I want to buy Manga on Boxing Day! I don’t know if you guys have heard of Boxing Day. I think it may be a Common Wealth tradition. Maybe it’s something like Black Friday but I’m not sure. I don’t really know what Black Friday is all about and it sounds scary so I don’t want to look it up. Anyways, Boxing Day is the day after Christmas where everyone that doesn’t work in retail gets a day off and there are crazy sales all over the place. Kinda…
Lately, I’ve been really renewing my love of Manga. I blame Scott for constantly posting amazing looking manga panels on Twitter and black magic. I looked into the average workload of mangaka and I’m pretty sure it’s not humanly possible. So thank you lord of darkness!
I’m writing this ahead of time so I’m not entirely certain I will manage to snag all these titles at a good discount however, this is my plan. Also, I will be giving links to Amazon but if you don’t find something on there, and you’re Canadian, there’s a website called NotAmazon.ca. It’s really just a collection of links to Canadian retailers but I had been looking for vol. 9 of Devils and Realist for over a year. It has been out of print for a while. And I could only find used copies for 60 to 140$. I actually manage to find a copy at The Beguiling for list price and I was ecstatic. So remember to look through your local bookstores for hard to find titles.
OK, now onto my list. Volumes I will put on reserve: Bungo Stray Dogs 17 (comes out Jan 5), Natsume 25 (April 6), Spy x Family 4 (March 2) and The way of the Househusband 5 (May 18). I don,t know if there will be any rebates on preorders but I’m going to try my luck.
I will also try to continue my Noragami collection (volumes 7 and beyond), get all the Nozaki-Kun and Haikyuu I can justify buying and volume 4 of the xxxHOLiC omnibus. I just started watching xxxHOLiC and it has revived my love of CLAMP big time! I sort of bought the 3 first omnibus volumes on a whim. This is what anime drinking games do to you!
Additionally, I want to look into (or look more into if I have volume 1) Chainsaw man, Jujutsu Kaisen, Hell’s Paradise and Hanako-Kun. I also read this thread on Twitter where tons of people were saying which manga they thought should get adapted and from that, I got really interested in Tokyo Ravagers (which is going to get an anime in 2021) and Blue Period. I’m actually quite excited about the latter. It looks different and I’ll probably get it even if it’s undiscounted.
Depending on the deals, I might just snag the entire Soul Eater collection. I do have volume 1 already. I really liked the Soul Eater anime but I thought the ending left to be desired. I have heard that the manga has a completely different ending so I would be buying it just for that. Unfortunately, my OCD won’t let me start a series at vol 13 or something so there you go…
Aside from the manga I am also really interested in a couple of book about anime. I have been seeing this Anime: A History book everywhere. By that I mean Amazon tells me to buy it all the time and I am intrigued. I am also interested in The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. It was published in 2009 so it’s probably rather out of date as streaming has had a huge impact since then but it could still be interesting.
However, the book that I am most excited about and I will get even if it’s not discounted is Japanese Mythology in Film: A Semiotic Approach to Reading Japanese Film and Anime. Man, this looks amazing! I’m sorry but you can probably expect a bunch of posts on Japanese mythology in 2021 because of this.
I actually have recently abused my power to get a bunch of scholarly articles on anime and anime culture. Let me know if you guys would like to hear about those. I can summarize the papers and give you the gist so that you’ll know if you want to read them for yourselves.
I am also interested in a few non-reading things. For instance these adorable Haikyuu patches. They really rock but no way are they worth that price. Barring that, this Haikyuu hoodie could be a nice backup.
Finally, I’m hoping to pick up the Trails of Cold Steel games 1 and 2. I bought 3 on a whim but a reader told me to really play them in order. So I put the game aside and I’m hoping I can get a decent rebate since the earlier games are still full price.
That’s pretty much it for me. If you’re wondering what my weekend is like, I’m probably making my way through countless online retailers right now hoping to snag some sort of deal that can justify me buying 100 volumes of manga. Not that I need to justify it to anyone…but myself.
What can I say, funny things happen to you when you suddenly realize you’re an adult.
Happy early boxing day everyone! I hope you find some things that will make you happy!
