The way I look at is that Alita may be independent-thinking and does her own thing, but her actions have caused her to gain many people that have supported her and helped her in times of need over the years. Just by living and doing something, Alita has gained friends. Some just liked her as a person, like Lou and Hugo, while others have had their own motives for being with Alita at first, like Ido wanting to make Alita his waifu, Ed trying to use her a part of a revenge plot against Jashugan, and Sechs originally seeing her as her last obstacle to being an individual. But the end of the day, they all believed in Alita as a person and her skills and have been willing to help her when she was in her time of need, from Lou sacrificing herself to stop AR-2 to jealous Ed believing in Alita by taking the pipe gun's shot. Even though Alita is independent, she's not a hardcore "gently caress EVERYONE THAT ISN'T ME" type you occasionally see of independent people in anime and manga. No man is an island, after all. Of course, by the same token, she's made enemies that otherwise wouldn't have attacked her, like Zapan and Den, but that's just how life is.
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Jan 20, 2015 01:21
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Finished with volume 11. Anomaly is beautiful and is one of the most detailed dick jokes I've ever seen. It's not just “Here's a penis!”, the goddamn thing humps Toji, dick-smacks him, shoots laser semen at him, and straight-up orgasms. Later, Zekka shoves a beer bottle down his penis and makes it look like Anomaly is cumming. poo poo, he even dies by getting his dick punched through because Zekka gave Toji one of the world's most powerful rear end-smacks. Anomaly is so utterly ridiculous at every step that it wraps around to being hilarious. The announcer's and Super Nova's crazy commentary makes it even funnier. I know there are some people that poo poo on Anomaly, but gently caress them, he is beautiful and his own phallic way. Even though they're supposed to be bad, I like the Jovians and how silly they are. They have a huge case of “human man's burden”, despite being literally brains in boxes. Based on their weapons, overkill is not a word in their dictionary. They're small and cute, but seem to fancy themselves as some sort of evil empire that wants to contr-er I mean guide humanity, can censor history books just because of their position in the solar system, seem to have a penchant for evil-sounding speeches and victory songs, and spend all of their time building a ridiculously over-the-top military, complete with legions of battle ships and a goddamn kaiju robot cat powered by a wormhole. They think they're the hottest poo poo in the solar system, but get chumped by a dumbass dude with a mini-version of himself on his shoulder, a plain-jane cyborg with a video game-sized arsenal in her coat, and a short cyborg girl that looks like a teenager. One man manages to wreck two of their state-of-the-art robots alone, and Alita hijacks their murderbot for herself as a sign of how utterly incompetent they are, despite their firepower and advanced technology. Speaking of Jupiter, the fight against Warmen 609 is probably one of my favorite fights in the series so far. All the cool and very clever ways the Space Angels defeated each form made the entire thing very fun to read. Sechs defeating the twister-bot via real-world physics was very cool and reminds me a lot of how Alita used plasma against Makaku back in BAA volume 1. The Berserker trick Zazie used on the floating ship form was extremely smart, a cool callback to BAA volume 5, and explained the Berserker cells, their purpose, and how they're treated in the Alitaverse. Plus, it has Sechs riding a missile like a surf board. That is awesome. After a re-read, I like the little bit about Zekka and his karate rival, and how they both took different paths. The rival actually cultivated his mind beyond its limits like their master said to and became a buddha, while Zekka wallowed in materialism and used his skills to kickstart Murderfest 2500 instead of developing his mind. Buddhism IN SPACE seems pretty silly at first, but it actually makes sense within the Alitaverse. The messages about salvation, waiting for the afterlife, the eventual creation of a paradise ruled by God Himself, and an all-powerful deity that the two major religions of the world right now preach doesn't fit in a world where Earth got wrecked by random chance, everyone is a cyborg, people are self-centered pricks, things just get worse and worse, and quite a few people live forever. Why bother waiting for things like heaven when you can enlighten yourself and cast off the corrupt world? The Buddhist asteroid statues are cool and crazy too! I feel that Sechs has really been mellowing out the past few volumes. He's gone from being only about fighting and killing to caring about others in his own special way while still wanting to fight. In this volume, he seems genuinely happy to see Zazie again, and seems to be quite concerned that Alita hasn't returned, even though he's sure she's alive. Even back in volume 7, he was disgusted by the mass suicide and Whopon's tyranny and spared Zworf even though he easily could've snapped her like a twig. Murdermode Sechs from the first few volumes was fun, but I'm glad to see that he's actually getting some development. I kinda found it heartwarming that two of Alita's rivals, Sechs and Toji, were upset by Nova announcing that Alita was dead. Yoji actually lost his will to fight for a second, while poor Sechs kept resassuring himself that Alita had a plan and was off doing something else. At least Toji managed to tell of Nova about what he considers indomitable to mean as a take that against Nova, which fits Alita very well. It seems to me that I'm reaching the part in LO where everything and everyone goes nuts and insanity prevails. It has a literal dick-bot, Sechs turning fat to defeat a killer robot, and a giant Jovian wearing sumo-wrestler underwear and a robo-cat on his head shilling Jupiter's might. If it's even a bit as amusing as this volume, I'm going to enjoy it. I liked this volume a lot, but for different reasons than ones I've liked a lot in the past. Instead of lots of twists and character development, it had a lot of zany and just plain fun parts that kept me reading just to see insane or cool thing would happen next.
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Jan 20, 2015 09:51
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My favorite part about the dickbot was that it was sent as a message from Mercury, which has been turned into a globe of literal Grey Goo, that they're semisentient nanomachines, not just mindless all-devouring things.
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Jan 20, 2015 10:41
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I love how Sechs basically becomes a murderous, cyborg Luffy in the later volumes. And you're right, actually, about just the level of insanity going up to 11 after the tenth volume or so. The Alitaverse always had this twisted absurdist humor to it, but it tended to be kind of in the background most of the time until about, oh, I'd say when the Starship Cult was introduced.
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Jan 20, 2015 15:09
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My absolute favorite part about the Alitaverse, aside from the incredible artwork, is that humanity has evolved in a short span of time to be incredibly inhuman in many cases. The Jovians are formerly human robots looking to expunge every aspect of filthy biologicalness, the Venusians are basically biological gestalts, the majority of other humans are either brain-chips controlling a meat mecha(of sorts), brains controlling an ACTUAL mecha(cyborgs), immortals thanks to technology, or simply unmodified humans. The variety of humanity in the Alitaverse is pretty staggering, it's great.
