Trivia / Battle Angel Alita

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• Author Phobia: Kishiro is afraid of a certain kind of butterfly, and so is Alita. This is only mentioned once.
• Channel Hop: The below-mentioned Executive Meddling caused the series to go from Shueisha to Kodansha. The same change also led to the English versions going from Viz Media (partially owned by Shueisha) to Kodansha Comics USA.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The whole debacle with the story being put on hold and Kishiro switching publishers was caused by Shueisha editors' attempts to censor the dialog in reprint issues to appear more sensitive — demanding he not use the word "crazy" because "some people who read it may have incurable mental disorders and would be offended." (They suggested "mad" or "angry" instead.)
  • To wit — they censored the reprints of the manga without his knowledge a few times, then the legal team got him involved directly. They intentionally did this while he was in the middle of crunch time getting chapter 100 out, forcing him to either accept the changes they were "suggesting" or they'd use a clause in his contract about missing a deadline to prohibit all future reprints of Gunnm, effectively ending his career. He didn't notice the former until the latter happened; his response to the entire affair was to demand they recall the edited works and replace them with the "correct" versions or he would change publishers... they refused, so he did.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Viz Media's translation of the manga is in this in general. Their final Last Order releases gets the worst of it, however, since they were published very shortly before they lost the license, and is very expensive to obtain these days. Kodansha USA admitted that while Viz Media's translation was the basis for their own Last Order release, Viz took many liberties with the story, so Kodansha heavily altered it to be closer to the original Japanese version, while the original series got a new translation entirely. Most fans will suggest just going with the new release of Last Order to avoid spending too much money.
• Referenced by...:
  • ANNO: Mutationem: The 'Dark Mirage' poster has Alita featured in the center of the cover.
  • Hollow Knight: False Knight is a nod to Makaku, a similarly insane, man-faced maggot who takes over the body of a heavily armored champion. They both hide their parasite heads under helmets with giant, curved horns.
  • Questionable Content: Dale has a poster of Alita in his living room, as can be seen in the background of "Nom De Guerre".
• Schedule Slip: Kishiro placed Last Order on a hiatus after its 100th chapter. That's the case of Executive Meddling rather than Schedule Slip. The editor asked him for the edits he was opposed to^note Namely, to excise some variants of words for "crazy"., so he decided to let it slip for the time as not to endanger the manga reprint issues that were in the work at the time, but stated that he'd never work for that publisher again. Later he announced that he leaves Shueisha's Ultra Jump magazine for Kodansha's Evening, unless Shueisha people apologize to him and revert to the original dialog from the censored one. Which they failed to do, so the new chapters are now finally being released in Evening.
• What Could Have Been: The original series was intended to go on for longer, with Alita eventually venturing out into the space, but after coming down with an illness, Kishiro decided instead to rush to a conclusion. Some of the ideas that Kishiro originally had for the series ended up getting adapted into the PS1 game, Martian Memory which was a complete retelling of the story. These ideas eventually came into full fruition with the sequel series, The Last Order and Mars Chronicle.

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