Your Questions, Answered!
By Emily • Aug 30th, 2007 • Category: Features
An Almost-FAQ
I don’t exactly have a general FAQ on this site, I am unable to respond directly in my guestbook to questions people post there, and I suck remembering to send individual emails, so I decided to start this page to address any random questions people ask me about this site either in email or in my guestbook. I don’t know if this is a FAQ exactly, since I don’t really get the same questions over and over again, but hopefully this will be useful to someone out there. Then again, I am probably just using this as an excuse to talk to myself some more here. :) I am sorry if I am slow to answer your questions! I fall victim to procrastination a lot ^^;
Ok, on to the questions and comments. For my first update in here, I will just gather up the few I have had, but in the future, any questions asked in my guestbook or in the comments down below will get a response here. New responses will appear at the top of the list of questions.
+ What manga are the images used for your different sections from?
- Haha, it figures that this ends up being a common question! Okay, here are the names of the series used in my feature page headers!
Suggestions Needed = Baby Kiss wo Douzo, by HATA Akimi
Site News and Updates = Shounen Cosmos, by AKIRA Shouko
Peek at 70’s shoujo manga = Kaze no Shiki, by KANA Sachiko
Your Questions, Answered = Datte, Aishiteru, by AKIRA Shouko
Shoujo Manga Wallpapers = Nanaco Robin, by NAKAHARA Aya
Shoujo Manga Magazines = Harukanaru Toki no Nakade 4, by MIZUNO Touko
Common Shoujo manga plot devices = Yasuko to Kenji, by Aruko
My Theme Classifications Explained = KoiBana! by NANAJI Nagamu
About this Site! = Gokusen, by MORIMOTO Kozueko
The picture I use on this very page is from Mainichi Kimi ni Koishiteru by YAMADA Komomo
+ Where can I read this manga?! – Well, as I have mentioned before, I don’t have any downloads on my site, and, in general, I have no idea if the series I talk about have been translated into any languages by anyone (scanlations or licensed release). You will have to try to google around for it. I can’t help you locate downloads, and I already offer links to sites where you can buy manga. I am trying valiantly to be reasonably legal on this site ^_^; That is difficult to these days in the era of entitled anime and manga fans
+ Can you talk about more series with older heroines? Not teenagers? – Sure, I will take a look at my collection and see what I can dig up.
+ Do You live in Japan? – Er, no. I currently live in the US. In California. The San Francisco Bay Area. I have been to Japan a few times though, and brought back as much manga as I could under the baggage weight limit restrictions. Why must manga be so heavy? Anyway, considering all the manga I buy now, living in Japan would probably kill me. All that cheap and easy manga access… I get giddy thinking about it. I have NO willpower. There would be no room to sleep in my apartment, it would be a horrifying MangaCave. I would so love to go on another trip to Japan though.
+ Where do you find/buy your manga? – Right now I mainly buy it (at horribly marked up prices, grrr…) from one of the two local Kinokuniya bookstores. When I lived in Texas (AKA MangaWastelandTM), I would order it online from the Japanese bookstore BK1. I should probably keep ordering from them instead of going to Kinokuniya because it is cheaper (even with shipping factored in) but as I said before, I have no willpower and am an impulsive manga buyer. Kinokuniya calls to me, and I can’t resist the shiny covers. Once a year I trek down to southern California for Anime Expo, and while I am there, I take the time to pillage the three local Book-Off stores. Book-Off is a Japanese used bookstore chain, and used manga there is wonderfully cheap! I LOVE Book-Off, and wish they would open a store up in the Bay Area. I also check out another tiny used manga store, MangaMura, for even cheaper used manga, but it is all really old stuff, like 70’s and 80’s manga. This place soothes my 70’s shoujo manga cravings :D My yearly Book-Off event is manga insanity.
+ How can I upload pictures onto your website? – Uh, what? I am not sure what the person who asked this question meant. There is no picture uploading here.
+ Have you read Naruto? It’s great!!!!!!11111111 – Er. cool. ^_^ I haven’t read very much Naruto. As you may guess from the subject of this site, I generally read more shoujo manga than shounen, but I can appreciate the attraction of shounen titles too.
+ Can there be a genre for big age differences? – I probably won’t make a separate Theme category for this, but I am (very) slowly working on tagging my entries with some additional descriptors (often relating to common plot devices) so eventually you may be able to sort manga entries by characteristics such as: age-gap, surprise bishounen, childhood friends, kitsune, vampire, tsundere, etc. This is gonna take me a while to complete.
+ Where can I find catboy manga? – There is a serious lack of catboy manga in this world. Well, regular shoujo catboy manga. I know there are many yaoi stories that have catboys. If you find any regular shoujo series with catboys, let me know. Until then, there is always Shugo Chara (Ikuto~~!)
Emily is not cute like a shoujo manga heroine.
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Why don’t you scan your manga and not share scans with us? I live far away from Japan and can’t order all manga I want to read.
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Because I am trying to keep this site somewhat legal. (I know, a shocking concept these days when everyone seems to think they should get everything for free ;_;)
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Thanks for your answer ;)
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Hi Emily,
I live in Mauritius(probably wondering where it is), its a small island in the Indian Ocean (manga writers should drop there, lots of nice ideas for shojo manga settings). I don’t have easy access to manga books like u do and I would love to have some help on how to order online and stuff…i know…really backward, but here things are really slow…And I’d really appreciate it if you could explain those ISBN refs please!!
Cheers and thanks for the summary plots, really help me in choosing what to read and what to ignore!
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Umm … you know the picture you click to gt on here ? is that a manga or just an avatar ? O__O
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How much does a tankouban cost at Kinokuniya compared to BK1? I know BK1 doesn’t do much of a mark-up compared to, say, Nippon Export, whose markup is pretty bad…
I’m in Texas, we have no Kinokuniya here…
I forgot to log in lol
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BK1 charges the yen rate, whatever it is. Right now the US$ exchange rate is really poor (around $1=88 yen). So if a manga costs 400 yen, that will be about $4.54. Pretty good, when the same volume at Kinokuniya would cost $6.40. However, there is also shipping. It used to be that it was cheaper to order from BK1 even with the shipping, but that poor exchange rate has ruined it. The shipping cost will depend on what method of shipping you choose, and how many books you order. The thing about Bk1 is that you don’t know how much the total for shipping will end up costing until after the items have shipped out. You can get an idea by looking at the price charts by weight that they have for each method. A regular shoujo manga tankoubon weighs about 150g.
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