Gunnm: Last Order (Battle Angel Alita: Last Order)

Alternative Titles

English: Battle Angel Alita: Last Order

Japanese: 銃夢 Last Order

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 19

Chapters: 124

Status: Finished

Published: Jul 19, 2001 to Jan 28, 2014

Genres: Action, Drama, Martial Arts, Sci-Fi, Seinen

Authors: Kishiro, Yukito (Story & Art)

Serialization: Ultra Jump

Statistics

Score: 8.14¹ (scored by 6,375 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #452²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #661

Members: 17,077

Favorites: 674

8.14

Ranked #452Popularity #661Members 17,077

MangaUltra JumpKishiro, Yukito (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /19

Chapters: /124

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Available on Manga Store
Battle Angel Alita: Last Order Omnibus
Omnibus 1
$19.99

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Synopsis

After being killed in an explosion set by Desty Nova, Gally is brought back to life in the city of Tiphares by the resourceful yet devious scientist. She learns that the floating city is caught in a chaotic civil war over the public revelation of brain biochips, the Tipharean substitution to the organic human brain. To have any chance at stopping the bloodshed, Gally joins Nova’s newly-formed entourage, which includes his assistants Elf and Zwölf, the battle android Sechs, and the repair robot Deckman 100.

Tiphares and its conflict is just one small piece to an unknown star system that Gally has yet to discover. In hopes of finding more answers to her forgotten past, she and the other group members venture into the vastness of space, beginning an adventure that is set to alter the course of humanity.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Gunnm: Last Order was published in English as Battle Angel Alita: Last Order by Viz Media from July 23, 2003 to October 11, 2011. Kodansha Comics USA published the volumes 16-19 from December 4, 2012 to September 9, 2014 due to a change of publishers on the Japanese edition (Shueisha to Kodansha). The series was entirely republished by Kodansha as a five-volume omnibus edition from March 26, 2013 to December 9, 2014.

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Prequel:	Gunnm
Side story:	Gunnm Gaiden
Sequel:	Gunnm: Kasei Senki

More characters
Characters

Gally

Main

Nova, Desty

Supporting

Sechs

Supporting

Fachiri, Vilma

Supporting

Ido, Daisuke

Supporting

K, Koyomi

Supporting

Zekka

Supporting

Four, Figure

Supporting

Walt, Erica

Supporting

Kaos

Supporting

More reviewsReviews

Mar 19, 2015

124 of 124 chapters read

Overall Rating: 8

Keten (All reviews)

31 people found this review helpful

NOTE BEFORE READING: This is a review of Gunnm: Last Order, thus it takes into account that you have already read the first series.

The highly anticipated sequel to the unbelievably fantastic original series of Gunnm. This sequel is fairly controversial due to it's change of pace and narrative to the original story, however, I still feel this is an outstanding addition to the universe.

Art: 8

The first thing you will notice is the art style change. Gally looks different than she did before. Yes, she has bigger lips and nose but her original design, while memorable and sexy, was more like a perfect doll than anything read more

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Nov 12, 2015

124 of 124 chapters read

Overall Rating: 7

gilgamesh310 (All reviews)

18 people found this review helpful

Sequels are a very tricky business in general. When following up an excellent work, it becomes very difficult to top, with a further instalment. Following up a master work like Battle Angel Alita, one of the greatest sci fi stories ever told, would require an insurmountable amount of talent. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, that level of talent was not present, in Last Order, the follow up.

Last Order retcons the ending of BAA, and renders the events of the last 130 pages, redundant. Many would argue that the original ending was weak, and we needed more closure. I am not one of them, but I digress.

The story begins with Alita waking up in a lab, in the floating city of Tiphares. Much time had passed, since she had seemingly died. Events have changed, and Alita is once again trust into battles of survival, and the protection of others. Her main goal throughout the series, is to search for her missing friend, Lou. But while this forms the crux of the plot, events spiral out in all directions, and the story goes off on a heap of tangents.
While the original story kept things restrained, and featured a far more down to Earth setting(mostly literally), the sequel takes Alita on a trip deep into space, where a whole host of OTT craziness occurs. Events start off very compelling, and some interesting new characters are introduced, that Alita both befriends and makes enemies of. Often both. It’s clear early on, that there’s more of a focus on battles this time around, and exposition heavy ones at that. Battles have always played a big part in the series, but here, they take centre stage. This isn’t so problematic at first. The battles are entertaining, and the characters are more than enough to carry events for a while. After about the halfway point, however, events start to lose focus, and the tight pacing and compact storyline of the original, is pretty much abandoned.