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Jan 20, 2015 16:02
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closeted republican posted:It seems to me that I'm reaching the part in LO where everything and everyone goes nuts and insanity prevails. It has a literal dick-bot, Sechs turning fat to defeat a killer robot, and a giant Jovian wearing sumo-wrestler underwear and a robo-cat on his head shilling Jupiter's might. If it's even a bit as amusing as this volume, I'm going to enjoy it. You're correct, it gets completely bonkers from here on out. You're also correct that the Jovians are hilarious. As for Alita's brainchip, Nova was saying from the very beginning of the series that the box held one of the most important objects to humanity (or something) and to not damage it. It wasn't until later on that we find out there's a brain inside and later still that we find out it was Alita's brain, but it all hooks together. Now, it could have been a literary device where he decided later on what to have in the box and whose brain it is, but it seems like the sort of plot point he would use. Contemplating the essence of humanity has always been one of, if not THE, main point of the series, so having the main character (as opposed to Ido, Nova, Sechs, etc) go through the emotional turmoil of discovering that you're a copy and what that means for "you" is important.
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Jan 20, 2015 17:22
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Captain Invictus posted:My absolute favorite part about the Alitaverse, aside from the incredible artwork, is that humanity has evolved in a short span of time to be incredibly inhuman in many cases. The Jovians are formerly human robots looking to expunge every aspect of filthy biologicalness, the Venusians are basically biological gestalts, the majority of other humans are either brain-chips controlling a meat mecha(of sorts), brains controlling an ACTUAL mecha(cyborgs), immortals thanks to technology, or simply unmodified humans. The variety of humanity in the Alitaverse is pretty staggering, it's great. Yeah the fact that humanity still has this huge diverse interesting solar system despite incredible hardship and constant war and genocidal actions is one of my favourite parts of Alita and wish that there was some sort of side story setup that let us see more of Jupiter and Venus and maybe the rest of Earth that isnt the continental US.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:19
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I'd like to see a side-story epilogue about the organic Alita and Figure after LO, if Kishiro ever takes a detour from CoMW. It'd be nice, just as a short story, to see Alita finally go to Alhambra with Figure and meet all the folks, maybe go fishing or teaching folks martial arts on the beach, and having a big wedding with Ido and Kaos and Koyomi and the dudes from Bar Kansas and everyone there! It'd be the most  thing.v- Good idea! -v DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Jan 21, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 18:37
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That's from the end of the series, so you might want to put that in spoilers for c-republican. But yeah, I agree. I'm also interested to see how brain-Alita will react if/when she finds out what chip-Alita has been up to. She's still the person she was at the end of BAA, so I'm wondering if she'll really be able to settle down or if she'll try to track down chip-Alita.
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Jan 20, 2015 22:04
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Zenzirouj posted:That's from the end of the series, so you might want to put that in spoilers for c-republican. But yeah, I agree. I'm also interested to see how brain-Alita will react if/when she finds out what chip-Alita has been up to. She's still the person she was at the end of BAA, so I'm wondering if she'll really be able to settle down or if she'll try to track down chip-Alita. It'd be awesome -- just this multi-Alita showdown just like with the multi-Nova showdown in volume 11.
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Jan 21, 2015 04:47
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closeted republican posted:Anomaly is beautiful and is one of the most detailed dick jokes I've ever seen. It's not just “Here's a penis!”, the goddamn thing humps Toji, dick-smacks him, shoots laser semen at him, and straight-up orgasms. Later, Zekka shoves a beer bottle down his penis and makes it look like Anomaly is cumming. poo poo, he even dies by getting his dick punched through because Zekka gave Toji one of the world's most powerful rear end-smacks. Anomaly is so utterly ridiculous at every step that it wraps around to being hilarious. The announcer's and Super Nova's crazy commentary makes it even funnier. I know there are some people that poo poo on Anomaly, but gently caress them, he is beautiful and his own phallic way. I agree.
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Jan 21, 2015 05:17
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DrSunshine posted:It'd be awesome -- just this multi-Alita showdown just like with the multi-Nova showdown in volume 11. 
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Jan 21, 2015 06:34
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If brain Alita, Sech, Zazie, Ido, Figure, Kaos, Lou, Toji and Koyomi don't all show up to save/kick rear end with Alita in CotMW I'll be sad.
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Jan 21, 2015 07:03
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GodFish posted:If brain Alita, Sech, Zazie, Ido, Figure, Kaos, Lou, Toji and Koyomi don't all show up to save/kick rear end with Alita in CotMW I'll be sad. Bio-Alita comes on the scene with newborn child in a sling on her back, backed up by husband Figure Four and GUNNTROLL SPACE PRESCHOOL VANGUARDS. 
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Jan 21, 2015 07:35
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Done with volume 12. I like the contrast between Alita and Mbadi. Mbadi sees himself as some sort of ubermensch and above everyone else, but instead he's just a bully who thinks he's god. Alita is much closer to being an actual ubermensch; she's independent and not held down by the rules of the Alitaverse, like the space politics. She has great power, but does not abuse it to make herself into a tyrant. Alita's powerful enough that she could've easily killed Mbadi and brainwashed everyone with her l33t hacking skills into making Ketheres and LADDER the Democratic People's Republic of Alita, but instead, she kept the ZOTT going. I enjoyed seeing how Mbadi got his rear end kicked in every way in this volume because he's a major douche that thinks he's the only think keeping the Alitaverse from collapsing into chaos, even though in reality he's just a tin-pot tyrant. His hacking skills were easily countered without a pro like Ping Wu stopping him, he was completely humiliated and essentially stripped of his power and authority by a robo-catgirl and a karate biker with Predator dreds, and he got a goddamn hand torn off by someone he thought he had in his (figurative) hands. I love seeing bad guys in positions of power get knocked off their high horse. I wasn't a fan of Alita's power boost at first, but after rereading, I think it fits her current situation. Alita's gone from a small player to probably the most important person in the universe when she was given the Fata Morgana. Alita was always a special person, but after Caerula gave her the Fata, she was literally given the keys to the kingdom. Now that she's fused her brain chip with the Fata Morgana, she's basally become what Mbadi wants to be; the person that decides who lives and dies. A power boost that matches her extreme importance in the Alitaverse fits. Even though she's a little more aggressive than before, I feel that Imaginos 2.0 Alita is still Alita. As soon as she burst out of Tunguska, she told Sechs she was sorry that she worried him and was being friendly with Zazie. She was playing nice with Toji when he messed up his story even though she easily could've called him a dumbass. Alita's always been aggressive, a bit cocky, and enjoyed taunting, so her behavior when facing Mbadi fits. Plus, she was facing the dude that completely humiliated her back in volume 3; her taunting and being cocky at Mbadi now that she knows she has the upper hand is completely understandable. Toji's development was quite a surprise in this volume. I wasn't interested in him way back when, but the past two volumes have really made me enjoy him a lot because he has an actual personality instead of just fighting and saying “I MUST TEST YOUR STRENGTH ALITA”. I enjoyed how his backstory illustrated that even karate, which has been portrayed as being noble in previous volumes, has fallen to the same selfishness and heartlessness that the rest of the Alitaverse has. Even worse; when Toji showed he had his heart, his dojo thought he was a complete bastard and suspended him. Toji's an rear end in a top hat turned good guy that's been betrayed by his dojo just for caring instead of being interested in smashing poo poo 24/7. Being nice ain't easy in the Alitaverse. It's funny how, despite being a pro karate dude, Toji isn't the wise man you'd expect. When he tried to be profound with