Preferred story telling method.

[00_unit]

Hey this is an interesting question I was thinking if Yukito Kishiro were to choose a story telling method back at around 1999 or 2000. Which one do you fans of battle angel alita prefer him to tell the story of battle angel alita, through drawing manga like he is doing currently or doing something similar to gunnm martian memories where he could just make sequel of video games with lots of story content and don't have to wait monthly. I just thought this is an interesting question and I'm really skeptical what would you have preferred. Also anime is not included since that is an easy choice.

[jjaquinta]

I prefer the current manga version. That way we get something, albeit small, each month.
Novels are pretty high up the list, because of the information density. However, you rarely see an author produce more than one a year. That's too much for an ongoing story. (Anyone have the novel in electronic form? I'd love to do a fan translation of it.)
Computers games have similar lead time problems.

Where things become interesting is if someone starts to do something between the two. Madefire does "Active Comics" which are mostly 2D graphic novels, but have additional features. I've been playing a lot on the Amazon Echo/Google Home side of things, where "choose your own adventure" style interactive fiction is a storytelling device.
But, again, all these add to the lead time, and reduce the pace at which the story is being told.

[00_unit]

yeah asking my friends and brothers since some are obsessed with light novels and video games storytelling method (like persona series and telltale games) and most prefer those story telling method than manga because they have way more story content than manga and at the same time they can tell a complete story faster. To be honest I like manga a lot because mostly because Yukito Kishiro is has one of the best panelling I see in manga, the way he use camera angles and the eye flow of his manga although not perfect is mostly good and him making video games to tell the story he wanted through a visual novel or an interactive story game instead of manga wouldn't have the same impact that is for certain. I hear people appreciate his art but I think the way he panels I is underappreciated since not much comment on it

[Sergio Nova]

Difficult to say. Initially, the plot in Mars memories seemed uncomfortable to me. Now in the manga the whole environment prepared the readership to face the fact that our beloved Gally Yoko is a sort of monster (although I was, in a certain way, already prepared to that, as I had previously seen the plot in the video-game), notwithstanding that someone who kills 450.000 people at one go is far from an angel, despite Viz's "angelical" titles.

I am not exactly a fan of mangas, and Yukito Kishiro is a great exception. The author has an impressive narrative structure and really strong characters. Another example of great narrator is Naoki Urasawa, but in general terms I dare say that mangas are waste of time. [I suspect there are people here who would shoot me if they could. ]

@jjaquinta
If you are serious, I can certainly scan the novel. I would like to see it translated.
Some time ago, someone here started the translation, but abandoned the project.

[jjaquinta]

@jjaquinta If you are serious,

I did wrote to Kishiro a few years ago asking who owned the English language rights to novelization of his series. So it's been in my mind for a while. I've also e-published several novels, so I've managed to complete works of reasonable length before. My Japanese is extremely poor, but I have worked extensively with Machine Translation before. Enough to understand its limitations.
My plan would be to do a machine translation of the work, and use that as a framework to understand the basic plot. Then to, essentially, write a coherent version of it in English. So it would more a work inspired by the original novel, rather than a direct translation.
So a pictoral scan would be better than nothing, but I'd then have to find OCR software that supports Japanese.
If you actually have the novel, then if you just did chapter 1, or even the first few pages, I could try to get what's needed together to see if it is a viable approach. If I can produce reasonable results, then you might be inspired to scan the rest.

[nick15]

I did wrote to Kishiro a few years ago asking who owned the English language rights to novelization of his series. So it's been in my mind for a while. I've also e-published several novels, so I've managed to complete works of reasonable length before. My Japanese is extremely poor, but I have worked extensively with Machine Translation before. Enough to understand its limitations.

IIRC, Kishiro himself outright owns the English translation. At least, it seems to outright say so in the copyright page of the updated translation. I guess it worked out such that Kodansha simply translated it for Kishiro on his behalf.

My plan would be to do a machine translation of the work, and use that as a framework to understand the basic plot. Then to, essentially, write a coherent version of it in English. So it would more a work inspired by the original novel, rather than a direct translation.
So a pictoral scan would be better than nothing, but I'd then have to find OCR software that supports Japanese.
If you actually have the novel, then if you just did chapter 1, or even the first few pages, I could try to get what's needed together to see if it is a viable approach. If I can produce reasonable results, then you might be inspired to scan the rest.

I always found the philosophy behind translation as being an interesting topic, because a lot of it doesn't have easy answers and how something is translated varies between person to person. Like, if the original Japanese wrote "郷に入っては郷に従え", do you translate it literally as "Enter the town, follow the village", or as "When in Rome, do as the Romans do?"

Both the original VIZ translation and updated Kodansha translation seem to keep things accurate or add in their own translation embellishments at their own whim. The best example of this is in Rusty Angel when Alita enters Factory 33 to get registered and runs into all the Deck men in the "Sea of Holes"; both English translations don't exactly translate the original Japanese accurately, but rather transliterates their confusing behavior.

If you ever do a translation, I'm honestly curious to see what the most accurate translation would look like, even forgoing transliterating any Japanese idioms into English idioms, etc, and just sticking with the most literal translation possible.

[jjaquinta]

IIRC, Kishiro himself outright owns the English translation

What English translation? We're talking about the novel. I don't believe it has ever been translated into English. If it has been, then I don't feel the need to replicate the work. I'd rather read it instead!

[00_unit]

Difficult to say. Initially, the plot in Mars memories seemed uncomfortable to me. Now in the manga the whole environment prepared the readership to face the fact that our beloved Gally Yoko is a sort of monster (although I was, in a certain way, already prepared to that, as I had previously seen the plot in the video-game), notwithstanding that someone who kills 450.000 people at one go is far from an angel, despite Viz's "angelical" titles.

I am not exactly a fan of mangas, and Yukito Kishiro is a great exception. The author has an impressive narrative structure and really strong characters. Another example of great narrator is Naoki Urasawa, but in general terms I dare say that mangas are waste of time. [I suspect there are people here who would shoot me if they could. ]

@jjaquinta
If you are serious, I can certainly scan the novel. I would like to see it translated.
Some time ago, someone here started the translation, but abandoned the project.

some do prefer light novels, or literature books, as it helps language building better (like grammar and writing structure), as many would say in general, manga wouldn't help in those criterias

[Cahir]

Video Game would have been awesome. They have cool graphics and scale. 10-100 hours of gameplay is also possible. In LO, they could even give that "Choose your destiny" to play as Alita or as Sechs. Or play as both, like in The Witcher 3.

Otherwise Manga, because, for example, it is kinda impossible to make a movie out of LO.