Ask John: Is There More Battle Angel

Question:
I know that Gunnm was a translated manga in the states for a long time; however, I’ve not seen any Battle Angel Alita shows other than the original movie. Were there or are there any TV series released, or perhaps other movies? What about games? You’d think that the “Battle Angel Universe” as it were would be an excellent setting for a video game, console or otherwise.

Answer:
Gunnm isn’t really a movie. It’s two 30 minute OAVs titled Rusty Angel and Tears Sign, both of which were released together by AD Vision. Unfortunately, perhaps because the stark, drab cyberpunk style of these OAVs were ahead of their time, the series was not a commercial success in Japan, and no more episodes were ever created.

Just last month Yukito Kishiro began publishing a new Gunnm manga series that begins right where the first series ended.

About 2 years ago, Yukito Kishiro personally supervised the production of a great Playstation action RPG called Gunnm: Martian Memory. It’s a playable adaptation of the Gunnm manga that tells the entire story, including the sequences of Gally in space, Gally on Mars and the origin of her berserker body- sequences that were never revealed in the original, unfinished manga series. Actually, it’s largely the events of the second half of the video game that Kishiro-san is fleshing out in the current manga serial, Gunnm: Last Order, which premiered in Shonen Ultra magazine in Japan last month. Unfortunately, like the original animation, possibly because the Gunnm game doesn’t look spectacular (although it’s a very solid and very fun game to play) the Martian Memory Playstation game was not very successful in Japan, and went out of print relatively quickly. A quick search on Ebay shows that copies now range in aftermarket price from roughly $60 up to $100.

Perhaps now that Japanese culture has caught up to Yukito Kishiro’s futuristic vision, and now that anime is becoming ever more marketable and accepted in America, we may see a greater revival of Gunnm in the future. The current Last Order manga is a direct continuation of the original 9 volume manga story, and seems to have met with positive response in Japan. In America, James Cameron has expressed interest in developing a Battle Angel Alita motion picture. Perhaps not coincidentally, Twentieth Century Fox has registered the internet domain names for “battleangelalita.com” and “battleangelmovie.com.”