Battle Angel Alita: Last Order

This series is a sequel to Battle Angel Alita.  The series is still at work, and so far there are only four volumes here in the U.S.  At first I couldn't figure out where the first volume picks up, because it seems to happen only one year after Alita was fused with the Tree of Life, and the epilogue talked about how Alita comes out of the tree four years later.  Then i realized that this series is a continuation from the end of Battle Angel Alita, excluding the epilogue.  So, I guess we can think of it as an alternative ending or continuation of the first series.

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order - Volume 1
Angel Reborn

At first this volume might get you a little bit confused as to where it fits in the time line, but as explained in the above series comments, the story starts one year after Alita succeeded in the collapse of Tiphares.  This volume is entertaining because we get to meet three of the ARs that are alive and find out what happened to the rest of the ARs.  The personalities of the ARs are so different from Alita that it's peculiar.  There was also Sechs, who provides a little humor, even though she is dead serious fighter.  We meet Tiphares citizens and get to know more about what happens to Tiphares since Alita's last adventure.

While Dr. Nova and his new successor, Jim Roscoe, regenerate Alita, Alita thinks back and remember her friend, Erica, and her master, Gelda.  When she wakes up, she sees Dr. Nova's dead body.  She finds Dr. Nova's video recording, she finds out that her Damascus blade has been molted to make her Imaginous body.    She meets 3 children who were being attacked by M.I.B. and saves them. 

The three bring Alita to their leader, Jim, who explains to her that Dr. Nova revealed Tiphares's secret and most of the adults died or went crazy, and the adults are after the children to eliminate them in order to restore Tiphares order.  He was the one who killed Dr. Nova in order to prove it.  The children want to create a new Tiphare with humans with brains.

Alita refuses to join the children and wants to find Lou, instead.  Two of the girls, Nola and Pam follow Alita as guides.  They run into AR-6, Sechs, who has killed all of the other ARs left, except for AR-11 and AR-12 to prove her identify.  Sechs challenges Alita in order to claim her own identify as real.  Dr. Nova and AR-11 and AR-12 join to watch the battle.  It was a touch battle, but Alita manages to defeat Sechs. 

Meanwhile, the children are attacked by the adults, leaving only Jim.  He escapes from the adults and searches for Dr. Nova's DNA history and discovers something shocking.  Dr. Nova tells Alita that he's immortal by ways of nanotechnology in the atmosphere.  He invites Alita to outer space to check out Ketheres, but Alita declines, determined to find Lou.  While the adults are chasing after Jim, the monster, Sachumodo, that Jim constructed appears, but before Jim could find safety with Sachumodo, Jim get killed by an arrow through his neck.

I get more and more worried for Alita because her opponents seem to be stronger and stronger.  She no longer just kicks butt easily, but has to go through some struggle before defeating the opponent as the best fighter on Earth.  This volume seems to be building up on what's going to happen in the future volume, and I need to get to the other volumes!

Alita, Nola, and Pam arrive at an adult camp, where Pam and her mother reunited.  These adults are the sane ones and don't wish harm to the children.  At Nova's end, Sachumodo proves to be more powerful than he looks and it appears that Jim has implanted his memory into Sachumodo.  

Nola runs away from the group, thinking that Pam betrayed her by siding with the adults.  Sachumodo appears near her and starts to attack.   Nola and Pam make up when Pam saves Nola from hanging on a ledge.  Alita takes on Sachumodo and strggles to win the battle until she is able to create plasma that finally destroys the shell of Sachumodo which reveals a fetus.

With the battle out of the way, Alita refocuses on finding Lou, who looks like Pam.  Dr. Nova and Alita find Lou's body in the Disposal Unit, but without her biochip.  Dr. Nova informs Alita that the absolutely only way to find Lou's brain tissues is to go up to Ketheres, and the brain tissue will be the tissue from when Lou was 19.  We see the last of Alita in this volume when she flies a paper airplane out to the Scrapyard, hoping Kaos will be able to help in the future.

Next, we see that Kaos is in really bad shape and pathetic.  Koyomi rescues her and find out that Vector has tortured him and asked him to return in a week.  Saving Kaos from further danger, Koyomi arrangement to deport Kaos.  When the passengers of the transportation objects to association with Kaos, Kaos returns to Vector.  Right before Kao was sent to death, he receives Alita's paper plane which gives him strength to defeat Vector and his workers.  With his change of behavior, Vector agrees to invest in his cause.

Alita looks noticeably different from this volume on.  Her face is more rounded.  I am not sure if I prefer it this way or not...  In the middle of the volume it also became a bit hard to understand, especially the council meeting part.  What the heck were they talking about?!  The parts seemed rather dry and boring.  I wish they would go back to Alita kicking butt, soon.

