(I am never, ever going to get to sleep.)
Nov. 15th, 2006 04:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snarpApparently, Yukito Kishiro is taking some time off the main Last Order plotline to start a series called GUNNM Gaiden/write some side stories? Or something? You're not helpful today, internet.
I'd actually be kind of okay with that. I feel like Last Order is moving really slow. Over the first seven volumes of the original GUNNM, we had like six plot arcs spanning about fifteen years. That was one of the things I liked so much about it. It was a fighting manga with no filler! No monsters-of-the-day! A new, absurdly melodramatic plotline that completely breaks Alita's heart almost every volume! This was awesome.
But at seven volumes of Last Order, we've only covered a few months of time - the past three volumes have just been a couple of days. And they haven't really been eventful days, by Kishiro's usual standards. An eventful day for Alita used to be:
- the massacre of not one but two evil organizations
- not one but two epic battles with evil clones of herself
- not one but two cyborg-brain-hacker-induced existential crises
- not one, not two, but three heart-breaking parent-child reunions. (One literally. Kaos's heart actually stopped because he was coding so hard. (he kept moving around, though, it didn't make sense))
- not one but two declarations of undying love (one from her archnemesis)
- not one, not two, not three, but six suicide attempts by major recurring characters*, half of which are successful**
- the death of her archnemesis (incidentally, one of the, like, two characters who wasn't trying to kill himself)
- the resurrection of her archnemesis
- as a direct result, her own death
- the return of her memory
- aaand the deaths of about three million nameless ugly guys
In LO, Alita just got her memory of how she ended up in the Scrapyard back, but she's, uh... you know... she's kind of done that before. And it was prettier then. Plus, recently she's been having Revelatory Flashbacks with a certain regularity, and they're starting to get a little annoying. I'm starting to want flashbacks where she finds a weird bug or plays Tetris or something.
Basically, I feel like if this Gaiden thing is going to act as a tank to hold all the flashbacks, then that would be good.
* Alita, Kaos, Koyomi, Ido, Den, Bigott
** Den, Bigott, and I'm counting Ido
I'd actually be kind of okay with that. I feel like Last Order is moving really slow. Over the first seven volumes of the original GUNNM, we had like six plot arcs spanning about fifteen years. That was one of the things I liked so much about it. It was a fighting manga with no filler! No monsters-of-the-day! A new, absurdly melodramatic plotline that completely breaks Alita's heart almost every volume! This was awesome.
But at seven volumes of Last Order, we've only covered a few months of time - the past three volumes have just been a couple of days. And they haven't really been eventful days, by Kishiro's usual standards. An eventful day for Alita used to be:
- the massacre of not one but two evil organizations
- not one but two epic battles with evil clones of herself
- not one but two cyborg-brain-hacker-induced existential crises
- not one, not two, but three heart-breaking parent-child reunions. (One literally. Kaos's heart actually stopped because he was coding so hard. (he kept moving around, though, it didn't make sense))
- not one but two declarations of undying love (one from her archnemesis)
- not one, not two, not three, but six suicide attempts by major recurring characters*, half of which are successful**
- the death of her archnemesis (incidentally, one of the, like, two characters who wasn't trying to kill himself)
- the resurrection of her archnemesis
- as a direct result, her own death
- the return of her memory
- aaand the deaths of about three million nameless ugly guys
In LO, Alita just got her memory of how she ended up in the Scrapyard back, but she's, uh... you know... she's kind of done that before. And it was prettier then. Plus, recently she's been having Revelatory Flashbacks with a certain regularity, and they're starting to get a little annoying. I'm starting to want flashbacks where she finds a weird bug or plays Tetris or something.
Basically, I feel like if this Gaiden thing is going to act as a tank to hold all the flashbacks, then that would be good.
* Alita, Kaos, Koyomi, Ido, Den, Bigott
** Den, Bigott, and I'm counting Ido
