Alternatively if you have never bought a volume, what is first on your wishlist to kickstart your collection?
Dragonball issue 5 and 34. Every other issue in my area was sold out. This was my first introduction to manga/anime, except maybe Pokemon anime I grew up with.
The blue, earless, mechanical cat - Doraemon
A Doraemon movie was actually my first anime movie that I had, on cassette, when I was a child.
Are you a big Doraemon fan or was it just by chance that you got that?
I had those too, on VHS. Loved it as a kid, but just an average fan now lol. I recently watched the movies on Netflix (Stand By Me) and saw some episodes randomly on YouTube, but didn’t really like them. I would still occasionally read manga though
Dragonball Z, I remember being given the volume with the arrival of Trunks by a friend of mine
Solid beginnings, I much prefer dragon ball over manga nowadays.
Agree. Although I much prefer Dragon Ball over Dragon Ball Z or Super. I think Toriyama shines the most when he goes with action comedy. I like Dr. Slump the most out of all his work.
Yep, Dragon Ball actually felt like an adventure. Also being inspired by journey to the west, at least in aesthetics and cast, is a huge plus for me.
Og Dragon Ball has so much charm, and it avoids the infinite scaling of power the series would later be known for
Funnily enough, the first volume of Tour Lie in April was gifted to me and was my very first volume.
I’m more of a digital person, but I still have the volume.
I’m definitely a digital person too, I have never read a series physical first nor do I have a complete one. But I do like owning volumes, it kind of allows me to think I support the author regardless of how little money actually comes their way from my purchase jeje
Volumes 1&2 of K-ON! I was planning to read it sometime but when I saw the physical volumes at a bookstore I immediately bought them (one of the best financial decisions I made, lol). I bought the other two volumes a few weeks later.
For me, technically it was green blood volume 1 which I received as a gift, I didn’t like it at all tbh, art was pretry but this kind of seinen wasn’t my style.
First one I bought myself was Jojo’s volume 4, battle tendency.
Shame you didn’t really like Green Blood, not an enormous fan of it, but I was always enjoyed reading it. I guess more accurately I’m just a sucker for the art style.
I bought a few Shaman King volumes because I saw the show on Fox on saturday mornings and thought it was the coolest thing ever.
I got very lucky and the first physical manga I got were the first 19 volumes of Berserk after finding it for $20 on Craigslist. After that I started buying more
Less than a dollar for each volume? That’s insane, I would certainly have thought it was a scam
I was just stupidly lucky and even put it on reddit when it happened. I even remember seeing the ad on Craigslist and thinking the guy probably sold it already because it was up for at least a month and it was down from $40. Instead the guy replied quite quick and the only thing he wanted to make sure is that I was over 18YO.
The first manga I bought was volume 31 of Berserk, the scanlations I was using had a huge gap that started at that chapter so I said wtf why not.
My first full series purchase was the full box set of A Silent Voice, top 10 all time for me so I had to have it, sadly got ruined when my old home flooded but hey what can you do lol
E: Actually if you count issues of Shonen Jump as physicals then I’d been sporadically reading chapters off those when I was younger, they used to sell them in the local blockbuster I believe, though it was never consecutive so I couldn’t actually follow any stories lmao. I vividly remember reading chapter #504 of Naruto and being very, VERY confused lmao
The only physical manga I own is the berserk deluxe editions. I’m still missing two volumes. I would love to own the jojo series in hardcover as well.
Nice, that is my favorite volume release of all time, it should be more common to do releases of that size (the cover is also nice, but I really like how big they are)
It was 25 years ago, so I don’t remember. Blade of the Immortal was one of the first, if not the very first, graphic novels I bought. Back then, graphic novels were only for back releases, and new releases were typically two or three chapters combined into a monthly Western style issue, so I’m sure I bought some of those before getting graphic novels.
My friend’s sister gave me the whole Sailor Moon series and most of Inuyasha when she was getting ready to go to university. I eventually bought the rest of Inuyasha.
Probably one of the pokemon mangas.
About 17 or so years ago I had a little money to spend on a book, and found this odd little shelf in my local bookstore. I’d never seen anything like it before, so picked up the coolest thing I could find and that’s how I ended up reading Shaman King. My taste has changed somewhat since!
I felt Shaman King had a lot of potential. The author was smart to move on from “spirit possession” early on since there’s far more room for creativity with external weapons, and it looks cooler too. Too bad the tournament arc became too “philosophical” and it just went down hill from there. Such a shame
I do think it’s a shame that the spirit possession got scrapped entirely. I would have liked it more if it remained a tool in their arsenal, rather than being completely overshadowed by Oversoul. I think there were a couple of chapters where an enemy disabled everyone’s Oversoul abilities, and Yoh had to be possessed by Amidamaru again for the first time since volume 3 or so.
Shaman King was my first too! I really loved the art style and the flashiness of it all.
I found the second volume of the old Tokyopop Blame! release in some secondhand bookstore. I was DEEPLY confused after reading it.
I can definitely see why! It would have been really weird to read blame with 0 prior context.