It’s around this point that we are presented with a backstory involving one of the newly introduced characters. It’s a story involving vampires. While some supernatural elements did previously feature, the introduction of vampires is a very big stretch. The backstory does nevertheless manage to be quite compelling, and the protagonist of it is one of the best in the manga. It does however, break the momentum of the plot and feels out of place. The mangaka clearly wanted to take a break from the main story, but it would have been best if he released these chapters as a separate manga entirely.

After this the focus is shifted back to Alita once more. Except…. that’s not entirely true. Alita is in fact, relegated to a supporting character for most of the manga, while others steal the limelight. It does help that most of the characters are very engaging, including her male bodied clone. In fact I’d go as to say that there’s not a single wasted character in the story. They are multidimensional and complex. Little has changed here, since its predecessor. But this doesn’t excuse the very poor story structure and terrible pacing. It saves the manga, but it doesn’t excuse the problems.

Most of the entire second half, is devoted to a fighting tournament. The manga pretty much becomes a battle shounen, with drawn out fights and copious amounts of exposition. The excellent themes that the original explored, are occasionally still present, but mostly drowned out by battles, and long winded speeches about “sci fi karate” and more uninteresting philosophies.

Another problem is that there is more of an element of “magic” to the battles. I mean that in the sense that characters manage to get out of dire situation too easily and too frequently. They may return to life or produce really overpowered attacks, seemingly out of nowhere. There is some explanations given for this, but they are not particularly good ones, and it doesn’t change the fact that death is being cheapened. This was never a problem in Battle Angel Alita. Battles would always remain very tense, and Alita herself felt much more vulnerable. She’s very OP for a lot of Last Order. While Alita, remains one of my favourite characters in all manga and anime, she didn’t really grow through the events of Last Order at all. She suffers several identify crises. This was stuff was already explored in the original, and she had supposedly moved past it.

Things pick up again in the last few chapters, as events become more grounded again, and we are introduced to some old characters. There is no conclusive ending however, and the story continues in *another* follow up manga, called Mars Chronicle. The fact that all these chapters continue to be produced, because fans weren’t happy with the original ending, is quite amusing in a sense.

In spite of its problems, Last Order is still a solid manga and certainly not any worse than most battle shounen manga. But the original was so much more.

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Nov 27, 2018

124 of 124 chapters read

Overall Rating: 3

DecimatedF (All reviews)

5 people found this review helpful

The rambling story arc of the last series, with its ridiculous ending and dropped characters, was not without its flaws, but it was entertaining and well illustrated enough to hold my interest.

THE HYPE around this series is that it cleans up the mess the last one ended on- Which early on, it seems to, even if in a clunky, much less fun and much more violent and gory way than we might hope for. One has to admit- Kishiro is still a great visual artist and his gore hits as hard as ever, his line work and shading more sleek and evocative than the read more

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Mar 29, 2018

124 of 124 chapters read

Overall Rating: 5

comiclove (All reviews)

7 people found this review helpful

I was genuinely interested in BAA:LO after the....interesting read-through of its predecessor. This was mainly because I heard that LO was better in terms of story, character, art, action, etc. etc. However, does it /really/ live up to the hype I was fed? Read on to find out.

[Story - 3]

I should probably begin by touching on That Retcon: Yeah, this story basically edits out like the last chapter or so of the original story because it wouldn't exist otherwise. While I am still critical of how rushed the original ending was, I was glad that some of the concepts (Ketheres the Space City, Figure Four read more

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	Poll: Gunnm: Last Order Chapter 38 Discussion Farabeuf - Nov 27, 2016	1 replies	by nijaskan »» May 23, 2020 8:21 PM
	Poll: Gunnm: Last Order Chapter 48 Discussion KurokamiPhantom - Oct 18, 2016	3 replies	by ee_tramboliko »» Dec 17, 2019 8:37 PM

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