Didn't expect a documentary about manga quality but I'm all here for it

Dawg, why does Weeabruh go SO HARD for the people?! This video is amazing and truly a great guide for all manga collectors!

I find the berserk deluxe to be one of the most gorgeous editions of manga I ever laid eyes on. Honestly, I don't ever bring manga with me outside so a large format to see all of Miura's stunning art is the way to go.

Corrections: 1) Viz also has dust covers with some of its Junji Ito releases [Thank you to Samuel Gillis in the comments for reminding me!] 2) GTO Spanish release was not designed by Ivrea but a faithful port of the original Japanese Pocket Edition cover design! [Thank you to Pedro in the comments for the correction!] 3) Satori Ediciones (Spanish Publisher) actually utilizes “obi”s quite a bit! Need to pick me up some! 4) Best Vertical Comics is hands down Gundam Origin (completely slipped my mind as I do not have it yet). Many bilingual collectors even consider it the best edition of all time! (For example, MangaLord)

Personally I love dust covers and I like the "softer" look they give the spines. When done correctly they shouldn't bother while reading.

You’re crushing it dude. Love the quality content. 🙏🏼

Just a summary about Mexico: In the 2000s we used to have a publisher called Vid, they weren't really great and their editions were kinda like old Viz but that's what we had. They went bankrupt in (i think) 2009 and there was no manga published at all for a few years. In 2014 Panini came here and the market was reborn, although the quality was similar to Vid but with significantly better bindings. That quality kept on for a few years until we, the costumers, started to demand dustcovers to Panini since that's what both Japan and Spain used in their editions. In 2018 they started to implement both dustcovers (i.e. Golden Kamuy) and french flaps (i.e. OPM). The public continued to demand dustcovers for all releases and better paper quality (since we had a quality similar to nowadays Viz) and right now we have pretty solid editions, with white paper with little to no transparency and dustcovers. They're even adding ornaments in regular editions like Punpun's embossed dustcover or Dorohedoro's scale-like pattern in the cover. The price change wasn't really big, a manga with yellowish paper and no dustcover from an old license that is still publishing (i.e. One Piece) costs $99 pesos ($4.80 USD) and a good edition costs $119 ($5.75). The price standard right now is $119 for regular Tankobon (12x17cm, seen in most Shonen Jump titles and other shonen like To Your Eternity and Attack on Titan), $129 ($6.25) for B6 manga (13x18cm, the most common for the rest of regular editions, it's the same size as Punpun's, Vagabond's and Atelier's spanish edition for reference) There are other more rare editions with other price tags, Inoue's works (Slam Dunk and Vagabond atm) are being published in a weird size that's bigger than a B6 but smaller than a Kanzenban (about the same size as Beastars' english version probably) without dustcovers but with french flaps and white paper, they cost $139 pesos ($6.70). The One Piece guides are being published with the same size but with dustcovers instead at $159 (Blue), $179 (Red), and $199 (Yellow and Green). We have a few 2 in 1's such as Fruits Basket, Shaman King, Love Hina and Blade of the Immortal ($199-$219) but they are B6 size. I think the only 2 in 1 Kanzenban we have right now is Monster, also $199, the paper thickness isn't that good since it was published in 2018 but the reprints are fixing that. There are Kanzenbans being published like Rurouni Kenshin and Yu Yu Hakusho priced at $209 ($10.00) that have ornaments, really good paper quality and include all the color pages.

Yay, I'm glad you made this! I did mention before that you seem passionate about the topic so I'm happy you went ahead and made a video going in depth about this. I'd love it if you continue in the future with more videos about this topic, or make videos with your general insights/tips for collecting. I really appreciated the video and the effort! I'm sure it probably took an eternity to film everything. 😉 This was wonderfully informative! Such a fantastic video and overview overall! I learned a lot of useful info and key terms. Your examples shown throughout were perfect, they did a great job at demonstrating every aspect you spoke about. At 13 : 48 , for Japanese Kanzenban editions it is more common to see the paper + plastic slip cover design (examples I know of: FMA Kanzenbans, Shaman King Kanzenbans and Soul Eater Kanzenbans). I own the Soul Eater kanzenbans and yes I can confirm the plastic covers can get scratches on the surface which leads to fogginess as well. And another way of reducing friction or wear on the dust jackets/covers are these specialized transparent plastic book sleeves/covers that protect the manga, some people even made videos about this (you can search on youtube for Manga Plastic Covers and you can find videos from Moonlite88, HDan and Shin Megami Talks, all 3 of them go more in depth, although it should be noted these covers are aimed at Japanese manga sizes for the most part. For Dai Dark, it seems Seven Seas is replicating the quality from the Japanese version, which is great. The Japanese versions come with a plastic slip cover though with the alternate cover design. For Vertical, their best editions seem to be the Gundam Origin ones from what I've seen. Maybe Blame is nicer, I don't know though since I own neither of them. Spanish editions are very nice overall. It's also really cool that some publishers replicate the Japanese special editions, it's a nice touch. The thing that I really like about Japanese manga or books in general is how the publishers do their best to make the price point as affordable as possible, so as many people as possible can purchase the books themselves. The sizes tend to be smaller, which makes things more portable and easier to carry around and in general in Japan rooms can have limited space so the overall design approach makes sense I'd say, when it comes to storage. Shonen manga tend to have a slightly smaller size compared to the Japanese Innocent seinen volume you showcased. Bunko editions/Pocket sized volumes are even smaller, which makes them even more portable and easier to store, plus they tend to have slightly higher paper quality from what I've seen. I would say the US manga market sadly does highly overprice the volume releases, when you consider the overall average quality. In my opinion, publishers should either drop the prices if they want to keep the same quality that is being used now, or the other option is to start releasing higher quality stuff in general, even if it is priced slightly higher.

