Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle vol. 9

Alita and Yunie were kidnapped by the monstrosity known as Gyapollo near the end of the previous volume.  They’re now captives of Jakoleva and the kids she’s kept around for her own experiments are thinking about using them for target practice.  But who is this battle-happy cyborg who has a mad-on for Keun the Kaufman?  It turns out that Keun and Gyapollo have fought once before and it was a decidedly legendary encounter.  While the two of them are on opposite sides of the conflict now, their bosses may have found some common ground when it comes to determining who their real enemy is.  That’s not going to stop them from trying to beat each other to the Library of Auf and finding out Panzer Kunst’s greatest secret.

Where vol. 8 felt like it was spinning its wheels as it set up the next leg of the story, vol. 9 quickly pays off on all of that.  It starts off with an action sequence involving a fight between Keun and Gyapollo during atmospheric re-entry that actually goes a long way towards justifying the use of “Legendary” in the chapter title.  That the cyborg now feels like a proper villain over the course of this volume also helps, but the focus on Keun and Panzer Kunst in general is most welcome.  It’s been a while so I don’t know if mangaka Yukito Kishiro is retconning anything with the talk of Super A.I.s here, yet the dialogue between Trikephari and Andro is very interesting and gives the story a sense of momentum going forward.

With all of this action and plotting going on, one might wonder what has become of the title character.  While she’s still very much a supporting character in the series which bears her name, she actually gets some meaningful development here as well.  We learn why she’s maintained such a childlike persona up to this point and even get a glimpse of the peerless tactical mind she’ll go on to display in subsequent (read:  previously published) adventures.  All of this is to say that while vol. 9 may not be good enough to convince anyone who thinks this series has lost the plot to come back, it’s a great showcase for the kind of quality a series that puts out new volumes annually needs to have if it wants to keep its audience’s interest.