The on-going Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle manga will be taking a short break from publication.

According to Anime News Network, the latest issue of publisher Kodansha's Evening magazine states that no new chapters in the Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle manga will be published until the release of the magazine's 17th issue, which will go on sale on Aug. 10. No reason was given for the break.

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Mars Chronicle is the third and final act in Yukito Kishiro's long-running Battle Angel Alita series. The series delves deeper into the past of the amnesiac and immensely powerful cyborg Alita, alternating between stories of her early childhood at an orphanage and her current-day entanglement in a complex power struggle that will determine the future of Mars. The series has been published in Kodansha's Evening magazine ever since 2014, picking up immediately from the end of Kishiro's previous manga series, Battle Angel Alita: Last Order.

The original Battle Angel Alita was first published in 1990. A two-episode anime based on the manga was released directly to video in 1993 and features significant differences from the original story. The manga was initially distributed in North America by VIZ Media, until the license was taken over by Kodansha USA, which reissued the manga in a series of special hardcover releases in 2017 to coincide with the release of the movie.

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The film rights to the series were acquired by Terminator 2 and Avatar director James Cameron in 2003. After undergoing over a decade of delays mostly due to Cameron's busy schedule, the live-action adaptation of the manga, renamed Alita: Battle Angel, was finally released in 2017. The feature film was produced by Cameron and directed by Sin City's Robert Rodriguez, and was originally intended by Cameron to be the first part of a potential trilogy. However, in 2020, Rodriguez said he was optimistic about the chances of a sequel being made.

Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle is currently published by Kodansha Comics and is available via paperback, Kindle or on Comixology.

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Source: Anime News Network