To further prove how exciting my life is, Muse of Subdued Fangirling tagged me in the Manga Tag game and I have pulled together quite a few pictures to make this work!
Starting with, I don't really have any accurate photos of my bookshelves anymore. 80% of my manga is still at my mom's place (since I have a room, not an apartment or shared house) and the most recent photo I can find is from February 2014 on twitter, except I wasn't home then so it's likely from summer of 2013 and I know I've rearranged it since then (I put the NISA dvds in with the rest and shuffled my non-fiction around to make room for my growing non-manga comic collection). And yes there is a lot of double-stacking going on there.
And this is a collection of images I had my brother send me (hence the bad quality, he's not the photographer in the family) from spring 2014 so you can see close up of the shelves a bit better, although somehow he missed the biggest shelf of my manga (second from the top right side). I would like to say that one-third of that shelving didn't exist when I first moved into that room, I had to buy wood from the hardware store, cut it, sand it, paint it, and put in hooks to hold them!
And here is what I have with me right now, top shelf is all mine, middle shelf is library books+books I plan to donate or sell soon, bottom shelf is my landlady's. There are a few series which pop up in both images like Furuba and CCS but most of the stuff I have with me right now is new!
Down to business then, Megan/Brainchild of The Manga Test Drive resurrected what was originally a youtube question and answer meme about manga collections and it's been going through a number of blogs now for a month. Like a lot of other people I'm combining some of my answers/giving multiples since some of these were really vague questions.
1. What was your first manga?
To read it was Furuba, I had heard about it for a while but didn't have a chance to read it until my freshman year of high school since a new friend have it. I'm not 100% sure about buying manga but I think the first CCS boxset, a Christmas gift, may have been it.
2. What is your most expensive manga?
8. What is your rarest manga?
My most expensive comic, period, is A Redtail's Dream which is a webcomic but it was $60 so it beats out anything else I have. BUT for $60 you get 600, full color pages in a hardbound book with ribbon bookmark so it's a pretty reasonable price. Manga-wise, that would go to either Two Flowers for the Dragon (some of the volumes were going for $20-40 when I got these, I paid less than 20 for all of my volumes, the other four are back with my mom) or the not pictured Afterschool Nightmare, also a CMX title where I once got a later volume for just $3, checked online since I knew some of the volumes were pricey and discovered it was going for $50 on Amazon.
3. What was your least expensive manga?
The Kodansha USA booth guy at Otakon was a tough sell, all volumes for $10 and 4 for $30 instead of the usual MSRP of $44ish. Technically Noragami was the one I got for free, not sure I want to collect both the anime and the manga though.
4. What is the most boring manga you own?
Not anything I own anymore!
5. What is your favorite manga series?
This is hard but I think I have to say Pandora Hearts (volumes 1-10 with my mom). I remember discovering the manga when I tried it out prior to the anime airing and having that wonderful "omg, how does this exist, this is EXACTLY what I want and I have no idea how someone made that, holy cow" moment. Expect a giant post on the series as a whole sometime later in the year since I intend to buy the rest and just read it all, I followed the scans for a long time but felt guilty when I got behind on buying the manga and wanted to hold off until I could support the series again.
6. What is the most relatable manga series you own?
Pppppphhhhhhh. I'm honestly I'm not sure, ParaKiss is my best answer since even though it's not like my life I never had any trouble understanding why this was how it's characters lived the way I did.
7. What is one manga you own that is based off an anime (not the other way around)?
None! Think the only one I've read (and liked) is actually Gundam the Origin, although that's a bit of a special case, which I do intend to buy at some point!
9. What is the most reprinted manga you own?
Proooooobably CCS again, since it was printed multiple times at TP (flipped and then unflipped), reprinted by Dark Horse and now online digitally too. Plus it's been reprinted a few times in Japan too.
10. What is the most popular manga you own?
Gonna go with Megan's answer of FMA (with my mom) because that probably has more widespread "knowledge" than anything else I have.
11. What is the most damaged manga you own?
Nothing is damaged persay but I do buy a lot of secondhand, library volumes and some of those stickers are impossible to take off, had to remove some from one of those Two Flowers books while I was shooting actually.
12. Which manga has the most amazing art?
Also stealing Megan's answer to say Bride's Story, it's fantastic beyond words.
13. What is the oldest published manga that you own?
I don't think I have an answer to this since nothing I have, that I know of, is pre-90s. There are a few older series I want to get, like Message to Adolf which is early 80s, but that's it!
14. What is the newest published manga you own?
Got it at Otakon a week before the street date!
15. What are some of the most recent manga you have purchased?
It's the light novel but I still say it counts
Honestly I don't think there's anyone left to tag in this but if there's anyone out there who hasn't been tagged and was secretly waiting to do this until they were tagged, just say I tagged you!