the cat story, he messed up because he got the cats mixed up. It was cute how Alita was nice to him though and gave him a positive response even though she was basically facepalming when he messed the story up. The karate war was beautiful. All of the participants, from rapist flamboyant robo-Ghandi to Robbie the loving Robot, were crazy in the right ways. It rules how there's a karate style for nearly everything, including the ancient art of rear end-kissing, and that space karate seems to be in a “People's Front of Judea vs Judea People's Front”-style situation. My favorite style was vampire karate because how does that even work? I never knew that a bunch of karatekas could create so much carnage that it ends with a shrimp cyborg causing a goddamn nuclear explosion, but thanks to LO, I now know the truth. I knew Zekka was badass, but not badass enough that a Venusian company has managed to patent his genes and use them to create luxury goods made out of his genetic information. Having the world's most hardcore thumb-wrestling match, opening beer bottles by slicing the top part off, flying around space in a flying motorcycle, and being all about just destroying poo poo is pretty badass, but having your own genes used to create high-end products puts the badassness into a new level because being a badass is literally in his genes. I liked and enjoyed volume 12. Seeing Alita finally gain the upper hand and make Mbadi her bitch was really cool and the karate war was fun and crazy. Toji's character development was the most surprising part of the volume, as he was dull back in the early volumes in LO.
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Jan 21, 2015 11:03
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closeted republican posted:Done with volume 12. Oh god, you have no idea how satisfying it was to finally see Mbadi get his rear end handed to him after literal years of seeing him sit around steepling his fingers and grinning smugly like Gendo Ikari. quote:Even though she's a little more aggressive than before, I feel that Imaginos 2.0 Alita is still Alita. As soon as she burst out of Tunguska, she told Sechs she was sorry that she worried him and was being friendly with Zazie. She was playing nice with Toji when he messed up his story even though she easily could've called him a dumbass. Alita's always been aggressive, a bit cocky, and enjoyed taunting, so her behavior when facing Mbadi fits. Plus, she was facing the dude that completely humiliated her back in volume 3; her taunting and being cocky at Mbadi now that she knows she has the upper hand is completely understandable. This kind of goes back to what Makaku said back in volume 1 -- all that stuff about the mind being influenced by the body. I think Alita gets pretty cocky and kind of assholish and aloof starting around this volume, and it probably has something to do with her inheriting Tunguska's body and the Fata Morgana. The battle-Alita that we saw in BAA Volume 6 starts to sort of take over, while the empathic, emotional Alita gets really put on the back-burner. quote:I knew Zekka was badass, but not badass enough that a Venusian company has managed to patent his genes and use them to create luxury goods made out of his genetic information. Having the world's most hardcore thumb-wrestling match, opening beer bottles by slicing the top part off, flying around space in a flying motorcycle, and being all about just destroying poo poo is pretty badass, but having your own genes used to create high-end products puts the badassness into a new level because being a badass is literally in his genes. There is a reason for this that will become quite clear in the next volume, the content and outcome of which I am very curious to see your opinions.
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Jan 21, 2015 16:54
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closeted republican posted:Toji's development was quite a surprise in this volume. I wasn't interested in him way back when, but the past two volumes have really made me enjoy him a lot because he has an actual personality instead of just fighting and saying “I MUST TEST YOUR STRENGTH ALITA”. I enjoyed how his backstory illustrated that even karate, which has been portrayed as being noble in previous volumes, has fallen to the same selfishness and heartlessness that the rest of the Alitaverse has. Even worse; when Toji showed he had his heart, his dojo thought he was a complete bastard and suspended him. Toji's an rear end in a top hat turned good guy that's been betrayed by his dojo just for caring instead of being interested in smashing poo poo 24/7. Being nice ain't easy in the Alitaverse. I like Toji a whole lot for his growth. In most manga, yeah, he'd be the "wise mentor" type, or maybe some hothead who gets beat up a lot. But he's frequently outright wrong, develops new skills quickly, and often changes his outlook completely. He's practically a main character in terms of the way he develops.
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Jan 21, 2015 19:10
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closeted republican posted:space karate seems to be in a “People's Front of Judea vs Judea People's Front”-style situation. V ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Collapse of thread due to self-quoting ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | V Avulsion posted:And I love the ridiculous infodumps:
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Jan 21, 2015 19:21
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"Bowing Japanese Salesman Karate" is the best, truest, and most powerful karate, in my opinion.
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Jan 21, 2015 19:32
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Done with Volume 13. I wasn't too interested in Homme du Feu's story on my first read, but after a re-read, it made sense and is a lot deeper than it looks at first glance. Despite him and Olympe being artificial creations meant to serve one purpose, they were far more human than Pissaro in that they actually cared for each other, while Pissaro considered everything his personal playthings meant to make him look better to others. Hell, they're more human than the Venusians seen so far period. The actual Venusians seen in the story are all creepy jerks that, despite looking like really fat and short humans, show a stunning lack of care for humans themselves to the point where the actually eat children for food and bioengineer creatures based on human DNA for pit-fighting. Funny how their creations can be more human than they are. Pissarro is a special type of dick. He treats everything as mere pawns to increase his prestige, to the point where he manipulated Homme with Olympe to plant doubt into him. The feelings of others mean jack-poo poo to him, which eventually bites him in the rear end when his own creations turn against him and eat him. His true form represented what he really is; a weak and tiny coward that relies on manipulating others to make himself look like Mr. #1 Bioengineerer. Out of all the bad guys in the BAA series so far, Pissarro is probably one of the worst out of all of them because he had nothing sympathetic nor redeemable about him; Bigott, another manipulative bastard, had moments where you felt bad for him. Pissarro? Zilch. It's ironic how the Jovians and their evil empire theme are actually a lot more sympathetic than the Venusians, who are controlling bastards that manufacture monsters out of human DNA to fight for their own amusement and treat biology like their plaything. That's not to say the Jovians are dicks; but they're a cartoony and fun evil, while the Venusians are bastards that think they're superior with their biotech, but in reality are manipulative slobs that think they can flush morals down the drain because of their biotech. Look-wise, Jovian's mechanical bodies are a lot more friendly and understandable than the abominations made by Venus. I like how the story tells how each culture operates through how they behave in the fights, from a Jovian chorus bursting into an uber-patriotic song in the middle of a fight to the pit-fighting creates that Venus has made that Homme is a part of. It's a lot more enjoyable than something like having a random Jovian/Venusian giving an infodump after Alita and crew bump into them. Even fighting Anomaly brought some interesting information about the situation in Mercury and how it's artificial lifeforms view humanity. As for the actual fight itself, my favorite parts was Toji starting a goddamn thunder storm, making a tornado in the middle of it, Rakan stuck in a literal booby trap, and Homme tricking shrimp guy. The Toji part is awesome because of how awesomely over the top it is. I love it when fights in BAA involve tricks instead of pure firepower, no matter the side, so Homme poisoning shrimp guy was a fun little surprise. I felt the Venus fight's art was a little hard to follow the first time. However, a reread where I actually focused a bit made it much better and understandable, so maybe I didn't fully grasp it the first time because I was too busy going through it as fast as I could to see what was going to happen next. Volume 13 was nice for a pure fighting volume. It did a good job explaining how Venusians operate and think and had a good subplot as well. The first two creatures Pissarro used were really cool looking as well.
