銃夢

GUNNM

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
9
RELEASE
April 1, 1995
CHAPTERS
54

DESCRIPTION

In a dump in the lawless settlement of Scrapyard, far beneath the mysterious space city of Zalem, disgraced cyber-doctor Daisuke Ido makes a strange find: the detached head of a cyborg woman who has lost all her memories. He names her Gally and equips her with a powerful new body, the Berserker. While Gally remembers no details of her former life, a moment of desperation reawakens in her nerves the legendary school of martial arts known as Panzer Kunst. In a place where there is no justice but what people make for themselves, Gally decides to become a hunter-killer, tracking down and taking out those who prey on the weak. But can she hold onto her humanity as she begins to revel in her own bloodlust?

(Source: Kodansha USA, edited)

CAST

Gally
Desty Nova
Sechs
Ido Daisuke
Jashugan
Figure Four
Kaos
Lou Collins
Koyomi K
Den
Yugo
Shumira
Zapan
Makaku
Gime

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO GUNNM

OVA ActionGUNNM

MANGA Sci-FiGUNNM: Last Order

MANGA ActionGUNNM Gaiden

MANGA ActionHaisha

REVIEWS

4digitmen
80/100
A flawed classic that gets tunnel vision half-way through, but redeems itself in its sequel.
No bullshit, long-winded explanation of what the manga is. If you want that, the synopsis does a pretty good job and the plot summary on the wiki is good too. I'm also not dividing this into sections, just because it feels pointless when most manga mesh both character and plot concepts together to where tearing them apart makes it harder to analyze.

To start off, the title might give the impression that this will have a bad/average score, but if you quickly scroll down you'll notice a rather high score. Because, regardless of how bad I think the direction went halfway in, the plot writing actually improves, and the characters, especially Alita herself, are much MUCH better than before. I think the score would be lower if there wasn't a sequel, but for now, we will put that aside until I write my review on Last Order, which IMO is so far the best entry in the trilogy.

Scrapyard

Gunnm starts off on a rather good note, showing off the art and the Scrapyard as a whole, a scuffed city that provides for the people up above on Zalem. This whole beginning bit has some questionable writing and pacing, especially the villain Makeku and the romance with Hugo, but for the most part, the characters are fine. This is probably where Alita is at her worst and most "submissive" since she is constantly being led around by Ido and his possessiveness, and also where Ido is at his worst for, let's say, being left to just being a father figure which wants Alita to stay out of fighting. Then Gunnm pulls a weird move and makes the romance with Yugo turn from a subplot into a real plot, which doesn't end up developed and not really believable, and honestly this "arc" is a mess and well-deservedly short so we are just going to skip over it.

Alita Motorball Arc

The next arc has Alita in the Motorball games, and for fights this might be the strongest arc, and where things start to go uphill for the manga as a whole, with the introduction of Jashugan as an "antagonist" which is more of a rival character. Here Alita becomes completely independent and not reliant on Ido, and where she finally accepts her true nature as a fighter after facing Jashugan. There's not too much to say here, but this is where Gunnm hits the peak world-building-wise and its a steady decline from here. The characters and the plot still get better than here, especially with Alita herself.

Zalem (Tiphares)

After the end of the Motorball Arc (takes place in the Scrapyard), Gunnm sets up the main antagonist of the series named Desty Nova, who apparently is behind everything that has happened to Alita thus far. Now as much as I do enjoy Nova's character in the later entries as he takes a sort-of more backseat role, this is the absolute worst way to introduce an antagonist, because up until this point everything was both BLACK AND WHITE, while now it's BLACK VS WHITE.

Desty Nova

In more simple terms, Desty Nova is set up as an irredeemable mad scientist who is all the worlds evil and Alita is the undeniable good. The previous antagonists for the entirety of the Scrapyard always had their own motivations, ambitions, reasons, or complete explanations as to why they believe in those things, and why that clashes with how Alita views the world (Makeku because of the way he was raised and his conditions, and Jashugan because they were similar but had different goals). Nova is just the mad scientist trope. THAT'S IT. It's stupid, and the shitty part is Nova is the antagonist until the end of this entry. THE ENTIRE TIME.

