One thing that bothers me about the ZOT final

[MrFaber]

At the final of ZOT i really don't get why Space Angels and Space Karate actually try to kill each other.

Now, ZOT is more often the rarely letal, ok, and the only team Space Angel didn't slay is Gunntroll. Well, excluding that chick enlisted by mistake among the Starship Cult.

But after the first encounter, Toji and Gally developed, at last, a mutual respect, if not a kind of friendship, and they met around the Leviathan 1 in peaceful terms. While it was quite clear then Zekka wanted to be a mentor figure to Sechs, to see what the kid would be able to become, not just to beat him, which e had no doubt he would have menage and dispose of the body.

Under the circumstances, you would have expected that they would go as far as render the advertsary incapable or to force him into submission.

Yet Gally from the beginning start to toy with Toji planning to cold bloodly kill him, since she initially totally have the upper hand, until Jupiter gets in the way.
And Zekka uses, as a first strike, a punch that would have vaporized Sech's Fitzroy body likely destroying the brain chip, and he had no idea that Sech's had a back up chip in the secondary body.
Even at the end, when Toji was put down and couldn't fight any more, Gally tryes to pierce his brain by one of the blade-feathers from her wing. It's only Donphyr's intervention that saves Toji's life.

All this really don't make sense to me. What do you think about it? Was all this out of character according to you?

[Neksus]

do not know about Zekka/Sechs, but Gally in that moment (trying to kill Toji) was like a real bitch for me... Yes, it is out of character

[Silvery]

I'm not sure if it was out of character for Gally. She was kiiind of a cold but also somewhat erratic asshole during the second half of ZOTT, especially after the catgirl upgrade. Pretty sure that going through the flashback earlier had brought some of Yoko's murderous instincts to the forefront, too.

I'm not sure if it was out of character for Zekka, either. Dude isn't exactly known for constraint, and I'm pretty sure that his line of thinking is that if someone catches the great and almighty Zekka's eye, they must be extraordinary - and so it's normal to have very high expectations of them. And since Sechs promised to go all out, it was only right to respect that.

All in all, I've seen this in many stories already - the idea that being friendly with each other doesn't mean that you won't be ready to kill each other on the battlefield. I mean, it's not like Zekka tried to save Ygrec's life or something, even though he built some kind of rapport with him during the fight.

[MrFaber]

Very good points!
I still think anyway that Gally had no reason to kill Toji while he was already downes and with arms severed (even if still conscious he would have admitted defeat or he would have been easely been further damaged). It was plain cold blood murder, which Gally despised in several occasions along the various arcs.

[Silvery]

Oh, I agree! I just don't think that we were meant to particularly like her or condone her actions back then, even when what she did looked super badass. I appreciate it when the author portrays the main characters in their book/comic/movie/etc as unsympathetic and/or plain wrong, and since showing Gally as less sympathetic was coupled with giving more spotlight/developing other characters (such as my favourite - Sechs), I didn't mind it much.

Though I think that in that particular moment she gets a bit of a pass due to having one of her "focused like a Damascus blade" moments (see: the Yoko flashback). It also felt to me like for a while she was losing her humanity, from the flashback through the chip revelation to being merged with a non-human entity and then reborn... I think that the encounter with Don Fua and having no choice but to help with saving people during the aftermath of the Damocles attack made her more stable and a little more like her old self ("old" as in "an honorable empathetic warrior from the majority of Gunnm", not as in "a weapon called Yoko").

Isn't going through such phases kind of her nature, anyway? It wasn't the first time she went somewhat cold and indifferent - remember motorball or the beginnings of her career as a Tuned agent? It might be her way of coping with shocking/traumatic experiences. Better this than falling apart, I guess.

And since I've mentioned Don Fua - I'm flipping through the chapters right now, and I've just stumbled upon his fight with Don Fua during which the monk remarks that behind decidedly deadly attacks of Zekka "there's no hatred, rage or sadness in his techniques; there's nothing but pure, innocent glee (...) for you, this is the highest form of self-expression". I don't think Zekka honestly wanted to destroy everything, himself included, with his antimatter punch - he just really, really wanted to prove himself by winning against Don Fua - and the rest wasn't important. That's just the kind of person he is.