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Jan 22, 2015 11:36
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Venusians are space-Libertarians and Jovians are space-Communists.
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Jan 22, 2015 19:26
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What I liked about Homme du Feu (lit. Man of Fire) and his storyline was how it basically dealt with sexuality. Olympe, basically an android Realdoll, acted as a teacher figure to Homme du Feu until he got old enough to start to experience feelings of sexual desire. The reason why he experienced it as hunger was because he was bred and socialized to be a combat animal -- he never understood any other form of desire other than hunger. Finally, through being tested in the arena and challenged to face their identities, Homme du Feu and Olympe end their journey as fully-realized people joined in romantic love. Even the finale, with the blossoming of the giant cherry blossom tree, is one huge orgasm metaphor -- the flowering is symbolic of their loving union.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:51
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Done with volume 14. Chapter 87 was my favorite part of the volume simply because it was nice to see the whole Scrapyard crew again and to see how things are going there. Things suck even more than they did in BAA, but at least there's some hope thanks to Vector and Kaos. Poor Kaos has good intentions, but he just can't communicate them right to the self-centered pricks that make up the Scrapyard. Vector's scheme was genius; what better way to appeal to the Scrapyarders than to make their fight for independence into a match to bet on? It was nice to see that people still hadn't forgotten Alita, even after 13 years. My favorite part of Chapter 87 was seeing all of the people from Alita's past watching the match, form the Kansas bar-owner to Limeria. It was surprising seeing Armblessed and Ajakutty had survived the thrashing Jashugan gave them back in BAA volume 4. Seeing Umba makes me imagine that Umba was so proud that Alita was still fighting and winning in the ZOTT, just like Ed would've wanted.  I love the whole sibling dynamic that Altia and Sechs are slowly getting. They're made for each other; they're both stubborn to the core and headstrong. Seeing them act childish together and act like little kids makes both of them more entertaining. Alita's been way more serious as of late, so seeing her immature side come out is good to see. It's even funnier when you consider where Sechs came from and how he originally behaved. He's gone from a homicidal clone of Alita with the typical self-loathing clones have in fiction have to a bratty little brother that jumps the gun like crazy and takes a bit of inspiration from Luffy. I wasn't sold on Alita's more cat-like mannerisms at first, but considering how serious she's been lately, it helps add some humor and lightheartness to her and it also gives her a bit more personality. The whole cat motif makes sense because she's been called a cat before, even back in BAA, behaves like one at times, and was named after Ido's old cat. It also fits with the ridiculousness LO has; the best fighter in the universe and Earth's last hope is a teenage-looking girl cyborg that sits around on rafters, uses ventilation systems to move around ala Gordon Freeman, ate all of the teriyaki her team had, and has her very own cat tail which she has used as a weapon before. I noticed that Sechs seems to be willing to jump to conclusions and assume the worst about situations. It probably won't pop up again, but it's interesting to get some more character development for Sechs that doesn't tie directly into beating the crap out of something. Alita's speech when helping Zazie is interesting because it was something I talked about earlier regarding Alita's independence. I feel that Alita's is becoming cognizant of the fact that, even though she does her own thing, many people have affected her life. Nearly everyone, from Ido to Toji, have had some affects on Alita's personality and how she behaves. I take it as a comment on individualism; no matter how independent we think we are, we'll always be affected by others and what they do with us. There is no truly independent person; just different shades of it. I also feel that Alita's coming to terms with that the fact that, in practice, having a brain chip doesn’t mean that people will treat you differently from the rest of society. She felt that the brain chip built a giant wall between her and those she loved and cared about, but in reality they still treat her like a regular human being. Sechs treats her like a sibling rival, Caerula considers her worthy of the Fata Morgana, Kaos still believes in Alita, and the people of the Scrapyard still see her as the Alita that whooped rear end in Motorball all those years ago, even though she's technically an android copy of BAA Alita instead of being the “real” Alita. It's not what physical form your “self” is in, it's how you express it. It's pretty obvious that Frau X is Erica. However, the questions is; how did she get to where she is? What lead to her being an amoal bastard? How did she survive the destruction of the Panzer Kunst school? What will she do when she finally meets Alita again? I want to see these types of questions answered so I can see how Frau X diverged from Alita, even though they both took the same classes together. I wish the fight between Frau X and Zazie had a bit more gunplay in it. I love seeing the gun-related tricks Zazie has up her sleeve. Seeing Mbadi get the poo poo beaten out of him in his home turf, cyber-space, was fun to read. He's gone from a sneering mastermind that had the entire universe in his hands to a powerless wimp that's been so depowered that he temporarily became Alita's puppet and serves as Alita's punching bag when she's asleep. Even worse is that Alita enjoys beating the poo poo out of him, as she woke up with a gleam near her eyes and noted how awesome her “dream” was. “I am order” my rear end. Things sure turned dark for the twins real fast. Rakan is going to gently caress them up so hard. Overall, I liked volume 14 a bit more than volume 14 because of the plot information in it, Alita and Sechs acting like siblings, and the return to the Scrapyard. That's not to say that I disliked volume 13 at all though.
