For many years I collected manga. If you never heard of manga, it is a comic book or graphic novel originally from Japan. The manga I collect are English translations of the original Japanese comics. I started as a teenager in the 2000’s, but over the years I slowed down a lot. This is mostly due to the fact I didn’t like the stories enough to buy new series. As for my old favorite series, most, if not all of them, finished publication over 10 years ago.

Recently, I started watching a lot of YouTube videos about manga collections. This made me realize, if I started my collection all over again, I would establish some new guidelines for picking manga series to own. Collecting manga is expensive, especially if the series is very long. Back in the 2000’s, I didn’t have the ability to do research the way I would’ve like to. So, in honor of my old hobby, I decided to write a post about six tips I would follow today before I buy and collect hard copies of Manga for the first time.

Learn and Understand the Age Rating of Manga. It Could Change Depending on The Publisher.

One of the best ways to understand if a manga contains scenes or situations that you don’t want to read is to learn and understand the age rating of manga. Like movies, there is an age rating for manga. This is done to help potential readers do a pre screen of the manga without reading the whole entire book. Sometimes, publishers change the rating system to be more strict or not. This is why, prior to purchasing any manga, it is important to learn about the publisher of that particular manga’s age rating and what it would imply. For the most part, modern day manga age ratings are far more consistent throughout each publisher than they used to be in the early and mid 2000’s. There are also publishers that include little summaries about what makes that manga rated for that age group.

 

Read Reviews from Multiple, and Honest, Sources (Especially if Trigger Warnings are a Huge Concern!)

Manga, like any form of media, can contain stories may have certain elements that may upset the reader. Today, we call them “trigger warnings”. Back when I started buying and reading manga, trigger warnings were something that wasn’t mentioned in as many reviews as they are today. Although some of my “mistake” manga purchases are due to naiveté, there are certain manga that I purchased due to the praiseworthy reviews about them. What those reviews didn’t mention are the upsetting elements in them that are complete deal breakers for me. This is why research into the manga series is a must. Reading reviews on Amazon helps a lot, as does reading official reviews about a series from official manga and anime based news websites, but watching YouTube videos, reading social media posts, and blogs reviewing the manga and series is important as well. Also, if trigger warnings are a concern, focus on reading reviews that talk about triggers. Same thing goes for official manga and anime news, YouTube channels, and blogs.

 

Research the Current Price for the Single Volumes and/or the Whole Series

Knowing how much you will need to spend per volume to own the whole manga series is an important part of manga collecting. This is because manga is released in volumes, causing manga prices can range dramatically. Some cost $9.99 USD per volume while others can cost $40 USD per volume. Usually what happens is the higher the price for the manga, the high quality the paper, the printing, and more it will be. Still, it can be hard to expect to spend $40 USD per volume for a ten volume manga series!

 

Know the Number of Volumes in the Series

Just like book series, and comic books, there are long manga series and short manga series. The longer the series, the more volumes of manga to collect. This is why it is important to know the number of volumes in a manga series. Some are only one volume long while others can reach well beyond forty volumes. If you are interested in purchasing all the volumes in a certain manga series, then I highly recommend researching the number of volumes in the series. This would help determine how much money per manga (Or how much a whole series) would generally cost.

 

Find Out if New Manga Series Currently in Print in Japan Will be Translated

Many times, popular new manga in Japan are not translated and published in other countries. Sometimes this does not happen. There are reasons for this with the most common one is that there may not be enough people that will purchase the manga. Yet, for fans excited to read the manga in their language, it can be very frustrating.

This is why it is always important to find out if new manga series will be translated and released outside of Japan. Even though it is usually assumed this will happen, checking doesn’t hurt. Look at for news of the releases online. The best places to find this information are news websites that cover manga as well as the official websites for manga publishers.

 

Like With Novels, There Are Classics. And those Classics have First Editions that Can Cost a Lot of Money! Buy Accordingly!

There are manga that is in print and out of print. This includes the “classic” titles. Today, you can find current reprints of popular 1990’s and 2000’s manga in omnibus form. Also, these omnibus volumes are much more affordable to purchase than the original printing of each volume of the manga. This is why it is so important to know if a popular manga from this time period (Or any other time period for that matter) has a very high collectability for the first printing of the series. If you plan on collecting the series to read and read along, purchase the more recent reprinting of the series. If you are collecting it like a book lover would purchase the first edition of a classic novel, then know the price of them will go up quite a lot!

 

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!

 

Featured Image is by Mariah N from Pexels.com.