manga mania

I bought some manga!

Now that may not seem anything particularly unusual -surely I buy manga all the time, right?

Well normally that would be the case, but for about the last year I've been on something of a "fast".  There have been a couple of reasons for this.

The first, and most important, was financial.  Unfortunately, with the adjustments to the VAT laws, the little loophole that amazon was exploiting to discount its manga has disappeared.  This means that all the mange I buy has gone up by several pounds.  This isn't a lot individually, but obviously if you buy dozens of them it soon adds up.

It also makes the situation a bit complicated in that the amazon prices now aren't guaranteed to be cheapest.  Also, I've had a few problems with the free postage service recently so if the free postage is now basically not worth using then shopping around becomes wise, and I couldn't really be arsed.

However, also, more obviously I've been struggling financially, so I didn't really have money to spare for manga.

The other key reason was that I wanted to catch up with some of the normal books on my shelves.  I've got quite a few that I hadn't read, but in particular there's a couple of series I've been reading that I was getting way adrift on.  I'd gotten to the state where I was reading so many manga series that they were all I was reading - whenever I got the pile low, new volumes would turn up (all pre-ordered on amazon, you see).

So why have I bought some manga?  Well, it's been a long time since I read any and I have been doing okay with the normal books, so I fancied a change.

Also, for Christmas I got quite a few amazon gift vouchers, so I needed to spend those anyway.  I also got a bonus payment so I figured I could loosened the belt a tiny bit and it would be okay (I actually only spend about £60 to buy £120 of stuff, so I figure that's not a bad deal.

However, the manga I bought was quite focused on series that have either ended or that I have been collecting and selling the volumes as I go.  That means that I will recoup some of the outlay later - indeed, it sort of helps me down the road, as selling incomplete series is particularly tricky on e-bay and it can be a little risky to leave it too long to buy volumes that have been released in case they sell out.