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Jan 23, 2015 14:13
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Finished with volume 15. My favorite part was Zazie's fight against Rakan. I love her tactics and strategies and how she uses normal guns and explosives to take down the craziest martial arts guys in the Alitaverse. Gunplay, especially when it's show in the fun and easy-to-read fighting in the Alita series, is a good change of pace from the ridiculous amounts of martial arts in the series. I love seeing Alita and Sechs smack some dudes down, but Zazie's gunfights are a great way to spice up fights. The Jovian part of volume 5 was great too, even though it was quite short. I love the Jovian's antics because of how goofy, and inept they are. I liked how they blamed Alita's actions on some dude that was just brought in and drag him off in a crane while he flaps his tentacles around. If they were an actual threat, that'd be a defining moment for them, but they're so bad at being evil that it made me giggle instead. It's funny how Sechs' fight get crazier and crazier as the series go on. He's gone from bouncing around with a polearm to turning into what looks like a killer yarnball that goes supersonic and absorbing the energy from a punch that can wreck a state-of-the-art cyborg body in one shot. It's crazy enough that I love it. Though the actual fight is a blowout so far, I thought Alita's new techniques were cool. Doing a spin dash from Sonic the Hedgehog and creating shaped charges, which are used as a part of anti-tank weapons, from her palms is pretty crazy and neat at the same time. Alita's sudden behavior change in this volume makes a lot of sense if you remember the distinction between Nice Alita and Battle Alita that the story was trying to make for a while before the vampire flashback. Battle Alita ain't very nice compared to Nice Alita (to the point where Sechs called her feral), and considering there's a lot riding on this fight and how uber-powerful she is now, her behavior is quite understandable. I like how the fights Sechs and Zazie are in contrast each other. Zazie's fights are fairly grounded in realty, while Sechs fight is completely nuts with things like making a giant sword turn into a shield. It's makes the final round more interesting to read when you have different degrees of plausibility in a single round. The art shift to really sketchy when Sechs was PISSED was a good touch. It really emphasized Sechs feelings at the moment, especially when he was getting ready to absorb the energy from Zekka's punch. Plus, it looked hilarious and fits how childish he is. When Kushiro wants a character out of the picture, he really goes all out. Getting the twins out of the story by butchinging them so much so that they're a pile of body parts on the ground is harsh, especially considering that they're comic relief characters. Kimpi and Kimpo are still alive (but look horribly traumatized), so I'm sure the twins will pop back up sometime. Anyone else notice that Sechs and Zekka tend to be shirtless often? It must be something in the Fizziroy body that encourages them to show off their sexy cyborg abs. Volume 15 was pretty good overall. I found the action a bit easier to follow and more exciting than the action in volume 13. I think being able to read all of it at once instead of slowly waiting made it a lot more enjoyable because I could go through all of it at once instead of waiting months for a new chapter. Volume 16 (and the rest of the series, for that matter) is in the mail right now, so I gotta wait a few days until it gets here and see how the final fight ends.
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Jan 24, 2015 11:39
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You're nearing the end of the series, man! I think Last Order hit peak crazy with the Karate War and the karate-chop cherry blossom explosion, but there's a ton of fun, neat stuff as ZOTT wraps up. I think you'll really enjoy the final two volumes, as they contain "Alita Quest" where we return to Figure, Ido, and the surface-dwellers. As for "Frau X", sadly Last Order does not answer this question -- you'll have to read scanlations with the rest of us to see what happens in Chronicles of the Mars War! Congratulations for reading this entire series in one huge go! I can only imagine how neat of an experience it must be. For my part, I started reading BAA like 10 years ago, and collected the volumes one by one as they came out over the years. It was almost agonizing having to wait for the next volume to be released.
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Jan 24, 2015 14:59
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Thanks! It's very enjoyable so far and being able to tear through the fights in one big gulp makes them quite fun to read.
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Jan 26, 2015 11:49
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Done with Volume 16. Man, Alita got mean as hell. She straight up-calls Toji a chicken, seems to be a bit too eager to kill him, then wrecks the ZOTT command post on Jupiter just because she's extremely pissed she was taken away from a battle. Battle Alita is a scary SOB. It reminds me a bit of pre-Figure Four TUNED Alita's viciousness. Alita's “confession” to Sechs about what she thought about him in the past was cute and funny. I think it fit her quite well; she's always been a bit immature and did childish and goofy things, but she hid it by being focused and serious when the situation called. I'm sure that the same Alita that beat-up Lou with the Interactive Interface and beat Kaos around like a cartoon character would when he tried to get intimate with her during her days as a serious TUNED agent would call Sechs a “lamebrain” and a “parody robot”. I think it helps flesh her out as a character and show that even the best of us have an immature side. After Alita apologized for the mean things she's called Sech in her head, Sechs called her narcissistic. I don't think that's true; she apologized because she's not so different from Sechs, as they both have a brain chip. Remember that, despite all of her flaws, Alita is a good person at heart. I think she felt guilty for being mean to Sechs for being a copy of Alita with a brain chip even though she also has a brain chip and could be considered a copy of Alita. She decided to air out her mistakes to him as something of a repentance for her bad thoughts about him, especially right before they were going to enter a match that neither of them might've survived. I'm interested to see what happened while Alita was with the Jovian supercomputer. He took her in for a reason, so why did she get out? At first I thought Alita's death and resurrection was pointless, but it probably exists just to set up something important that'll happen while she's with the Jovian supercomputer. The images of her with her wings is loving awesome, though. It feels like it's visual representation of how she's basically become the Alitaverse's guardian angel because she has the Fata Morgana fused inside her. Regardless, I want a poster of it. I like how, even when everything was crashing around him, the Jovian responsible for pulling away Alita to Jupiter was trying to save his own skin (or is that chasis?) by trying to transfer responsibility to a random dude. He was a scumbag to the bitter end. Jovians look cute, especially when they're being carried around like they're a prize in a crane game. Toji's super-tornado punch was cool as gently caress. I think it's cool how Kushiro incorporated how rifling helps a bullet travel into Toji's tornado. It's a neat idea and shows that, despite how crazy LO gets, he does his homework when it comes to physics. Something like that would never be able to work in real life, but he used a real-world idea to make a super-powerful move cool and a lot more interesting than doing something like punching something extremely hard, like you'd see in other comics and mangas. Even though he's a complete creep, Rakan's backstory is actually quite tragic. He's a dude that likes to show off karate, but his own son completely changes him because of very bad luck. I liked how Kushrio explained his personality by showing that he suffered enough frontal lobe damage to make him lose any sort of inhibition towards committing wrong acts and amped his sexual desires instead of not giving a reason or saying something bad happened to him as a child. However, I do have to admit that his supersonic rear end is beautiful in it's own special way. One thing I like a bit more in LO than in BAA is how varied the bad guy's origins and motivations are . Roscoe saw the truth about Tiphares and the G.E.N.E. Project and decided to burn the entire place down because of how wicked it was, Sechs wanted to kill Alita just as proof she could be her own person, Mbadi was a decent dude that thought he was some sort of god that was the only thing keeping the universe in order because he installed a genius' brain-chip inside himself, Payne saw what he was doing as giving purpose to