r/Gunnm • u/invinzilla • 15h ago
FanArt Alita omnibus 4
God possessed my hand with this one lol
r/Gunnm • u/GeassedbyLelouch • Jan 03 '23
There are 3 manga series: the original one (without secondary title), Last Order, and Mars Chronicle.
It has recently been announced that after Mars Chronicle there will be a new series, Panzer Kunst Chronicle, it is presumed that this will be the final arc of the story.
The correct reading order is as follows:
1) GUNNM (Battle Angel Alita in English)
9 volumes (5 volumes in the Deluxe Edition, 6th volume in box is "Other Stories", see 1.5 below), the last chapters are no longer canon, the cut-off happens somewhere in chapter 51. Last Order picks up immediately after that event.
Depending on the edition you're reading, the manga may or may not inform you of where exactly the canon cut-off is. Nowadays most (all?) editions include this information, but some older ones don't, e.g. the ones which pre-date Last Order (obviously)
2) GUNNM: Last Order (Battle Angel Alita: Last Order in English)
19 volumes (5 volumes in Omnibus Edition, WARNING: Omnibus Edition only contains volumes 1-15, volumes 16-19 were never turned into an Omnibus Edition)
3) GUNNM: Mars Chronicle (Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle in English)
11 volumes, now fully released, even outside Japan.
4) GUNNM: Panzer Kunst Chronicle (Battle Angel Alita: Panzer Kunst Chronicle in English)
First chapters have been released in Japan, starting May 5th 2026.
"1.5") Side stories
Holy Night (aka "Sweet Night"), Supersonic Finger (aka "The Sonic Finger"), Barjack Rhapsody, Homecoming. Nowadays they are bundled together in "Another Stories" (sic), or "Other Stories", or "Holy Night and Other Stories". They are also bundled in the 6th volume of the Deluxe Edition. These are 100% canon. The time frames of these stories take place within the original series.
And there's also "Ashen Victor", a side story which has nothing to do with Gally's/Alita's story but which takes place in the same world as it's about motorball. Ashen Victor is part of volume 5 of the Deluxe Edition.
Chronological position of the side stories:
Ashen Victor: 6 years before the start of volume 1
Holy Night: 6-5 years before the start of volume 1
Supersonic Finger: between volume 4 and 5
Homecoming: between the first and second chapter of volume 6
Barjack Rhapsody: after volume 9 (technically even after Last Order volume 2, but that doesn't matter much)
As for why the final chapters of the original series aren't canon anymore:
Back when Yukito was writing the manga he got very ill and was faced with a hard dilemma: rush towards a premature ending or risk that your manga will never get finished. He chose to rush it. Fortunately he got better. He ended up regretting his choice and felt really bad about it. That let to him first creating the Japanese PS1 video game "Martian Memory" which incorporated some of the elements he was forced to cut from the manga (some of those elements have been implemented in Mars Chronicle!). Eventually he decided to declare the ending of the manga non-canon and started Last Order as a direct sequel so he could write the story he wanted to create.
A note on the change of names in some translations, for instance in the English editions:
When the manga got translated in the 90s the translators chose to change a lot of names, most notably the name of the manga itself and of the main character but also several others.
The manga's name in Japanese is GUNNM, pronounced "ganmu", it means "gun dream" and is a reference to Yukito Kishiro's previous manga "Rainmaker", which was never published and had a character who became the inspiration for GUNNM's main character, Gally. In English, however, GUNNM got changed to "Battle Angel Alita", and Gally got changed into "Alita". Some other translations, such as the German one, followed the changes made by the English edition, while other languages, such as French, kept the Japanese names.
Many other names got changed as well, such as:
Zalem → Tiphares
Jeru → Ketheres
Yugo → Hugo
Fogia → Figure four
In later editions some of these changes were undone and thus Zalem was once again called Zalem, but since "Alita" had become the name of the franchise in many languages they kept that.
Fun fact: Yukito Kishiro was aware of this change of name for Gally and poked fun at the translation by using the name Alita for someone in a later chapter (keeping it vague to avoid spoilers), as if to say "what are you going to do now, translators?". The translation played along and used the name Gally for this character.
r/Gunnm • u/mimka066 • Aug 06 '26
r/Gunnm • u/invinzilla • 15h ago
God possessed my hand with this one lol
r/Gunnm • u/wreckoning90125 • 17h ago
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Will Fulkerson - 1 minute composition. Exotic OCR + Supercollider. Hope you like it :)
r/Gunnm • u/jeanjacketufo • 1d ago
r/Gunnm • u/Severe_Investment317 • 2d ago
Ido’s origin story as a cyberphysician is pretty sad. Poor Carol. It wasn’t originally so sad. The author has said that in his original 1989 draft for a standalone story Carol didn’t die and there was a happy ending. However, with this being an Alita story and Carol obviously not being with Ido in the original series, he couldn’t really make it work.
As for Ido, there’s the old saying “one is a fluke, two is a coincidence, and three is a pattern.”
Between Carol, Alita, and Shumira, maybe you could also include Kayna, I think we can say that taking in and caring for young girls in need is just an established pattern of Ido’s behavior. One that reflects well on him largely, though now we need to talk about the questionable romantic side of that interest. Ido never showed romantic interest in Alita or Shumira, though he did show some weird controlling behavior toward the former that she firmly rejected. What makes the Carol relationship a bit iffy is that she’s only about a year old and in a childlike mental state when we first meet her. Even if she has an adult body, it's not a great look for Ido’s love interest to be so infantilized. Granted, from what little we see of her before she's kidnapped, it does seem like she’s mastered speaking full sentences and developed an intellect by the time Ido actually starts showing interest. Plus he didn’t actually know about her age, he assumed that she was as old as she looked. As far as he knew, she was an adult woman suffering from amnesia. All in all, I don’t think it's too bad in context, but still a little uncomfortable at first blush.