The logical next step would be to search for this Nova, and this takes us to the Badlands and the beginning of the TUNED Arc. Sadly, aside from the HUGE amount of foreshadowing given to us by the ruins in the Badlands and the general location of the Badlands, there is no more world-building aside from that since the Badlands consist mostly of desert with a few scatered towns everywhere.

Alita TUNED Arc

The entire lot of characters introduced here are, as I said before, an absolute improvement, except for the romance between Alita and Figure Four. In general, the romance with Alita throughout the whole story is not very well done and honestly would have been much better without it entirely. The plot here is very good, as I think Den is ambitious in his goal and the Barjack organization being behind him is the icing on the cake (I'm a sucker for labor revolts, so this would obviously entertain me), and not only that it completely clashes with whom Alita is sided in this arc creating conflict. There are a couple of plot-twists in this arc, one left a bad taste in my mouth and the other wasn't really that impactful but cool to see and revealed more information about the unknown world of Zalem.

Though, sadly, as stated in the title, it gets tunnel vision. After this antagonist is taken down, Nova is somehow involved again and stays as the antagonist until the end, not leaving any room for more world-building beyond the Badlands, for Zalem, or even what was left of the Scrapyard/its origins. The original ending makes this worse by rushing things with exposition dumps, and not leaving any time to process the information. Last Order gladly retcons this, but the canon ending is just abrupt and isn't conclusive enough.

That's it. It's an 8, simply because most of the major problems I had while reading it I could easily ignore because the plot-twists, characters, and art were stellar, and also that it's sequel fixed all the problems I had with this one.
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szatanek
80/100
Great setting that deserves a better, actually thought-out story. Aka my love-hate relationship with Gunnm
Frankly speaking, I have very mixed feelings about this manga. I disliked many things about it but loved at least as much.

First of all, the art is excellent. Very meticulous drawings, great panelling (with quite a few amazing double page panels) and really cool designs. I’m not a big fan of action-heavy manga in general as I often find the action sequences a bit difficult to follow, but it didn’t seem to be the case here. The author somehow managed to draw them in a way that I could imagine the movement behind the still drawings with not much effort. It’s certainly one of the best looking manga I've read so far. 11/10 lol

The next thing I absolutely love is the world-building. Kishiro-sensei created an incredibly interesting setting. I found myself very curious about the world itself – especially the story behind the "floating" city of Zarem. Too bad that manga failed miserably at satisfying that curiosity though. One of my biggest complaints in that matter (a minor spoiler, I guess):

Zarem, a city separated from the world below, the entry is strictly prohibited and once you leave it there's no going back. A city full of mysteries, no one really knows much about it but some idealize it. And then we have Ido, one of the main characters and one of very few former Zarem citizens living currently in the city below. An anomaly. Makes you really curious what happened in his life, right? Why did he leave Zarem? Or maybe he was forced to for some reason? Why is he here, what’s his story? Very interesting! But the manga never really explores it. He's there because his presence as a person of Zarem is needed for the development of the story and that's all apparently. Oh, well...

That's just one example of the kind of thing I really disliked about this manga – too often it feels like something is/happens the way it is/does just because it's convenient for the author at the moment, with little reason behind it. But well, the author himself admits that he hadn't had a real plan for the story from the start and was just making things up as he went so I guess that's what we get.

That was a big let-down for me. Not because the story is particularly bad. No, it's very engaging for the most part actually and filled with a lot of very interesting ideas. But there’s also no shortage of rather dumb or questionable scenes. Oh, and the ending is a severely lacking in context mess. Overall, I can't help feeling that there's a lot of wasted potential here.

As for characters, I'm really unsure if I like Gally or not. When she's cool she's cool as fuck but sometimes I would find her behaviour very irritating and hard to stomach. She acts like a spoiled brat way too often for my liking. But she becomes more likeable as the story progresses, to be fair. There’s one thing for sure though – I love her best when she goes on a killing spree.

Most of the other characters are fine, some really interesting. I liked Ido a lot, he's a cool guy. And I love the main villain – that's how you write a mad scientist lol He's not evil for the sake of being evil, he's just truly insane and very convincing in his insanity. A despicable guy you hate with all you've got but can't help feeling some weird kind of admiration towards him at the same time. Definitely a strong point of the series.