kids in a world that hates them, Spring-Healed Jack is a loser that went nuts because of what a failure he was, Tyzkrow is a spineless wimp that convinced himself he was serving the greater good, Super Nova is Nova's craziness plus the instability that comes from having multiple brains in one body, and Rakan lost his morals because of a bad choice made by his son and very unfortunate shot placement. Meanwhile, two of BAA's baddies are bad because of childhood problems (Makaku and Den), Bigott just hates sruface dwellers just because, Zapan became a ball of anger because of his obsession with tearing down Alita, and Nova was Nova. I felt that Zapan's decent into evil was by far the best in BAA and easily ranks as one of the best bad guys in the entire Alita series, but the other ones didn't feel very interesting compared to LO's bad guy's backgrounds and motivations. I'm glad Zekka finally got a taste of his own medicine. I like him, but seeing Sechs beat him around during this volume was quite satisfying because of how intense it was. It was going to happen sometime during the fight, but the way it was done really shows that you need a lot of skills and raw power to do some actual damage to a badass like Zekka. My only real disappointment was that it felt like nothing really happened during the actual fight between Rakan and Zazie. Getting Rakans' background was cool, but the actual fight felt like it was just Zazie shooting him over and over with him finding all sorts of crazy ways to deflect the bullets shot at him while she didn't have any sort of plan. It's a shame, as their fight was my favorite fight in volume 15. This volume took a little bit of getting used to because the font used and the translation style was a bit different from the ones used in the omnibus volumes, but after a re-read, I liked it quite a bit. Angel Alita is very badass-looking and her new look fits her power level well.
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Jan 27, 2015 12:22
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Ah yes, I remember this volume. I can recall thinking that Alita felt to me like she'd gone off the rails a bit in terms of her characterization. Why is she being so mean and self-centered? My guess is that somewhere along the line during her many deaths and regenerations, something happened, and now perhaps her newfound wormhole-powered super body is beginning to really affect her mind. I actually kind of disliked the simpler, meaner, battle angel Alita (hoho!  ), because unlike in the original series, she didn't seem to have any reason for being rude and overly competitive. Granted, Alita always had a fierce and competitive nature -- we got plenty of that in Volume 3 of the original series, and all through the TUNED saga -- but those moments always had a pretty good context for why she was acting the way she was.
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Jan 27, 2015 15:38
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Toji is the main character of a Shounen Manga we'll never get to read. He would not appreciate Alita going soft of him just because they're friendly! Also I am guessing she could sense that he really didn't have a plan past sitting in his invincible stance, so she had to push him tell his fear of death overcame his hesitation.
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Jan 27, 2015 19:41
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Done with volume 17. Tunpo is such a cool dude. He's basically a literal deus ex machina, but he's chill as hell and feels like he's not taking everything seriously. However, he's easily the most comically overpowered character in the series, to the point where he can make loving punch black holes into existence. But, he's too chill to actually use it unless it's actually needed, preferring to nullify powerful attacks because of his disinclination towards violence. Alita's not nearly as powerful as he is, but he accepts her help when it comes time instead of shrugging it off, like others would've. Tunpo's a bro. The little bit about Zekka is quite interesting as well. I get the feeling that Zekka and Tunpo's master wanted them to go beyond their limits and help the corrupt world with their powers. Tunpo managed to help restore things spiritually, but Zekka completely missed the point and thought that the dragon he had to slay was something physical, not an abstract concept. Now, I'm not saying that Zekka should've been a politician or anything, but I think he was meant to use his skills to help damage the current oppressive system the Alitaverse is based on. Helping destroy the system does fit the whole “destroy the impossible!” motif the master's assignments have. Of course, this is all drawn from Tunpo's interpretation, but considering how full of deeper meanings that all the karate stuff has had in the series so far, I think it makes sense. Zekka himself is interesting in this volume. Despite being the most powerful karate guy in the universe, it's actually simple enough that Tunpo notes that he takes child-like joy from unleashing his ultimate move. The way I look at it is that he's boiled down the complexities and cruelties of the Alitaverse into a childish narrative where something is or isn't manly. Even though everything about him is awesome, he's basically a big overgrown child that learned one of the most destructive attacks in the universe and waited for the day that he could use it on someone. Call me nuts, but I loved all of the crazy punches in volume 14. In the Alitaverse, you can not only harness the power of anti-matter to punch things really hard, you can create a goddamn BLACK HOLE with your fists. Considering all of the things that have happened in the last few volumes, punches that let you create black holes fit just right. I like how the Sechs vs Zekka fight ended not with an epic move, but with Interactive Interface Sechs trying to beat the crap out of Sechs, then him tossing mini-Sechs like a toy, who is caught by Deckman 100 with a butterfly net. It's crazy and fits the insanity of the Zekka vs Sechs fight perfectly. The end of the Zazie vs Rakan fight was perfect. The serial rapist's life was ended by getting the world's most deadly assfucking via a super-powerful magnum bullet. I think it worked just right for an unrepentant creep like Rakan. The Toji vs Alita match helped remind me of why I like it when Alita fights so much; her fights are fluid and graceful. Her defeating Toji flowed well and was quite good to read, even though he's very overpowered. Her flipping around and using a feather to slice up Toji with Panzer Kunst is rad. Alita getting really pissed about about Toji attacking her before she could finish creating her clothes seemed odd at first, but what I think actually happened was that Toji attacking got her back into Battle Alita mode and the whole clothes thing was just an excuse for her to get back into battle mode. I thought it was cute how Alita used her zen response to Tunpo after he tells her where he's going. She thought he was being metaphorical and was trying to be nice, but he was being quite literal. This was definitely an “oh poo poo!” volume. At the end of the volume, Mbadi decided to bring down the entire Earth Sphere with him, LADDER has been heavily knee-capped, Mbadi has gone from being order itself to getting sliced up like a pussy by Caerula, Kethres has gone from dystopia to chaos because of Ping Wu's virus, Tiphares is basically at ground level and the Scrapyard can now access it, and the Scrapyard and Tiphares are now independent. Earth has been forever changed, and I think the after-effects of this will ripple throughout the entire galaxy. At the same time though, I consider Alita winning the ZOTT as a start for unfucking the universe and restoring Arthur's dream. Mbadi's perversion of it is over, Unanimous is toast, and Tiphares and the Scrapyard can finally reunite. Venus and Jupiter are still dicks while Mars is still in a civil war, but it's a start. After all, you should clean house before trying to clean up everything. The only remaining problem is the Onion Frame heading towards the moon as Mbadi's last “gently caress you!”, but I'm sure Alita will deal with it. The Jupiter computer and Arthur seem to be quite interested in Alita succeeding. I wonder what's going on between them. Overall, I'd say I really liked this volume. It ended the ZOTT on an very explosive note, completely changed how the Earth sphere will operate, and helped tie what happened to the ZOTT with Tiphares and the Scrapyard right now. My only real disappointment is that Alita really didn't do a lot this volume, but Tunpo's such a bro that I didn't mind after a little bit of adjustment. It reminds me a bit of volume as far as game-changing chapters go; volume 10 had Alita's self turned over her head, while volume 17 threw all of Earth, from the Scrapyard to Ketheres, over their heads. It's nice to get a huge shake-up once in a while. No matter what happens from here on out, the Alitaverse will never be the same, and it's all thanks to Alita winning the ZOTT.
