If, intrigued by the spectacular art-snippet on the front page, you're wondering what in the world this book series might be about then this review is exactly what you were looking for. You eventually ending up on this page isn't too much of a coincidence as the frontpage posting, hosting the fenomenal art of Yukito Kishiro, directly guides you to this section of my blog but heh, maybe you just lucky-guessed this article's 'url'...

Introductions past let's move on to a short word of the author on the subject of his life's-work, setting everything in the right perspective :

Known as "Gunnm" in Japan, this comic was my debut series. It was published serially from winter 1990 until spring 1995, in Shueisha's "Business Jump" magazine. After many years of trial and error,I finally succeeded in creating a story that combined an introspective cyborg theme with the concept of surviving in an apocalyptic world Battle Angel Alita has been a very big success for me. Besides Japanese, it has been published in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Thai. Compared to my other works, Battle Angel Alita is very unique.
There are 2 completely different underlying themes in the series. The "darkness mode" refers to the to dark side of life, and the "glory mode"  refers to the goodness of human nature. To succeed in showing this contrast, I created characters,whostrove for humanity in a dark world.
Someday, I would like work on Battle Angel Alita again...
maybe an extra story or something like that.

Now follows a short storyline description by the author himself:

Tiphares, the gigantic and mysterious mid-air city, covers the sky. Underneath, junkies and cyborgs live in the ruined city known as the "Scrap Yard". Within the giant pile of ruble cast off from the city in the sky, begins the story of a girl. One day in the Scrap Yard, and ex-Tipherean citizen and cybernetic doctor named "Ido" finds the partially destroyed body of a young cyborg girl. He names her "Alita". Even after being restored by Ido, Alita has no memory, so she fights to recover her true self that is hidden somewhere inside her body. While helping Ido against a powerful enemy, Alita's ability to use the "Panzer Kunst", a long lost fighting technique,returns... By fighting through various encounters in this sci-fi action epic, the cyborg girl, Alita, grows as a human being.                      -Yukito Kishiro