This is my friend's story.

Found an ARIA manga in the largest bookstore in my country.
He interested to buy it.
But.. Hey only vol 10.
Where is the others?
And after searching the whole manga part, he found the vol 11.
But only that, no vol 1-9 and 12.
And so the scanlation saves his live.

My country has many manga published but most of al is Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Eyeshield 21, and Nube. Else, just a bunch of manhwa and lots of un popular manga. There is some popular one, but not many. Manga isn't very popular in my country. They says that Manga is only for children, and lots of children at the manga part of that bookstore. Nuff ranting, life goes on.

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~Everyone will be alone someday, living on in memories only. Even so, it's fine. I call this peaceful feeling my friend.~

There's some maybe 15 titles in The National Bookstore but majority of them are OEM. Aside from that...none. I can get Japanese raws through a Japanese friend who runs an Anime/Manga hobby shop though.

I live in Finland and it is very difficult to by my manga. My town here are only one shop which sell manga in english language.Selection is very limited. Even now days I order my manga different internet shops. Prices are quit high. For example Kuroshitsuji volume 1 pay 13 euro or 16.76 dollar plus shipping.

Option 2 for me - it would take more money then I could afford. A single volume of manga in my town costs $9.50. I'm a high school student with no job, and with this economy, no chance of getting one. The little money I have is what I've been given by my parents for mowing the lawn or washing the cars; so basically, nothing.

Not to mention, as most others have said, they mostly have the more popular, mainstream stuff. Of course, I know of a specialty store or two (well... not anymore, actually. They went out of business) So I DID know of a specialty store or two with more selection, but they had the same high prices.

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I think this question seems to be asking too many things. When I voted, I interpreted it as, "Can you access manga without the use of digital scans on the internet?" since this seems to be the popular topic these days. If you include using the internet to learn about and purchase manga, it seems like a whole different topic. I think everyone's aware that the internet is very useful for many things, including legally purchasing manga (or legally reading it on a publisher's website (or accessing your public library's online catalog to place holds and make requests)) as well as accessing content that is not offered legally. But no one is threatening to take away the entire internet—it's just illegal digital scan websites that are closing/etc.

Anyway. We have a few nice bookstores in my area with a good manga selection, and my favourite store is always more than happy to special order books for me. I do, however, use online stores in addition to in-store purchasing, and I also follow a number of manga-review websites that talk about new and upcoming series to decide whether I want to buy/read a title. (MangaBlog is excellent at rounding up reviews from around the internet daily, as well as other interesting manga-related articles. And I don't use it quite as much, but Manga Views has a nice and ever-growing database/archive of reviews organized by series, if I want to find out more about an older series.)

No I have stores that I can reach where they sell manga, mainstream and the not so mainstream I guess.
I have back up shops as well just in case they don't have like certain volumes I need or whatever, so it's not impossible at all. In fact it's very easy for me to purchase manga.
The only problem is the money. The prices keep on increasing and I'm a broke Uni student who's going to need to spend her hard earned money (which is basically peanuts) on art materials and fees and not on manga
The mainstream manga is the cheapest out of the bunch. The not so popular ones are getting close to £10 per volume which is just stupid and really expensive when there are a few volumes to buy.

Well, without the internet, it wouldn't be easy...since online shopping can do wonders.
But not really, the bookstores' manga collection isn't...that bad. It's not enough, though.

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

i live in brazil, and theres is a few mangas being published in my country

theres some problems tough...
1. they are a bit on the expensive side, cant blame them for that, anything published here tend to be expensive. but the have the habit of splitting volumes in two

2. they also have the habit of going on hiatus or simply stop a series midways, i pretty much stopped buying it because of that. after a few of the mangas i used to buy stop being published( including my favorite one piece)

3. translation varies between tolerable and complete garbage. the last issue of ranma that i have here(which stop being published mid way also) makes absolutely no sense at all!

also some mangas are translated in weird way, with some things being left in the original language and not being adapted. beats me whats the criteria to decide what is what is not. but some mangas(which are released on a small form) end being polluted with side notes explaining those
ever saw a explanation about meiji revolution written in between two frames? i have


4. Brazil is a bit unbalanced on population, most of the people live in the southeast of the country(são paulo), and the manga distribution follows that
even i, who lives in a respectably large city, 4th largest city over 2.5 milhion people, always get release 3~6 months after release. sometimes we don't get it at all. i have a few holes in some series i used to buy because that

i also have the personal problem that most of mangas kinda lost the fun for me, maybe i'm getting old or read too much, but i keep seeing the same themes, situations and so over and over and over. with exception of one piece no manga made me truly feel that vibe that made me start reading mangas in years


Last edited by khh at 5:30 pm, Jul 24 2010

No, because my library system has a, what I consider, large range of manga available, but they have a nice selection and a librarian who cares. Outside my county, I'm not sure of the situation... Borders and B&N pretty much stock up on what's new and the main stream mangas, like usual, but are even unpredictable in that field (new mangas might be there right when the month starts or up to 1 to 5 months later, if at all).

In all I'd say it is very easy to access manga here, which I Iike, because I like manga.

Note: Manhwa is a different story since Tokyopop quit half-way through...

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I care waaaaay too much...

I'm about 2 hours (public transit ≈ $20 round trip) from LA Kinokuniya....

So, no. It's not hard.

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"Officially, this machine doesn't exist, you didn't get it from me,
and I don't know you. Make sure it doesn't leave the building."

I could probably go to the library for the more generic ones, but there are two problems. One is that I dislike reading "official" translations of mangas by the publishing companies. Two is that there isn't a large selection in the library, so I could only read a bit of what I normally read. So I chose the "more money than I can afford" option.

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Lalala~

Stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble only carry mainstream stuff like One Piece , Bleach, Naruto. I don't like any of the mainstream stuff. And If I did order a series I liked. They eventually just got dropped. Good titles that I have actually been interested in have all been dropped. Whats the point of buying manga if the series is going to get dropped. Some titles I could mention include Rure, Junai Tokkou Taichou! , Apothecarius Argentum and a bunch of other titles that where dropped. All most all other titles I read ,have not been published in English. I would buy the manga if it where available in English. But its not and if they are they have a high percentage of being dropped. . I think publishers are hypocrites. They are fighting and demanding manga scanlations to be taken of the internet, but they cant even continue a series they pick up. I get excited when I stumble on a series I actually like, buy it, happily expecting another volume,only to find it it was drooped. Yeah published titles should be taken of the web. Since you could buy it in stores. But what about the rest? I think they should stay. Since where else can we read them? Unfinished series have just left a sour taste in my mouth, and utter disappointment. And considering the publishing company lack of creditability in general , why should I buy a title when the series could just get dropped the next month?

Last edited by foreverfree123 at 5:29 pm, Jul 24 2010

It's not hard for me to obtain licensed manga. There are quite a few major bookstores that have fairly large manga collections in my area. There are even a few small comic shops that sell obscure or out of print licensed manga. Sometimes I order books from Amazon but I usually don't have to.

As for untranslated manga, as in the Japanese books, I have no access what so ever. I have no interest in buying untranslated manga but I wouldn't have the option to anyway. I need scans, as I assume most people do, to read unlicensed manga.

to get manga... we have to import theres no shop that sells them here BUT u can always go to the japanese embasy to get ur fix ( free ) they got a nice room with mangas there i bet they have some otakus working here .

I just hope cheap people aren't just picking the money one despite living in North America.


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