Ask John: Is There More Battle Angel?

Question:
Battle Angel Alita is one of if not my favorite manga, and I also enjoyed the OVAs. I know there are nine volumes of the collected manga, and the two OVAs. What I would like to know is if there is any more Battle Angel Alita stuff out there, be it manga, movies, OVAs, or even video games. Also, I keep hearing rumors about famed director James Cameron trying to get the rights to produce a Battle Angel Alita piece. Is there any truth to this?

Answer:
(This question has been asked and answered before, but the current answer contains more detail than the former.)

Almost akin to its main character, the history of Gunnm is virtually tragic. Due to poor sales performance, after the originally announced two episode OAV series was concluded, no more episodes were ever made. The manga spanned 9 volumes but was actually supposed to continue much farther than it did. Due to some sort of accident, Yukito Kishiro was forced to conclude the manga series earlier than he wanted to. In 1998 Kishiro was able to conclude the Gunnm story the way he originally intended it to end in the woefully under-rated Gunnm: Martian Memory action RPG for the Playstation. (GameSpot published a very favorable review of the game several years ago.) Kishiro worked directly in the production of the game, thus the game presents a playable version of the manga story we all know that continues past the manga ending onto Mars to explain Gally’s origins and the origins of the berserker body. Unfortunately, the game likewise wasn’t commercially successful and went out of print in Japan relatively quickly.

Still more recently a new reprinting of the manga titled “Gunnm Complete” was released in 6 extra large sized volumes. These collections include the original Gunnm manga expanded with additional side-stories and chapters, sketch art from Yukito Kishiro, a detailed & illustrated encyclopedia of the Panzer Kunst martial arts and more bonus content. The sixth and final Gunnm Complete manga even includes a DVD featuring a 3 minute long full CG movie of Gally participating in a motor ball contest. However, the Gunnm Complete manga don’t contain the entire Gunnm manga story from the original 9 tankouban volumes. The final Complete book ends a bit prior to the finale of the original ninth tankouban, at the point at which the “real ending” of Gunnm begins. This “real ending,” is known as Gunnm: Last Order. Early in 2001 Yukito Kishiro introduced a new Gunnm manga series titled Gunnm: Last Order. This continuation of the original manga begins with Gally’s visit to the floating city of Zalem and will eventually take her to Mars. So far, though, there have been no plans announced for any new Gunnm animation.

According to rumor James Cameron is interested in directing an American live-action adaptation of the Gunnm story, and Twentieth Century Fox has secured the internet domain names “battleangelalita.com” and “battleangelmovie.com.” But so far there seems to be no word on any progress on such a project.