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Jan 28, 2015 12:05
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The only thing that I thought was a little too pat and tidy was Tunpo just "exorcising" Colonel Payne from Alita at the end. Like, she never quite got a chance to face off with him and finally deal with him in the end, Tunpo just waved his magic black-hole hands and made Payne go away so that Alita doesn't have to reconcile with her feelings of guilt and inadequacy anymore. It was pretty lame and rushed.
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Jan 28, 2015 16:22
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DrSunshine posted:The only thing that I thought was a little too pat and tidy was Tunpo just "exorcising" Colonel Payne from Alita at the end. Like, she never quite got a chance to face off with him and finally deal with him in the end, Tunpo just waved his magic black-hole hands and made Payne go away so that Alita doesn't have to reconcile with her feelings of guilt and inadequacy anymore. It was pretty lame and rushed. Yeah, I thought that was a bit lame as well. Then again, Alita seemed to blow off Payne during the last time he appeared to her, so maybe she managed to conquer her inner demons before and Tunpo taking him away is just to make sure he won't ever pop up again and try to annoy her instead of actually filling her with doubt.
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Jan 28, 2015 23:37
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Done with volume 18. I'll split it up between the Last Order chapter and Alita Quest since they're two completely different things. Last Order: To me, the situation that Alita's in kinda reminds me of how she joined TUNED: she can either join an organization or wither away, either by dying or by being Jupitan's pet. However, the circumstances are different this time around; she has something to look forward to instead of having everything and one she loved destroyed and she's actually going to do good for everyone by joining forces with Arthur and Jupitan instead of being forced to work for a society she hates. I like how Alita really has a purpose now; to unfuck the Alitaverse. Like I said before, it's clear that things have gone horribly, horribly wrong in the Alitaverse and frankly, Alita's the only one with the heart and skills that can actually tackle these issues head-on. The political system is corrupt to the core, so really the only way to fix things is to tear it down. The Alitaverse does need an ubermencsh, but it needs one so it can be liberated from the oppression and lack of empathy that plagues the Alitaverse, not so it can be controlled and keep the system running, but with brainwashing, ala Mbadi. Her accepting the burden of unfucking may seem at odds with what she's said earlier, but look at it like this: Alita can only help those she can reach, but what if the people she can reach can really change how things work? It's not like it hasn't happened before; she helped influence Kaos to take a stand and help reunite the Scrapyard and Tiphares, helped convince Lou that surface dwellers were good people, and her attempt at saving Lou started the path towards reconciliation for Tiphares and the Scrapyard, gave Ping Wu a purpose again, disintegrated Mbadi's order, and has made her into the catalyst for change in the Alitaverse. She has a short reach, but she can do A LOT with it. The way I look at the whole situation about the brain chip is that both brain chip and brain Alita are both Alita. They both diverged from BAA Alita, as brain Alita is actually reconstructed from the remains of BAA Alita. Brain chip Alita is carrying on the life of Alita in one way, while brain Alita will carry on the life of Alita in another way. I consider them both equally valid as Alita; they both carry the essence of what makes Alita who she is. The form the brain takes on is just a medium instead of defining whether someone is real or not. Alita Quest: I'm enjoying how Alita Quest has expanded on what happened with Barjack. I felt one of the biggest problems with BAA was how it set up all of these dark and grimy places, but they all felt like stages for Alita to do cool stuff and get into conflicts, not actually a coherent world. Seeing Barjack dissolve into raiders and hosed in the head veterans helps make the world feel real and show that Earth goes on without Alita's interference. Even Nova experiments and their legacy now have real consequences in the badlands instead of just being a small plot point to show how evil Nova is. The bits with Barjack and Nova remind me a bit of the Zapan arc. One small thing has lead to a giant tragedy and horrific slaughter for the sake of revenge. Dr. Rivet tried to give hope to the desperate Barjack veterans, but it had far bigger effects than intended and lead to a series of events that culminated in Farm 21 being completely destroyed and everyone being slaughtered by something completely filled with hate and anger, though in this case it was a militia filled with hate and anger, not a single person. And, unlike the Zapan arc, nobody's going to save Farm 21. There's no magic bullet that can neutralize the militia; the only thing Figure and friends can do is GTFO of there. The militia leader betraying Ido and friends, despite Ido helping his nephew and knowing Ido was nice, was a good twist. Normally you'd expect someone like him to give it up and realize the goodness in Ido makes it impossible to be Nova, but instead he was so full of anger and hatred that he kept clinging to his delusions, hoping to find someone that he could claim is Nova and satisfy his bloodlust. No matter how good you are, you can't convince everyone to like you. Even though Figure Four's the main character so far, I feel that Kayna is the real breakout character in this volume. Before, she didn't really have a lot of character, but she's a lot more interesting to see in LO because of her interesting past and how energetic she is. She's silly enough to be entertaining and her speech and movement is so full of life that it's hard not to be interested in her. The more typical manga-esqe overexaggerated facial expressions LO has really work well for Kayna's fleshed-out behavior. I get the feeling that she's toast, though. Anyone else notice that Kayna called Nova “perverted” when she was yelling about how different Nova was from Ido? Suddenly him hiring Eelai and the twin's original outfits make much more sense; he wanted some T&A while he was working. He really knows how to get the sexy ladies.  It also explains why Super Nova looks so pimp-tastic; he is one.I think it's cool how Kushiro is still drawing Figure differently from the rest of the character. It helps give him a bit more personality. Speaking of Figure, I kinda like how he's been beaten on his rear end in this volume. He's still the happy-go-lucky guy from BAA volume 6, but he's undergoing some serious poo poo he can't punch his way out of. A town is burning to the ground and there isn't anything he can do about it, he got his arm torn off by Sechs, and he thought he lost Alita for good. It shows that even a nice and chill guy like him can't avoid going through really bad poo poo in the Alitaverse. I liked how Kushiro manged to tie in a bit of LO into Figure Four's journey by having Figure get caught in Sechs' AR series massacre, which also helped break Figure a little when he thought Alita actually was killed by Sechs. I always get a kick when characters from early on in a series meet characters from much later on. Volume 18 is really good. It's nice to focus on Earth again after being in space for so long, especially when it cumulated in a classic, BAA-style tragic story, and see what's going on with familiar characters and give Alita a real focus for her life instead of trying to fix her mistakes while causing more. I can't wait to finish up volume 19 and see how this whole shebang ends.
