In the manga Battle Angel Alita, also known as Gun Dream, Ketheres Elyion is a space station 1200 KM above the Scrapyard. The city doesn't play an apparent role in the series until the very end, but it is conspicuos by its absence.
The physics of the set up are a little suspect, but in the series there is a ring of metal circling the globe. At a certain point, above what is now Kansas City, Kansas, is a vertical column stretching upwards to an altitude of 1200 km and downwards to a distance about 3 km above the surface, where the city Tiphares lies. The column that stretches upwards has the space city Ketheres Elyion at the top. Ketheres was originally designed by an advanced human society to be a space port where humans would emigrate throughout space. Due to some catastrophe, the port now lies empty, with the lower city of Tiphares being the home of the descendants of the powerful colonizer civilization.
The cities were originally called Jeru and Zalem (together: Jerusalem) in the Japanese version of the story. For some reason, perhaps due to the political nature of this name, it was changed into Ketheres Elyion and Tiphares, also both reasonable latinizations of Hebrew names. The names chosen in translation are possibly very meaningful, or perhaps just random choices.
Ketheres and Tifares are translations of Kether and Tifareth, both names of Sephiroth, that would be, in diagram, directly in relations as the cities are in the manga. That, is, one above the other. In addition, "Kether" is a rather multifaceted term in Hebrew. The literal meaning of "Kether Elyion" is "Highest Crown". However, it has many other meanings\references, such as being a cosmological goal, as well paradoxically an orgin. The term crown itself derives from the word "encircling", and the philosophical concept was so "aethiric" that it was said that it was "empty", because nothing could describe it.
In the series, Ketheres Elyion is a "crown" because it is the highest point of the column stretching into space. It is "empty" because it is void of people, as well as being in the void (space) in the physical sense. It is the origin of the current human situation, as well as a symbol of the goal of human interplanetary migration. In addition, although Space Port Ketheres itself is a single point, the ring it is attached to encircles the planet.
At the end of the series, Alita runs to the junction of the ring and the column, and passes her DNA into the organic metal structure of the whole shebob, transforming it into a gigantic flower, and thus allowing people to go from the Scrapyard, to Tiphares, to Ketheres Elyion, which is now kind of a Westfield Shoppingtown in space. This is, of course, a reference to the Heart Sutra.
| 
