Battle Angel Alita. Not many people remember this female-empowering, yet deeply fragile characters from the early 90s. She started her life in the pages of Shueisha's Business Jump Magazine in 1990 from the hands of master manga artist/writer Yukito Kishiro. It chronicle shte life of Alita, a cyborg found in the massive trash heap of a far future earth by Daisuke Ido, a cyber doctor. She has lost her memories and attempts to regain them through combat. Giving her a new body, Ido "raises" Alita in Iron Town, the city beneath the floating city of Tiphaeres (Zalum in the anime). Alita finds out that Ido has a secret double life: that of a bounty hunter who tracks down killer borgs and deals with them with extreme prejudice with the aid of his rockethammer. Throughout the series, which spans 9 volumes and roughly 68 chapters total, Kishiro tells the story of a girl who becomes a woman through very extraordinary and tragic circumstances. She lives in a world where the saying "only the strong survive" takes on it's literal meaning. The writing is top-notch and the character developement solid. It's a violent book with lots of blood, brains, and body parts flying in all directions when our girl goes to work. I blew through the first book and I've got more on order.

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order is Kishiro's retelling of the story if things had happened differently. It goes on for 8-9 volumes and roughly 60 chapters. Our violent, blood-covered Alita takes on new foes and finds new friends in her struggle to restore a friend of hers from a brain-collecting computer.

Battle Angel Alita was also made into a two-part anime in 1993 and is the only adaptation to-date, of the manga with no intention of reviving it. This is sad, I think, sinc ehte movie was pretty good even though it only covered the two first chapters in condensed form with (if you read the manga) quite a few changes.