Do you know what Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, Tsutomu Nihei’s Blame!, and Yuu Someya’s Pleasure and Corruption all have in common? They are all manga that I purchased volume-by-volume, then sold as a collection once I finished reading them. It wasn’t because I didn’t like them, Monster is great and Blame! is still Nihei’s best work, but because I felt my experience with those titles was done. This is due to the rule I have for manga: if I’m not going to read it again, then it doesn’t need to be in my library anymore.
It always surprises people to discover that I keep a giant cardboard box on the floor of my library at all times. Admittedly, it does clash with the rest of the décor though it does have a purpose. Said box is there as a halfway home for manga pulled from my shelves to be re-sold. That box will remain there for 2-3 months, slowly being filled, until no more room remains and I have to take it back to Half-Price Books. Manga sizes vary but I can usually fit 35ish volumes in there before space and weight become an issue. After everything has been sold off, the box goes back in the corner of my library and the process starts over again.
This process doesn’t really recoup the money that I spent on said manga, you can expect to earn 10-18% of retail price back, but I find the real value is in making space. Even though I have an entire room of my house dedicated to books, there is still a limit on how many I can store in there. If someone else happens upon the books I sold and picks them up for a steal, then I’m all too happy to provide that opportunity. Given the transient nature of my collection, I’m often asked why I bother buying so many in the first place.
Why I bother buying so many in the first place…
I have something of a flaw when it comes to manga. I don’t particularly trust the opinions or reviews of people that aren’t me. This extends to anime as well but it isn’t because I think the opinions of others are invalid. What someone likes and why they like it is not for me to dispute; nor do I consider myself the final arbiter when it comes to takes that aren’t mine. The problem is that I have yet to find someone whose taste in manga sufficiently aligns with my own.
I’ve never been interested in the critical consensus surrounding any one piece of media. The idea that many people like or dislike something isn’t information that I find to be useful. What I do instead is search for the opinions of specific people and use that to determine if a thing is or is not worth my time. Breath of the Wild was heralded as the greatest video game of all time but Joseph Anderson thought it was kind of mid and I agree with him. Not just his final assessment, but with the reasons why he didn’t enjoy it as much as everyone else. I’ve been watching his reviews for years and I have a good idea of what he prioritizes when evaluating video games. Our opinions share a lot of overlap so when he says a game is worth playing, I know there’s a decent chance that I will also enjoy it.
That was just an example, I don’t solely rely on Joseph Anderson for all opinions on video games that I haven’t played yet. There are 6 people whose reviews I look to for video games, then 3 other people for music, 4 for movies, and 2 for books. When it comes to manga and anime, that number has remained at 0 for the better part of two decades. I know there is no shortage of people online making content about manga but none of what I’ve found has resonated with me. There isn’t anyone whose content has made me think, “This person is operating on a similar wavelength to me.” I’ll still watch their videos or read their articles but without altering the current state of my To Read list. Thus it falls to me to read everything myself to determine if I might enjoy a particular manga.
Truthfully, this isn’t even a real problem for me. I enjoy reading and critiquing manga enough that buying five series in the hopes of liking one is a worthwhile investment. The pushback comes from those around me, who think that I shouldn’t spend my money on something just to turn around and sell it at a huge loss. However, I don’t see it that way. I purchased those manga for the express purpose of reading them, not to collect and certainly not to hoard. It feels wrong, malicious even, to keep a book whose only future is to soak up dust on a shelf. Which is why I keep a cardboard box in my library.