All in all I love Gunnm, it's really cool. But it had the potential of being so much more and I hate it for wasting it.
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Aetherys117
87/100
Perle de la SF dite "old School" aux côtés de Akira et Ghost In The Shell
Dans un futur lointain, où même mourir n'a plus de sens, où l'on peut se déchiqueter le corps, sans pour autant en avoir conclut avec la vie.

Dans un futur où le paradis, le cité blanche d'Ivoire de Zalem, trône en maître au dessus de nos têtes et où en bas se vit un enfer au quotidien, dans une décharge suitant l'acier.

Dans un futur ou tel Icare, les cybernisés de la décharge se brûlent s'ils tentent d'approcher Zalem.

Dans ce futur, un beau jour, du haut de Zalem, tombe un ange, un parangon de vertu et de beauté. Son nom était Yoko, elle s'appellera désormais Gally.

Sur les conseils de son "père", Ido, elle tente malgré son amnésie, de découvrir qui elle est vraiment. Cet être de vertu et de douceur, au visage de poupée, se trouve pourtant rapidement aspiré dans un maelström d'extrême violence, à mesure qu'elle tente de mener une vie paisible. Elle se rend compte d'une chose : c'est au cœur du combat et du dépassement de soi, qu'elle pourra espérer retrouver ses souvenirs perdus. Que ce soit au coeur des arènes d'un sport ultra violent nommé le Motorball où dans les plaines arides jouxtant la Décharge, préparez vous à être emporté dans un récit sous haute tension, à la recherche des souvenirs de Gally et dans sa quête d'un futur meilleur. Dans un enchaînement ininterrompu de combats, elle devra gravir les marches et protéger ceux qu'elle aime pour espérer trouver et comprendre la vérité.

Dans un style graphique précis et dynamique, Yukito Kishiro nous embarque dans un récit cyberpunk qui a rapidement su graver dans le marbre son importance majeure dans le genre. Si les scènes de Motorball sont dessinée d'une main de maître, alliant une sensation de vitesse et de dynamisme à outrance, l'auteur maîtrise tout autant les paysages en double page. L'alliance improbable entre arts martiaux, chi, armes de tout genre et corps cybernétique aux dimensions titanesques donne un cocktail détonnant dans Gunm.

Mais bien au delà d'une claque visuelle qui saura vous laisser figé devant certains combats mêlant art martiaux et corps cybernétiques en lambeaux, Gunnm est une source de questionnements existentielles.

Ce genre de questionnement dont en quelque sorte parti du genre Cyberpunk. En effet, dans un monde qui semble à la dérive, où l'homme n'a même plus conscience de ses limites et où ses désirs les plus malsains peuvent être assouvis, c'est dans ces mondes là justement qu'on y trouve un terreau fertile à la réflexion, un espèce de miroir sur ce que pourrait devenir notre société et comment l'éviter. Dans Gunnm, la question du corps est omniprésente car en plus de le voir se déchirer, se démolir ou même se reconstruire, on pose souvent des questions : qu'est ce qui fait l'humain, le corps ou la conscience ?

Si de notre être, il ne reste plus que boulons, écrous et système informatique, sommes nous encore des êtres conscients ? Au fil du manga, on y découvre des êtres d'une laideur et d'une difformité indescriptible, qui semble prêts à être à 2 doigts d'exploser sous la charge de leurs modifications corporelles. Dans Gunm, la notion de cyberniser son être est poussé à son paroxysme. On va ici bien plus loin qu'un simple bras bionique ou un œil, mais jusqu'à changer l'entièreté de son corps pour dépasser des dimensions classiques ! Certains personnages ressemblent alors à des animaux quand certains ne sont alors plus que des éléments interchangeables dont on utilise les oreilles ou même le visage comme d'un baume pour faire fonctionner la grande roue du système.

Dans ce marasme d'acier donc, certaines réponses émergent et c'est à nous, lecteur, d'en interpréter le contenu.

En conclusion, Gunm est un immanquable et il m'a été difficile de réfréner ma plume tant il y a des choses à raconter, autant dans la trame principale que dans les questions qui la jalonne. Je pense m'attarder à l'occasion à quelques FRAME ANALYSIS sur certaines planches qui méritent à elles seules un débat tout entier.
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