James tells Steven about the two non-cannon endings of Battle Angel Alita, draws comparisons between the James Cameron / Robert Rodriguez movie adaptation and the anime, as well as bring up how much the mangaka suffered from burnout. Over all, this was an amazing cyberpunk treat and it's fair to say both dudes have a crush on Alita.
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074: Battle Angel Alita vol. 9
Chapters 48 to 51
"No Brainer" and "Epitaph"
By Yukito Kishiro
Translation by Stephen Paul
Lettering by Scott Brown
Topics:
- Casting of the Alita: Battle Angel movie
- Indiskovar (indi 2.0)
- No Brainer (MIB, death of Bigot, Lou Collins fate)
- Ouroboros II (Nova, "Gentle Alita" or "Gally")
- Last Blade (Koyomi, The photographer, Den)
- Epitaph (Things we forgot to mention, the ending, the author)
The different endings to Battle Angel Alita.
As the majority of readers will know by now, Battle Angel Alita ends on a type of tragic cliff hanger, this was confirmed as canon when the new series 'Battle Angel Alita: Last Order' followed from the events of this chapter 51.
For a long time, the canonical ending was deemed to be the one in the Playstation videogame 'Gunnm: Martian Memory (a.k.a. Memories of Mars)'.
The following is a brief summary on the two endings, we'll refer to the original as the Shueisha ending and the other as the Playstation ending. Note that both endings count as non-canonical but start off similar since they take place after chapter 51. The two are similar in that Alita is revived by Nova and wakes up to find herself in the city of Zalem, she recalls some memory of her past life, we discover that prior to meeting Ido she crash landed on earth as she was making an attack on Jeru. The attack was pre-empted by Gerude, who Alita narrowly escapes from. On Jeru, Alita makes it her goal to save Lou from the MIB and liberate both Zalem and Jeru from the control of Melchizedek, with Melchizedek being responsible for cutting off Earth from its space elevator and creating the brain to biochip initiation. It becomes clear that Melchizedek is an AI infected by some sort of virus.
Shueisha ending:
Melchizedek is suicidal and decides to collapse the space elevator, to save the scrapyard and Zalem from the cataclysm Alita uses the Imaginos body that Nova gave her and fuses herself to the main bolt. Effectively Alita sacrifices her life. A few years later, searching for answers to Alita's demise is an 18-year-old Koyomi, now a photojournalist. Koyomi travels to Jeru where she finds a much older looking and jaded Figure Four, the two come across a dishevelled and decrepit Nova who leads them to Alita's grave, now known as the 'the tree of life' or the 'Nanomachine tree'. Which was created when Alita transmuted into the space elevator. Both Koyomi and Figure break the seed of the tree and set free a flesh and blood Alita. She retains all her memories and is happy to be in the arms of Figure again.
Playstation ending:
Alita leaves Nova to find out what infected Melchizedek. Meanwhile she takes part in the tenth "Zenith of Things" tournament, which involves the strongest fighters in the solar system all competing with each other. It's during this time that Alita meets Gerude, and although Alita loses a fight to Gerude she is spared because he sees that Alita's Panzer Kunst is different. And he can see that Alita has now become a defender of Earth and its people. Gerude is eventually killed by another "Kunstler", the main antagonist of the space arc, known as Zuoh, who calls his martial art "Panzer Faust" a newly developed form of Panzer Kunst. Zuoh intends to terrorise Earth and continue the terraformation war in spite of Melchizedek. Eventually with the help of a spy called Limeira, Zuoh is arrested by Martian authorities, putting an end to Mars' involvement in the terraformation war. During these events Alita revives a space ship for the sake of frontier exploration.
And it's in this conclusion where Alita is about to set off with her friends and allies on the space ship, known as Leviathan 1, that she finds that due to the absence of Melchizedek, Jeru has been transformed to resemble the likeness of Desty Nova's face. Alita chooses to stay behind on earth. Making sure that Nova does not make earth a personal playground for his experiments.
More Movie related topics:
- Tilly Lockey (So to sponsor the Alita movie, the designers at 20th century fox made designs for Open Bionics, as a representative of Open Bionics, Tilly wore the bionic arms on the red carpet, her previous arms were based on the Deus Ex: Human Revolution Videogame)
Comparisons between the Original Video Anime and the Live Action Hollywood movie:
Similarities
- Chiren is an original character from the '93 anime, played by Jennifer Connelly in the 2019 movie. She is a love interest for Ido and a sort of anti-villain. She plays a pivotal role in saving Yugo's life.
- Grewishka is a composite mix of the characters Kinuba and Makaku. He works for Vector and is played by Jackie Earl Hayley in the 2019 movie.
- Fang the Dog is killed by Grewishka, When Alita fights Grewishka she wears the dog's blood as war paint. There is no baby Koyomi involved in the fight.
- Megil (the werewolf) is absent from both stories.
Differences
- Desty Nova manages to possess and control Grewishka and Vector. Making it clear that those who work for Nova are puppets to his will.
- Yugo first meets Alita whilst he is working on the wind turbine, whereas in the 2019 movie Yugo pushes her out of oncoming traffic.
- Clive Lee's role in the 2019 movie is reduced to a cameo, for all intents and purposes, Zapan functions as a composite role in place of Clive Lee.
- The 2019 movie includes Nyssiana who seems like an original character but is actually based on the Mutant Woman who appears in the manga. In the 2019 movie she accompanies Grewishka and Romo.
- Alita is given a Berserker body by Ido, in the 2019 movie she finds the Berseker body in the ruins of a Martian spacecraft.
- Zapan frames Yugo for murder.
- Koyomi does not appear in the '93 anime but appears as a teenager in the 2019 movie. She becomes a friend of Alita's through Yugo.
- Alita does not fight the hunter warriors in the Kansas bar, unlike the manga and the 2019 movie.
- In the 2019 movie, Murdock the dog master, appears during the underground Grewishka fight. He uses his cyborg dogs to aid Alita. The fact that Grewishka kills Fang is enough motivation for him.
- In the 2019 movie Zariki is a Motorball champion who gets his Grind cutters stolen from Yugo and Tanji. Eventually they are given to Grewishka. Unlike the '93 anime, Zariki is not a hired goon for Vector. It is Grewishka who serves that function, thus Grewishka survives the underground fight to die in Vector's office.
- The presence of Motorball is the largest difference between the anime and the live action Hollywood movie. In the 2019 movie Yugo teaches Alita how to play Motorball on the streets of Scrap Iron City. And in her first appearance on a legitimate Motorball track she faces a conspiracy to kill her. We also see a brief cameo of Jasugun.
- As with the original manga, Zapan loses his face when he crosses Alita for Yugo's bounty. This is absent in the '93 anime.
- Alita experiences flashbacks of her mission that involves the invasion of Zalem and her target being the villainous Desty Nova.
Major differences from the Manga:
- By the end of the story Chiren's organs is packaged and ready to be transported to Zalem. Including her brain.
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