Gunnm/Trivia

• Executive Meddling: The whole debacle with the story being put on hold and Kishiro switching publishers was caused by Shueisha editors' attempts to censor the dialog in reprint issues to appear more sensitive—demanding he not use the word "crazy" because "some people who read it may have incurable mental disorders and would be offended." (They suggested "mad" or "angry" instead.)
  • To wit—they censored the reprints of the manga without his knowledge a few times, then the legal team got him involved directly. They intentionally did this while he was in the middle of crunch time getting chapter 100 out, forcing him to either accept the changes they were "suggesting" or they'd use a clause in his contract about missing a deadline to prohibit all future reprints of Gunnm, effectively ending his career. He didn't notice the former until the latter happened; his response to the entire affair was to demand they recall the edited works and replace them with the "correct" versions or he would change publishers... they refused, so he did.
• Shout-Out: To various classic rock and metal bands.
  • Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie appears at one point. "Aces High"/"Live to Fly" is stamped on Sechs' soles in chapter 66.
  • Bounty Hunter Zapan has the Blue Oyster Cult logo on his face.
  • One character owns an antique synthesizer with the name alan parsons Dymotaped on the side.
  • One really badass scene in Volume 5 is further enhanced by the imprints on the soles of Sechs' boots, which are "Blood Red Skies" and "You won't break me". A shout-out to a little known Judas Priest song from the "Ram It Down" album.
  • Desty Nova's name and the name of the "Imaginos" armor are also BOC shout-outs, which makes a lot of sense considering that "Desty Nova" as said in Imaginos means 'Eternal Light' and Desty Nova is pretty much unkillable... at least permanently.
  • The fighter champion Kinuba from volume one is Slaine from Two Thousand AD with cyborg arms.
  • Some of the Space Karate fighters are shout-outs to Radon/Rodan, Kamen Rider, The Chupacabra, and Robby the Robot.
  • The first great cataclysm of their universe happened in E.S. 55—which translates to AD 2012. Well, most probably not to the movie itself, but to all those crackpot theories it was based on.
  • There's also a character identical to Grace Jones.
  • Space Angels engineers are basically Sakaki and Shige, Patlabor resident gearheads, in cyborg form.
  • The Kudos! List has an extensive archive here: