I remember being a preteen in the mid nineties before the prequel trilogy was announced…hell, before the special edition even came out, hanging on every word of the EU books. Back when I honestly believed we’d never get another Star Wars movie, I must’ve read Zahn and Anderson’s books a dozen times.

Alita is great, some of it gets a little out there, but I think that might just be the nature of Japanese comics, I’m not sure. There are three Alita series, I think the third one is still ongoing. Anywho, the first series seems to have been localized twice, the first time was pretty faithful to the original work. Unfortunately that one is out of print and has been for a while. The second localization was poorly translated, and while it doesn’t seem to be malicious woke meddling in someone else’s work, the poor translation seems to cause some sharp changes to the story. And naturally that version is all that is in print.

So it would seem that if you want the original, faithful, localization you will have to either find a second hand copy in print, or pirate it. I don’t condone piracy because I believe the mangaka that created Alita should get paid, but the US distributor has kind of hamstrung the fans.