My first manga related post of 2024!
Recently I’ve started to buy some manga in a language I am not native in and I thought I would go into the reasons why
Last year I did a review for Madoka’s Secret, it’s a manga I read in English online and I wanted to get the book physically to read on my break at work and take a picture with it BUT physically you can only buy it in it’s native Japanese. After working out how to order manga from Japan, I got it for the review, took a picture of it and put it on my bookcase never to think about it til the end of year ranking.
Throughout 2023 I discovered Ore Ga Watashi Ni Made which got pretty high in my top 10 manga I discovered and read during the year, because it’s a small creator behind it I really wanted to support them, so bought some volumes to help as there was no other way of supporting outside of Japan.
Because I have read it online in English (fan translated as there is no official English translation) I’ve just got the volumes on my bookcase.
Only recently with me wanting to learn Japanese ahead of a trip to Japan at the end of the year, having some manga in Japanese in my room I can use it to give myself motivation on learning a second language.
A few weeks ago I purchased Kaisha to Shiseikatsu: On and Off (Company and Private Life) it’s the manga I’ve got in the thumbnail, it’s a series I have been seeing in parts online and I am really loving the story and so i don’t have to wait to see what happens, I’ve bought it and trying my best to translate it via Google Translate til I learn all the kanji etc.
Language aside, the cover is absolutely amazing!
The past few weeks I have found a body-swap manga called Hope You’re Happy, Lemon via the Mangaplus website (free site you can read a lot of manga from the official publisher), its going to be in my top 10 for sure this year as the story is amazing and I’ve become friends with someone who helps out with it, due to that I found out the first volume of the series was available so had to order to support it!
Highly recommend this series to anyone!
So to answer the question of this post, I order manga in Japanese to help support the creators behind it if I can’t do it any other way or there is no way of finding out the story any other way (eg Pumpkin Wine, post about this soon)
Thanks for reading
Megan
Megan Leyman 
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