How did you get into manga?

This board is so quiet!

How did you all get into manga?

I purchased a volume from a friend as part of a fund raising auction she was holding. Strictly as a way of doing her a favor. I ended up liking it so much I've now got shelves and shelves of manga.

Not sure if I am into manga, but have been reading one here and there lately. After seeing the movie Akira, I then went and read all the books. That would have been close to 20 years ago perhaps?

I just picked one up at a book store one day. And I loved it. And while I still prefer reading novels I always have my eyes open for a good manga. Anyways that was about a year ago.

My intro to manga was through anime, which I got into through Sailormoon and Astroboy.

I became interested in manga after I got into anime, even though I was introduced to them at roughly the same time. Looking back on it, I realized I had a subconscious issue with the pictures being flipped. *laughs*

Anyway, the first manga I ever read was Imadoki, and I read it with the original Japanese volumes in one hand and a text translation done by a couple of my college friends in the other hand. The first one I ever owned was the first Japanese volume of Kodocha, and it's continued from there.

I guess my friends introduce me to manga. Went to kinokuniya and bought kare first love. this is a really good story. about self esteem and teens life etc. its also have romance. But that was 3 years ago. i dont read manga anymore...

I have read most of the postings and will probably join when I get my bearings here. It amazes me how much cultural transference has taken place in the years since I lived in Japan (1965-1967). I was a kid who read manga, drew saucer-eyed manga characters and wore plastic shoes with my favorite manga personality. Then my family immigrated to the US and I couldn't buy manga--they were too expensive in Japan Town and it took two months to get them shipped from Japan. Looking back now, I remember a real sense of loss as a kid. In the 60s American, few would knew about this art form. I am now 46, drawing/writing a graphic novel and young people are voracioulsy reading manga. The world is a strange and wonderful place! Just wondering why it took so long for manga to catch on here.

Can someone please recommend a manga for starters?

It's hard to recommend a starter manga without knowing what kinds of fiction you enjoy reading. Manga in English ranges all over the map, with an emphasis on what I think of as 'younger teens' titles.

In 1993, when I was living in Bangor, Wales, I bought a new magazine called "Manga Mania" because it looked interesting.

It had an article on Ranma 1/2 and a serialisation of Urusei Yatsura. Rumiko Takahashi's stuff was so funny and surreal and so unlike anything I'd ever come across before that I was hooked.

For some reason, although Bangor was a small city (about 15,000 residents) there was a shop there that was entirely devoted to manga and anime. There wasn't much manga published in English at that time, though - nowhere near as much as there is now.

There was a very good magazine called Mangajin which was aimed at people learning Japanese. It printed manga in Japanese with translations and explanations on the facing page. I wish it was still in print!

I've kind of lost touch over the last 5-10 years though - what's hot at the moment?

What's hot at the moment is anything on TV or anything in the English Shounen Jump magazine. Naruto, Bleach, Death Note, Kenshin, FMA. Oh the girls side, Fruits Basket was big in 2005-6. I haven't heard of anything on the girls side that has replaced it in terms of buzz (not saying there isn't, just I haven't heard).

>9 Akiyama:: Akiyama,
Magazines like "Hirigana Times" still exist to help teach Japanese language.

>7 belleyang:: Belleyang,
With so many companies licensing manga in English nowadays, there's as much variation as asking for a recommendation of "fiction". Companies like TokyoPop, Viz, and Del Rey, (the biggest English-language publishers right now) are very good about labeling manga for appropriate age groups and genres.

My youngest sister bought an issue of Oh! My Goddess about 8 years back. I read it, liked it, and started collecting the series along with Saint Tail and Miracle Girls. Soon after that I discovered Sailor Moon and CLAMP, and the rest is history. :)

I'd be interested in anime for a few years but for some reason I hadn't developed an interest in manga.

I used to work at a comic shop and one day, I flicked through one of the Ranma 1/2 collections. I found it hysterically funny and loved the entire series, despite it being made up of rehashed jokes. From there I proceeded to Maison Ikkoku, Akira, Gunsmith Cats and Blade Of The Immortal.

I'm the opposite. I started reading manga last June and then bought my first anime sometime during the fall.

I got into manga and anime at a fairly young age and around the same time. I remember my first anime was Princess Mononoke, but my first anime is a little harder to think of. I guess I'll go with Princess Ai.

I could be wrong, but I believe the first manga I ever read was Sanctuary, which I saw described in Wizard Magazine, and then I saw they had all the volumes at Borders, so I sat in the store and read them all over a period of two weeks.

I was in high school and manga were still $18 at the time, so forgive me treating the bookstore like a library. I own a lot of manga now anyway.

I was at one of my friend's house and I saw this book sitting on the T.V. stand and asked "What is this?" and my friend replied "Just read it" it took my an hour to read my first manga but I was hooked after that. It was Wall Flower. For me the anime came next and I'm still not as big on collecting anime as I am collecting manga.

I didn't start reading manga until this past school year.
I've been watching Myazaki's movies since I was really little though...I still have Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service on VHS. I love his stuff. And I just VERY recently started watching anime t.v. shows through the funimation channel.

oops I forgot to say how I first got into manga! :)
It was because my mom had to do a project on graphic novels for a college class (she's going to be a librarian) and she went to the library and brought all these books home. I have friends that read manga so i guess i just decided to give it a try.
Fruits basket is the only manga I've read so far...well, except for a few of the first volumes of books my mom brought home and the series for Warriors...it's a series that is "americanized" i guess...not backwards or anything and more of a comic book panel format. So I'm still very new to manga. But I got a manga/anime magazine the other day!

