I’m pretty pleased with my manga haul in December. I finally gave in and bought a complete set of Yumi Tamura’s series Basara on ebay. I ended up paying a little more than I really wanted (some of the volumes are very out of print), but the fact I had a couple of gift cards to use made me feel a little better about the whole transaction. Plus, the seller threw in copies of the two Basara artbooks as a bonus. As for preorders this month, my copy of Gengoroh Tagame’s Endless Game arrived which made me pretty happy. The English translation is actually the manga’s debut; it hasn’t even been collected in Japan yet. The next volume of Q Hayashida’s Dorohedoro was also released in December. We only get three Dorohedoro volumes a year, so I’m always excited when a new volume comes out. I got a great batch of queer comics in December which I’m looking forward to reading, too.
Manga!
Attack on Titan, Volume 10 by Hajime Isayama
Basara, Volumes 1-27 by Yumi Tamura
Between the Sheets by Erica Sakurazawa
Dorohedoro, Volume 11 by Q Hayashida
Endless Game by Gengoroh Tagame
Fairy Tail, Volume 33 by Hiro Mashima
Hetalia: Axis Powers, Volumes 4-5 by Himaruya Hidekaz
Knights of Sidonia, Volume 6 by Tsutomu Nihei
Lies Are a Gentleman’s Manners by Marta Matsuo
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, Volume 4: Jaburo by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko
No. 6, Volume 4 by Hinoki Kino
Otomen, Volume 17 by Aya Kanno
Pink by Kyoko Okazaki
Red Colored Elegy by Seiichi Hayashi
Sankarea: Undying Love, Volume 4 by Mitsuru Hattori
Sekine-kun no Koi, Volumes 1-3 by Haruka Kawachi
Smuggler by Shohei Manabe
Soul Rescue, Volumes 1-2 by Aya Kanno
Wild Com. by Yumi Tamura
Manhwa!
Evyione: Ocean Fantasy, Volume 1 by Young-Hee Kim
Comics!
Flutter written by Jennie Wood, illustrated by Jeff McComsey
QU33R edited by Rob Kirby
Queerotica edited by Allie Kleber
What’s Normal Anyway? by Morgan Boecher
Artbooks!
Basara: Earth by Yumi Tamura
Basara: Flame by Yumi Tamura
The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy by Yoshitaka Amano
Anime!
Sword of the Stranger directed by Masahiro Andō
Film!
Zoo directed by Various
Oh, Basara! Congratulations!
(I helped a friend fill out her collection a few months ago, I know what you mean about prices for those used volumes.)
Thanks! I’m very excited. I’m happy that Basara is legally available digitally, but I still like having physical copies of the manga that I really love.
Oh, it is? That’s fantastic, I’ll have to update my fan page!
It is! Fifteen volumes have been released so far, with the rest to come!
http://www.vizmanga.com/basara
Have you had a chance to look at your copy of Endless Game? Mine had like 8 or 10 pages from the first chapter duplicated at the beginning of the second chapter, I think instead of pages that were supposed to be there (it seemed part of the story was missing). Amazon refunded me but the book is now unavailable there, so I was wondering if it might be a production issue.
Yeah, my copy has the same printing error. I’m currently trying to determine whether it is actually missing pages, or if it just has extra pages. Since the repeated section happens at a scene change, it’s hard to tell.
I’m lazy, so if it’s extra pages I’ll probably just hang onto the copy that I have. I’ve asked some people that I’m pretty sure will be able to tell me one way or another. If I hear back from them, I’ll be sure to pass the information along.
I requested a replacement copy expecting to return the defective copy, but amzn customer service responded with a refund and told me not to return the book so win/win I guess? IDK if the holiday season had something to do with it or because it was defective.
If it’s missing pages I definitely want to buy a replacement though, if possible, so I look forward to hearing what you find out.
Maybe you heard from the publisher as well, he told me that amzn received a batch of defective copies and suggested I purchase through Massive, which I just did, but I requested that they confirm completeness before shipping.
Good to know, thanks! I haven’t heard anything back yet. If I do get a response, I’ll definitely be sure to pass it along.
Massive is a great way to go! I’ll probably end up doing that myself. The folks there are a great group of people.
OK, just received a good copy from Massive, and yes, pages were missing from the bad copy as suspected.
I agree, the folks at Massive are a delight!
Thanks so much for letting me (and others) know! Now to get off my lazy butt and get myself a replacement copy. ^_^
Dayum, I only have one of the two Basara artbooks! It’s quite nice, I have the red one. Be sure to tell me how the Green one is to let me know if it’s worth it to get that one too! All the artbooks I want are always Japanese, so anytime they get wordy I’m like “I have no idea what is written here, dammit! Give me more pictures!” so I want to make sure the second book is also manga artwork and not much wordiness. I notice the later artbooks tend to have bits of anime info at the end if there was an anime for it (and this does have an OVA, clearly in our Game of Thrones loving society though, this now needs a full on series)
I was very happy to end up with the artbooks! I wasn’t planning on trying to find them, but I’m glad I have them. Although longer, the green artbook does not have as much art as the red artbook. Most of the volume is taken up by a sort of Basara encyclopedia with additional commentary by Tamura. So, it’s much, much wordier than the first artbook. But, there are about fifty pages devoted to illustrations.