[MrFaber]

Now that you mention it, another really odd thing about that arc is that Gally LITERALLY behaves like a cat. She sleeps around in high places, she sneaks into places getting through holes, she even walks on the four occasionally.

From the first fight with Makaku the story introduces the hypotesis that a body can influence the mind. I wonder if it was meant to be that the case, since the body she forms out of the Warmen 609 material is the most "cat like" she had.

[Silvery]

Yes, I think so.

[Cahir]

t also felt to me like for a while she was losing her humanity, from the flashback through the chip revelation to being merged with a non-human entity and then reborn...

Payne was talking about that, was not he?

[Silvery]

Payne was talking about that, was not he?

I guess? Honestly, I mostly remember him as an irritating apparition that talked too much. I'll have to re-read that part again.

[Cahir]

Payne was talking about that, was not he?

I guess? Honestly, I mostly remember him as an irritating apparition that talked too much. I'll have to re-read that part again.

Haha. I liked that guy, not gonna lie.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vf64geKFoqk/ ... s0/008.png
I took this as "people will see you as a monster" aka inhumane.

[Silvery]

Haha. I liked that guy, not gonna lie.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vf64geKFoqk/ ... s0/008.png
I took this as "people will see you as a monster" aka inhumane.

Well, what I focused on was that he sounded like depression-with-a-dose-of-dissociation-and-PTSD personified (if depression could be an insufferably smug pseudo-Nazi). Probably because I have depression. But yeah, I guess his little speeches made her question her humanity and resolve.

[00_unit]

I like colonel, as an antagonist he is just someone you can't help but hate due to him antagonising Alita all day, give her a break. But I admit I like him as a villain due to challenging Alita's insecurities, doubts and problems. Also he one of the very few( or only) antagonist, that doesn't involve physical (fist fight) challenge, but a mental or emotional challenge instead. Similar to the ouroboros scene which is one of the most greatest parts of battle angel to me.

[00_unit]

At the final of ZOT i really don't get why Space Angels and Space Karate actually try to kill each other.

Now, ZOT is more often the rarely letal, ok, and the only team Space Angel didn't slay is Gunntroll. Well, excluding that chick enlisted by mistake among the Starship Cult.

But after the first encounter, Toji and Gally developed, at last, a mutual respect, if not a kind of friendship, and they met around the Leviathan 1 in peaceful terms. While it was quite clear then Zekka wanted to be a mentor figure to Sechs, to see what the kid would be able to become, not just to beat him, which e had no doubt he would have menage and dispose of the body.

Under the circumstances, you would have expected that they would go as far as render the advertsary incapable or to force him into submission.

Yet Gally from the beginning start to toy with Toji planning to cold bloodly kill him, since she initially totally have the upper hand, until Jupiter gets in the way.
And Zekka uses, as a first strike, a punch that would have vaporized Sech's Fitzroy body likely destroying the brain chip, and he had no idea that Sech's had a back up chip in the secondary body.
Even at the end, when Toji was put down and couldn't fight any more, Gally tryes to pierce his brain by one of the blade-feathers from her wing. It's only Donphyr's intervention that saves Toji's life.

All this really don't make sense to me. What do you think about it? Was all this out of character according to you?

A different answer from others but I'm guessing Alita is in a lot of pressure due to the high stakes of the tournament as she needs to win it, to prevent the tiphare redevelopment act, and win the independence of tiphare and the scrapyard as to be recognised as a commonwealth if Alita won so she has no time to hesitate like with the nursery team and that's she does it by going full battle mode similar to the tuned arc though still many difference to that of course.

[MrFaber]

A different answer from others but I'm guessing Alita is in a lot of pressure due to the high stakes of the tournament as she needs to win it, to prevent the tiphare redevelopment act, and win the independence of tiphare and the scrapyard as to be recognised as a commonwealth if Alita won so she has no time to hesitate like with the nursery team and that's she does it by going full battle mode similar to the tuned arc though still many difference to that of course.