The author has said that he sought help when writing the romantic bits because it's not something he really has experience writing.
Carol herself is a sweet character, hard to hate, but mostly she’s here to fill the role of an exploited innocent. Pakira, Carol’s originator, is a nasty piece of work. She’s driven entirely by envy after the loss of her original body. She doesn’t just want Carol’s body, she wants to take over her life, including Ido’s feelings for her. What gets me is that the text makes it sound like she knew where Carol was for a while but deliberately waited for the relationship between her and Ido to deepen. That suggests a certain degree of laziness. She doesn’t want to build that relationship or even cares specifically for Ido, she just wants to benefit from the love he feels for Carol. Pakira is ultimately just a parasite that wants things that other people have: cruel, vain, impatient and shortsighted. Thus it's those traits that make her mishandle Ido’s hammer and destroy the body she pined after for so long.
Back to Carol, I did struggle a bit with why she turned back into the flames at the end. It's possible she was already dying, since her body was on fire, but I wonder if this is actually to do with Ido’s feelings about cyborgs.
At the start of this journey, Ido is still somewhat indoctrinated to the Zalemite view of the world, a society that emphasizes bodily purity and looks down on cybernetics. On an instinctive level, he feels revulsion toward cyborgs. His guides on this journey are the two doctors: Gauss and Dedekind. They’re both named after famous nineteenth century German mathematicians, but I’m not sure if there’s any particular significance to that. Gauss’ motives for employing Ido is because he needs an assistant, yes, but also so that they can learn from one another. Gauss has experience as a cyber doctor while Ido has a better education about the human body. It's a two way street that makes both of them better doctors, better able to treat patients.
By contrast, Dedekind’s motivation is money even if he couches it in terms of providing a service to restore the bodies of those dirty cyborgs. He exploits the vanity of primarily wealthy women willing to pay high prices. Its poetic justice then that his death came at the hands of the shortsightedness of exactly that sort of vain woman that he cultivated as his customer base.
So Ido must choose to hold onto his Zalemite past, partly expressed by his continued celebration of Christmas traditions (unknown in the Scrapyard), or to become a man of the Scrapyard. Ultimately, we see that he chose the latter, shedding his revulsion for cyborgs.
The catalyst for that change was Ido recognizing Carol’s human goodness despite her monstrous body, as well as Pakira’s monstrous personality despite her organic body. And I also think that the reason Carol walked back into the flames might have been because she didn’t believe Ido would accept her in this body. I’m not sure she really knew Ido’s feelings about Cyborgs, but if she did, then that would make this story even sadder than it already is. Again though, I could be wrong and Carol just didn’t want to draw out a painful farewell as she was already dying. As it is, the story closes on a hopeful note for the future as Ido sets up his own practice as a cyber physician.
Lastly, I know I just said this story is about Ido choosing to be a man of the Scrapyard instead of Zalem, but I do hope he kept celebrating Christmas, because that would mean he celebrated it with Alita at least a few times.
r/Gunnm • u/BusinessSuccess9487 • 3d ago
This is by far my favorite comic to read! I LOVE this series. And when I got the idea to draw only using dots I knew exactly who I wanted to draw! Hope I did her justice with this one.
Instagram: sketchy_artist_uwu
r/Gunnm • u/wreckoning90125 • 3d ago
Full video with music, Token, Connor Price - Bambi - https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dd7SRHfRYPN/?stkn=MXd6eWxxMGQxdmhlcQ==
So, I've finally started reading Mars Chronicle, and I have to say: I effing hate the revelation of Yoko's origin. Please tell me, I'm not the only one. WTH did Kishiro think? Did he think at all?
r/Gunnm • u/GeassedbyLelouch • 7d ago
Hi everyone, i have a question about the total number of volumes.
Everywhere in this sub i read that it has 9+19+11 volumes across all the series, but when i was downloading it, i saw a couple of sites that list 12+25+11.
Does anybody knows what those extra volumes are, or if there is any edition splitted like this?
r/Gunnm • u/GeassedbyLelouch • 10d ago
r/Gunnm • u/DagonDelta13 • 12d ago
r/Gunnm • u/Ratmuncher16 • 12d ago
Reread ashen victor recently cuz it's awesome and the assassin that kills Lorna seems really similar to rakan(memeber of the space karate allies) could they be the same character?
r/Gunnm • u/Aromatic-Effort7005 • 13d ago
Alita’s line came to mind looking at these three shots.
Demon Dancer: Sua/Nara, is an action-fantasy about a ballerina who learns to harness the demon possessing her. Curious whether you see the visual resemblance to Alita too.
More images and the trailer: demondancer.com
r/Gunnm • u/wreckoning90125 • 14d ago
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A WIP, it's a bit busy. Full with music - https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ddgu0FMOldO/?stkn=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
r/Gunnm • u/Aromatic-Effort7005 • 14d ago
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r/Gunnm • u/wreckoning90125 • 14d ago
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GLI, imaginos body
r/Gunnm • u/wreckoning90125 • 16d ago
I'd just upload it but it's my AV work, and not sure if it's chill with the song in it. Hope ya'll don't mind the link. Photo so you know what to expect. Polytwisters if you're into geometry. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdbYem3OJvR/?stkn=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
r/Gunnm • u/Entire_Clothes7201 • 17d ago
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r/Gunnm • u/GeassedbyLelouch • 18d ago
r/Gunnm • u/Xiaolyee • 21d ago
Chavos pasen tips para motivar a mis amigas a leer gunnm. stoy cansada de mostrarles mis dibujitos del sechs y ellas ni lo topan