Well I use the description mostly and the year it was made (can't stand art before the 90's).

For shoujo I just steer clear of that genre unless the plot is really interesting, then I would skim through the first chapter to see if the art was a typical shoujo art style.

Almost all the time. Shame on me. >_>

I usually read the summary first then read the reviews although most of the times the reviews are misleading. It has happened a few times though that upon looking at the cover I immediately deduce that it's not for me...

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To see everything from the perspective of eternity

First - read summary
Second - if summary leaves me ambivalent, check reviews (if it's here) or check out the beginning of the manga (if I'm in a book store)

The cover doesn't really have much to do with it for me, except for helping me quickly avoid stuff I'm just not interested in (i.e. if the cover makes it clear that it's your basic shounen fighting manga, or yaoi, or it's *extremely* fan-servicey, etc. then I don't waste time reading the summary).

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"[English] not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
-James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992

That saying was one of my reasons for making this topic.


I's had a winning formula when it came to covers. Not too much going on with a great amount of detail, love 'em.

A lot of the covers of my favourite manga are incredibly inferior to the art inside, so I have learnt not to.

For one thing they are often in some cheesy pose that's completely out of character, and for another it's rare that a manga artist has time to get good at working in colour. The Bleach colours for example always look to me like they were coloured in by a kid with their first pack of felt pens, which considering how classy the chapter title pages are in that manga is a bit silly.

It is a pity though, cos when your mates who dont read manga come round and see them all lined up they think you're reading complete shite...

I always found that weird, compared to western style comics that had covers that are so well done.

I've always read the description and sometimes judge just it by it's cover but I've been good about getting away from that. I also take in account heavily what others thought of it, read a fair share of manga that I wasn't feeling the description or something but people highly recommended it, would read it and be like wow, why did I not want to read this is in the first place. A good example of a manga like that for me is Angel Densetsu

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"I came to laugh at you!" - Chars Aznabal

Sometimes if it looks really weird I won't read it but usually I give it a try first or read the description on the back.

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"Great things come in small packages."

When looking at unscanlated manga, yes, I do.

When looking at scanlated manga, I pay attention to genre, people's comments, reviews (if any) and whatever.

well i shouldnt judge just by cover but mostly i do that. and when i started to read it, mostly all i have is big disappointment. i just dont learn

I tend to read everything I lay my hands on, although, obviously, if a manga has a really super cool cover than I'll probably start reading it the minute I see it. But, yeah, if I judged a manga by its cover, I definitely never would have read Hana Yori Dango, for instance (I didn't like the art of the first covers at all!)... thank goodness I did, though!

if i take a liking to the cover, then i will read the description. but i normally like whats on the cover so i mostly judge it on that the story is about

Gotta be honest. All the time.
Well, when all I see is the cover, and no description, what else am i supposed to judge it with?
Art is an important factor for me to read a manga, no doubt, I won't touch a manga with horrible art unless the plot is uber amazing.

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♪MONSTARR~ will eat all your cookies and steal your bishies~♪ Φ_Φ

Seconded, I look at the art to draw me in.

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Forever lurking...