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Jan 29, 2015 12:04
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Done with volume 19. Seeing the remaining BAA cast team-up with some of the LO characters was cool. I love seeing characters from different points in a story finally meet up and interact with each other. It helps me feel that BAA and LO are part of one big universe that affects each other instead of them feeling like two completely separate areas. Plus, I like to imagine things like Figure and Sechs arguing in the three month interval between Deckman 100 being taken down and brain Alita being revived. Some people may say it feels forced but I don't care, I like it.The Scrapyard really got hosed up harder than it looked back in volume 17. I feel that it was done so that the Scrapyard and Tiphares could develop a new society together instead of trying to link two completely separate groups together. Tiphares got wiped out as well way back in volume 1, with most of the cyborg-hating population purged by the MIB and Alita showing the survivors that cyborgs were regular people, so they have a fresh start as well. Seeing old Ido back was really nice, even if he only did get his memories back at the very end of the second to last chapter. I think it's neat how the little plot about about Ido liking to hurt people way back in BAA Vol. 1 was the key reason why Ido restored his memories, as he knew that it contrasted the persona Kayna made for him after his brain wipe. And, finally seeing him put the smackdown on Nova X because of what a bastard Desty Nova has been was quite satisfying. I get the feeling that Ido having his memory restored is a hook for future Ido involvement in Mars Chronicles, especially considering he was wondering where brain chip Alita was instead of being content with brain Alita's revival. I don't expect him to hop over to Mars, but I get the feeling he'll find out where brain chip Alita is and give her some messages. Kayna's characterization was enjoyable. She's selfish and tried to hold Ido back, but at the end of the day, she did the right thing and helped Ido escape, even it it meant sacrificing her life for him. Even though she cared about herself more than others, she wasn't a monster or even a bad person. I loved Nova's little game. It's been so long that we've seen Nova's schemes in action that it was nice to see that Nova's still evil as ever. He actually managed to break Kaos for a second, which is pretty impressive, considering how determined Kaos was. It was also nice seeing Nova get chumped despite him thinking he was some sort of human emotion chessmaster. It reminds me a bit of when Nova was wrecked when he tried to use Oroboros on Alita for the second time. Also, I was right on the dot about Nova wanting to use Tiphares as his little lab a few reviews earlier. I thought it was interesting how Ketheres went into complete chaos after Unanimous was deactivated and Mbadi's treachery broke the leftover mental conditioning. I look at it as everyone's hate finally coming back after being suppressed for so long and released at once, overwhelming everyone and making them want to right their wrongs, forcefully. If you suffer a lot of things that make you angry at once, you get really pissed off. Now, imagine every fear, hatred, disapproval, or things and places you've just plain disliked from when you were a child to your current time rushing to you at once. Bad poo poo would happen if that occurred. As it turns out, it's better to deal with our negative emotions one at a time instead of having all of them rush you at once. Deckman 100 taking over Ketheres makes sense; he's doing it to ensure that brain Alita will not be destroyed because of the Incubator being dismantled. He's waiting for an order from Alita to do something with brain Alita, but she never got to say anything because of the chaos that happened after ZOTT. Because brain Alita is still Alita, he decided to take over and make sure that nobody would touch the Incubator until Alita returned. The actual ending was good. I look at it as Alita accepting that, because she's now an agent of Arthur and Jupitan and working to fix the Alitaverse, she can no longer return to her old life on Earth. She knows she herself can never stop fighting, but sees brain Alita as an opportunity to give herself the rest she wish she could get. Brain Alita will be at peace, no matter what befalls Alita. In an ideal world, brain-chip Alita would've met everyone, told Figure all about what happened, then went home, but considering the circumstances, there was no way that would've happened. Alita has a much bigger purpose now and she has lots of unanswered questions about Mars. The ending is a bit similar to BAA's ending in terms of themes (the Scrapyard and Tiphares reunited, Alita being reborn as a pure human), but it's executed way better. Tiphares and the Scrapyard finally reuniting in LO was a lot better because it relied of actual kindness and negotiation, not Alita using nanomachines to turn into a tree and make everyone kiss and make up. Nova's still a threat as Super Nova instead of being reduced to a strange homeless man for...reasons. Earth, Tiphares, and Ketheres still have a long path of reconciliation ahead towards them instead of Tree Alita making everyone be friends forever and Ketheres being renovated into the Scrapyard IN SPACE! In general, the original ending wrapped up everything way too nicely for me, while LO's ending adds nuance and leaves things open instead of wrapping the entire world up and putting a pretty bow on top. And, honestly, things like Kaos marrying Lou and the main computer just dicking around in Tiphares for no reason were stupid and I'm glad they're not in LO's ending. I get the feeling that poo poo is really going to go down now that Alita's at Mars. There's a civil war going on and Alita needs to find Frau X and what she has planned for Alita. Also, remember that two of the biggest factions in the Mars civil war are backed by a superpower. Something huge is going to happen on Mars that'll affect not only Mars, but also Venus and Jupiter. What better way to unfuck things than by going to the superpower's playpen and wreck their poo poo? poo poo, she might even put Mars on the track to peace, considering how much she's changed the Earth sphere. However, I did notice that there were some small inconsistencies in the story. Kaos seemed to know that Ketheres was weakened long before he reached Ketheres and talked to the guy there, and it looked like Ido smashed one of Nova X's body parts on the right side of Nova in one panel after wrecking his left hand and leg, but later on, his left body parts looked untouched. Am I right or am I just overanalyzing things? Overall, I really liked volume 19 and thought it was a fine ending to LO. Earth has a good future, Alita and Figure are back together, Alita (at least one of her) can finally rest, and Alita's adventures will continue. I'll post my thoughts on LO in general later.
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Jan 30, 2015 14:23
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