I got into manga from cartoons and comic strips. I started collecting books of newspaper comics, then expanded into web comics. I found MegaTokyo and fell in love. :)

(edited to fix touchstone)

We got into manga when my mother bought my son what she thought was an interesting looking comic book, just so he would calm down and be quiet at the grocery store! That was actually Shonen Jump Magazine(American Version) and he has been reading it since he was 8 years old. He's now 13 and wants to be a manga artist/author. We like to read Dragonball Z, Naruto, Bleach, Deathnote, Trigun Maximum, and Inuyasha, among others.

I started reading manga when MixxZine was first published because it contained the Sailormoon manga. Even in its butchered form, I loved it. I was introduced to CLAMP through Magic Knight Rayearth. Then I read a few other series in Animerica Extra, most notably X/1999 and Fushigi Yuugi. A few years later, I had learned enough Japanese to pick up a few untranslated volumes of 3x3 Eyes and I never turned back.

I got into manga back in 97 with Mixxzine too and I thought the sailor moon manga moved faster then the anime. I fell in love with Parasyte though and will always have fond memories of that manga.

Hmm I don't remember, I think it was something to do with being fascinated by Japanese culture and reading up about it

Well, I got into it by watching watching anime on TV such as Naruto. After that, I picked up a manga and loved it!

I picked up the first Volume of Dragon Ball from an OP Shop for $1. I thought it was cool how the books went backwards and the story was really good.

A few months later I found a book store that sold Manga and bought the first volume of Devil May Cry 3, it then bloomed from there.

I got into manga through anime.

When I first came to college someone introduced me to youtube. We watched the whole movie of Instella 5555 by Daft Punk.

When I came back home for the rest of the summer I was watching Bleach one night and the episode (of course) ended right when it was getting to the good part. So, I figured why don't I see if this is on youtube. And sure enough all the episodes were there.

So I started watching the episodes, but they were in Japanese with English subtitles; the whole time I thought these were American cartoons! So, I did my research and realized that these (Bleach, Naruto, Rurouni Kenshin, Yu Yu Hakusho) were all originally manga. And that's how I got into manga.

The first manga I ever read was Rurouni Kenshin and 'til this day that is my absolute favorite. (But I download all of my manga though; I never buy them in paper format).

Well I only got completely hooked on manga a year ago, after reading volumes the local library owns. But the first manga I read was when i was 12/13 and every issue of Nintendo Power (in 1992) contained a chapter of the Legend of Zelda Link to the Past manga. My brother subscribed to the magazine, and I would pester him every month to let me read it. I still own (meaning I stole them from my brother) all of those issues of Nintendo Power. Now I'm buying two volumes of manga a week and slowly building my collection.

I got into anime first. I got into Inuyasha (anime) before I had trips with my Sr. Beta. I look to see if there was Inuyasha books. I got some and read them on the bus ride. After that, I went crazy for manga.

I, too, got into anime first (Sailor Moon was my first ^_^) and being the person I am (I tend to take soemthing I like and go gungho with it) I wanted to learn more about anime and found mang through that string. My first manga series I got into was MARS because my local library had them all.

Initial D, my brother was watching the anime and introduced me to it, then I spotted the manga and the rest is history ^.^

1994... my japanese teacher had a copy of 'ribon' magazine in the classroom. XD;

A friend brought some manga to my house. The next time we went to our local library I asked her to recommend some manga to me. I started out reading Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. I've loved it ever since. That was about a year ago.

Fruit Basket was my first and i just couldn't bear to tear myself away after that :D

>34 ashley21:
Clamp's art is really complicated and unique, don't you think? :)

> 34
I love reading Clamp because of their art. It's so beautiful. I love the way it flows.

i've never read any CLAMP until recently...well, 2 days ago to be exact. I just finished Chobits Vol 5 and i really love it so far. the plotline is riveting and the art is really beautiful too :)

Ithink I started to like manga in gr.3, when Inuyasha was airing. At that time, I loved the storyline very much. I wanted sooo much to watch it, but never got the chance to. Then in gr.5, I found out there were inuyasha books in the library and that was how I started to love manga and animes. Now in grade 8, I have read over 500 different anime/manga series online. P.S. I figured out you could find manga/anime online in my grade 6 summer.

>37 mjrcatgirl: Chi is so adorable!

>38 crazygemtrees: I need to start watching Inuyasha again!

Thought it would be interesting to mix in some manga in English in my lesson plan when I was taught ESL since a lot of my students were already reading them in its original language. I picked out a couple in store and somehow got hooked into it.

Let's see....I got into manga in 2003, when I was 14. My sister, who was 12/13 at the time, liked it already. I remember thinking it was really weird and lame xD Most of the stuff that was out back then was shounen manga, and I didn't have an interest in that. But one day when I was with my sister in the manga section of the bookstore, I spotted Peach Girl by Miwa Ueda. I read it, and I was hooked! There wasn't *that* much shoujo manga out back then, and a lot of the earlier stuff had been fantasy stuff. I really liked how Peach Girl was just about a normal high school girl. I quickly also discovered Marmalade Boy and from then on my love of shoujo manga was cemented! : )

I got into manga in 2007 with The Legend of Zelda: Ocaraina(spelling fail) of Time and Majoria's Mask. Great manga by the way.