Actually, at that point of the story, the problem of the tiphare redevelopment act is solved already. When Mbadi puts the ZOT on halt after Space Angels defeat Warmen 609, Space Karate and Genome Kingdom also appear on the battlefield and after putting Mbadi on his place, Gally tell them what's about to happen to Earth's surface and both Toji and Pissarro agree to declare Earth's independece in case any of their teams win the ZOT.

Of course Gally might not have believed them to the full extent, and she, for sure, aimed to win the tournament no matter what, even if that would call for the life of Toji. Yet we are still talking about winning the match. And when Toji was down in the end he was completely defeated beyond any hope. No need to kill him any longer, yet she deliberately goes for the killing.

My only explaination to make sense of this is that she wanted revenge for having been smashed to bits 1 minute earlier. Yet from the beginning of the match she tells Toji that she's going to kill him. Odd.

[Martin]

Zazi and Rakan are there as filler. Love em. sorry.

Everyone else except for Toji are the most lethal / destructive concepts imaginable. Literally. Every punch is like a rail gun.

I was explaining Gunnm to someone...in a very defense industry, smarty pants area..what is it about?

What would it be like to teach a tank Kung-fu? Improving a killing machine's ability to kill. An element of Gunnm is just extrapolating raw killing science in a fun, entertaining yarn. It is called "GUN DREAM".

When Alita uses the shape charge hits...those were very much taken from the frontlines of recent US military engagements.

When there was a Gunnm related killer in Taiwan...it hopefully made every Gunnm fan a little nauseous...someone was running around trying to brain people with a combat knife. ick.

I forget when, but there is a point when Alita tells Toji, I kill, what I do has nothing to do with sport. His life is eventually pleaded for. He was never supposed to be there is probably a subtext. The Leviathan fight never made sense, he had beat Alita and failed to seize the victory.

And this goes way back for Alita. Koyomi and the stand off with Den. Koyomi's resolve, this world is wrong and I am fighting against it. "I'M JOINING BARJACK!" Alita is not inhuman. She caves. But at that point, at any point prior, and since; there is no doubt; If I ever see you again I will kill on sight.

I do think that the character Alita does kind of take a back seat for an extended period of time...I think Sech's growth, interest and appeal were a surprise and YK just rode it. Looking back, Alita was irrelevant for so much of the Zott.

I did not like the Zott for much of it, but when the big volumes came out and I took it in...omg...best climax ever. Void Fist!

[Martin]

I think Sechs is Zekka's best friend is part of the story. We'll probably never find out.

[MrFaber]

I was explaining Gunnm to someone [...] what is it about?

Well, actually, the main theme of Gunnm is the definition/research of the human persona.

What is the qualifying characteristics of the "i"? What is a human behing in the end?

And it explores that through different, progressive, scenarios.

Is a person who has some part of his/her body replaced by prothesis a human behing?
Is someone who has a full machine body but a human brain a human behing?
What about one who has a human body, but his/her brain is a machine? Did he/she no longer have a "soul"?
And what if i can duplicate an individual, both brain and body, machine or biological? If they don't share their memories, are they different persona? What about if they even share memories, but they started to live different lives? Are they the same person or did they become different persons from the moment the "copy" have been created?

And so on.

[Silvery]

If I were to describe Gunnm (as in, Gunnm/LO/etc) in a shamefully quick 'n dirty way, I'd probably say something along the lines of "the duplicates paradox being explored in a cyberpunk/SF setting; also, you'd be surprised just how much character development can be done while people are trying to kill each other in an intricately choreographed way". Depending on the person I'd mention just how surprisingly inclusive Gunnm is.

[Martin]

just rereading...Toji probably couldn't have defeated Anomaly. He was not supposed to be in the finals is the point.

[MrFaber]

Zekka would have had. And at this point he had joined the Space Karate team. He was just so overpowered that he won the match basically throwing Toji against Anomaly.

[Martin]

It was Tunpo magic jumping from Zekka to Toji.