Maddies Manga

Are you the type to take a chance on a book just by its title, or its cover? What about if you like one of the authors other books?

As I’m the type of person who cannot stand spoilers, but also doesn’t want to buy a book I ultimately won’t enjoy, this is a bit of a tricky topic for me!

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Cover art vs art style

One thing I’ve come to notice rather quickly after I became more serious about collecting manga is that art on the cover of a manga isn’t necessarily the same style as the rest of the manga.

I find this is more common with webtoons that have gotten manga adaptations than manga that started out in manga magazines, however I always think it’s a good idea to take a quick peak at the first few pages before you buy.

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Buying completely blind

As I tend to be rather picky with what I add to my collection nowadays, borrowing books from the library did allow me to grab everything that seemed even slightly interesting. This was actually rather therapeutic for me, as I no longer feel that urge to grab first read later.

While I did enjoy a good amount of what I borrowed from the library, I am very happy that I chose to borrow and not purchase. There were quite a few series’ with stories that seemed interesting but fell flat, had a ML that I couldn’t stand from the start, or just I found to be rather boring, that I probably would have bought had bought had it not been for my library.

Reading reviews

I also learnt that I can’t necessarily depend on just the description written on the back of a book to indicate whether I might like a book. This is why I’ve grown rather fond of review sites! While I love being a part of the manga community across social media, I also really put a lot of faith into GoodReads.

While everyone has different opinions on how to properly rate something (some say DNF’s shouldn’t be allowed to rate as they didn’t read the whole thing, others say people shouldn’t be allowed to rate 1 star), in general, I think it’s a very good system.

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Blind buying a certain authors books?

This is a bit of a difficult one for me! There are a few mangaka who, whenever they write something new, I just know I need to get my hands on it. I’ll list a few of them just in case you’re interested (note, not all of them are shoujo mangaka, but they all deserve love!)

• Nazegaki Narumi
• Fujimoto Tatsuki
• Julietta Suzuki
• Alto Yukimura

Usually though, I typically still feel a need to take a peek into a known authors new book before making the plunge.

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My most recent purchase…

Was actually a somewhat blind purchase!

As I’ve read one of this author’s other manga, In The Clear Moonlight Dusk, I was intrigued by their older manga, Tsubaki-chou Lonely Planet!

As I know I like this mangaka’s art style, I felt no need to take a sneak peek at the art, but I did want to see what others thought of it before I made the plunge. The reviews were actually quite mixed! Some loved it, some hated it, some found it to be very telling of the time it was written in.

Although the reviews really didn’t push me one way or another, I did end up ordering it! I usually end up liking some of the more controversial manga, so I really hope that I don’t regret this purchase – but I doubt I will. ~

In case you were interested…

Here’s a little peak at what I bought! I’m very excited for it to arrive~

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How about you! Do you have anything you feel you have to do before purchasing a new manga?