Alita and the Nova gang arrives at Ketheres and meets Aga Mbadi, the Hitechnolat Minister and Ladder Assistant Chairman.  He informs the group that they are at Ketheres, the world's zenith.  Alita learns that Nova and Roscoe were both manufactured by Ketheres.  Before Alita could take Mbadi as a hostage, Alita was invaded by nanotechnology and the group was trapped into individual blocks.  With Alita's  body torn in half, everyone, except for Nova, gets ejected into the space. 

Ping Wu rescues the group from floating into space.  Alita and Ping negotiated that Ping would help her get Lou's brain back and in turn Alita gives Nova's biochips.  By rescuing Alita, Ping broke the Robo-Asyl Law and needs to face Landa Namnam and be punished.  Ping reminds Namnam that he was the one who started the Robo-asyl.  Namnam then decides to turn himeslf off for 24 hours to let Ping do what he wants.

Ping and Alita finds the incubator that stores Lou's brain and that Lou's "dreaming".  Ping tells Alita that before they can rescue Lou, they'd have to enter the Z.O.T. tourament ("Zenith of Things"), and get Lou's brain in the process.  During a treaty meeting, Alita sees the Queen Limeira of the Mars Kingdom Parliament, and the Konig "King", a teddy bear.   Mbadi was the one who ordered the assassination of Queen Limeira but he wants to make things right at any cost.  

Alita and Ping were discovered by Queen's follower.  Alita, in her injured condition, wins a battle against the Queen's follower (Zazie), and demands to see the Queen.  When Zazie refused, the Queen shows up but was accidentally released in to the space, and Alita saves her from floating away.  Once in Leviathan, Ping fins his old girlfriend, who takes him to see another old friend, Martin.  Turns out that the three of them used to hack until Anti-hackerTrinidad showed up.  The two talked about the past as 100 fixes Alita up.

Alita now looks complete with all four of her limbs.  Her outfit no longer looks sleek as her old ones - it's rather kind of chunky.  The face is still rounded.  I kind of miss the old Alita...  This volume has more action - YAY! - a nice change from the last volume. 

Alita saves a child from a thug and turns him in to the adminipolice.  Little did she know that children don't have rights in Leviathan and the child would be returned to Juvenile Infantry School and participate in "combat training". The Queen then tries to buy the boy's whole platoon to save him while Zazie, Sechs, and Alita actually go to the field to find the boy.  By the time they were there, the boy was already dead.  Colonel Payne, who is in charge of running the children's combat, is killed by Alita soon after his appearance on the battle field.

After Alita killed Colonel Payne, Alita starts to get haunted by his ghost.  Zazie and Alita decide to take on the whole battle field and collect all the flags so no kids will have to die.  The media crew shows up and records Alita and Zazie's battle against their foes. Alita finds that her fighting has improved but it was almost a losing battle against space karate master.  Alita again was haunted by Colonel Payne, and decides to die in order to win, but only ends up winning but not dying. 

Alita says good-bye to Zazie and the Queen at Leviathan docking bay and leaves for Z.O.T.  In Ketheres, Mbadi is shocked to see Alita's entry into Z.O.T., with her 3 other (Alita) members.

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order - Volume 5 
Haunted Angel

The Z.O.T. begins and we see Sechs got a new body - (s)he now has a male body.  The four easily defeats their first opponent team in the prelminary.  Mbadi personally approached them to congratulate (hack) them, but with Ping's defense program installed in Alita, Mbadi failed to hack into Alita. 

During the team's own celebration, they meet their next team opponents, whose leader, Caerula Sanguis, happens to have saved Mbadi his life before, and who's now a vampire.  Mbadi comments that with her team, they are likely to be the champion.  The team's purpose to win the Z.O.T. is to get a planet where the kids will be able to live happily.  They recently escaped their home base, which was destroyed.  Knowing their purpose, Alita has trouble fighting them, especially with General Payne still haunting her.  Sechs tells Alita to leave the fighting to the rest of the team.  Sechs, Elf, and Zwolf managed to defeat the first two opponent on the opposing team, but they had no hope against the next pair - Niz Sub-Captain and Qu Tsang (even though Sechs beautifully defeated Niz Sub-Captain).  At this time, Caerula Sanguis reveals to other team members that they can't win the Z.O.T. and that she wants them all dead.  Alita finally gets on the battle field and easily disarms (literally) Qu Tsang.

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order - Volume 6

Alita encounters her former Panzer Kunst instructor, Major Tzyk!  She discovered her past from 200 years ago but stayed true to her present self.