Thank you for a very hefty and informative video! I'm really interested in the topic so it was a real joy to watch 😊👍 Keep up the good work!

This is one of those videos that people are gonna be watching for years to come

Just want to give you some of my personal recommendations: the Yu Yu Hakusho Kanzenban that Ivrea is currently publishing (the covers are awesome, it has plenty of color pages and all the 15 spines together will form an amazing image of Kwabara, Yusuke, Hiei and Kurama). The Slam Dunk Kanzenban also by Ivrea and Sun-Ken Rock, GTO and Kingdom which are coming out soon. From Planeta Cómic I'd recommend the Dr. Slump Kanzenban, I"s Kanzenban, Captain Tsubasa (my favourite sports manga), Happy! (super underrated Urasawa manga but really, really good has all of his works), Saint Seiya Kanzenban (never became popular on the US but it's a really good shonen manga) and the "Historias cortas de Naoki Urasawa" single volume that compiles all of his one shots (a very good insight on earlier Urasawa manga and how his art and writing evolved) and also the Naoki Urasawa Guidebook that's coming out this month and the Kochikame box set that's also coming out later this month (this one is a limited edition and Planeta did not disclose how many will be made, it covers 20 volumes in total personally picked by the author and according to him these are from the best era of the manga, a really good chance of owning a piece of this legendary manga). From Arechi I'd recommend the City Hunter Kanzenban (given the fact that you're a fan of Tsukasa Hojo (as everyone should since his artwork is superb and his manga are really funny and compelling) but since you already have F. Compo you're probably already planning on getting this one. Also "Arte" by Arechi, if you can please give it a try, this manga is criminally underrated, it's so, so good! Panini later this year is going to republish "Spriggan" in the Kanzenban version, if you like classics you should keep and eye out for this one, and you also have 3x3 Eyes currently being published by Ivrea based on the bunkoban edition which will form a really cool spine image. I also want to recommend that you try some manga by Satori, a company specialising in Japanese novels and culture that recently started publishing manga. The paper is below the Spanish standard but they're dust jackets and volume covers are simply incredible. They publish single volumes and smaller series by select authors and I'd recommend literally all of their catalog (not exaggerating) but for starters maybe you can check out Oen and Yuko by Ryoichi Ikegami, Los Locos del Gekiga which is about the pioneers of Gekiga like Takao Saito (Golgo 13), Lo Chico de los ojos de gato and La casa de los insectos by Kazuo Umezz and Box by Daijiro Morohoshi. If you want to follow the releases of the Spanish manga market you have this site: www.listadomanga.es/blog/ It has a calendar of all the previous and upcoming releases and it also has literally every manga ever published in Spain and you can also search by publisher and author. Lastly I just want to say that I recently discovered your channel and I really like your videos! Keep up with the great content!

You also have to think about the differences in market size; the English editions are being sold to almost every single English-speaking country, while the Spanish one is basically only available in Spain (most Latin American contries have their own publishers with their own translations, even if they buy some series from Spain). I'm not really sure if they could actually afford to change the paper and the overall quality of the volumes, but it sure is nice to think about haha.

Fantastic video, Weeabruh. This is a great resource for the whole community. Thank you for undertaking this research and sharing it with us.

Such an in-depth video. You have earned a subscriber sir.

Great video! Learnt a lot!

Really interesting stuff. In terms of printing quality, Viz now has their Italian printings for a lot of their newer reprints, which can be hit or miss but the thing that can suck about them is their thinner spines, so some spines look weird on a shelf. One other interesting series of releases though are the Akira and Nausicaa box sets. Both are from different publishers but they both have this really high quality and unique paper quality to them. I’m guessing only classics get that kind of treatment but I wonder if any series other than those two have that kind of paper quality. Also in terms of the Tokyo Revengers omnibuses, the first volume (the regular edition, not the B&N edition) has really nice paper but the second volume goes to much lower quality Viz-esque paper

Just a correction: the GTO version of Ivrea Spain is based on a real Japanese version, the bunkoban version of GTO, they just changed the size to B6 (seinen size).

such an amazing video, another banger

This deserves way more views. Very informative

I love the quality of the Dai Dark volumes as well.

a really informative video, great work.

What a amazing video, the most complete on youtube so far, I start recently with manga collection, in fact, I start with Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu from Viz and I was thinking there was great editions, for the size and the covers but now Im starting to think about the quality as a whole and reevaluating things about it. Im from South America and we have the good quality of paper but is the fact of the size but well, this video open mi eyes jajaja. Great chanel btw, sorry for the text!

So informative.! Props for the chill music to

informative video, learned a lot. thanks!

Yes sirr another awesome video to watch

great video my guy needed this

Such a goated video bro!!!

My conclusion: we got it pretty good in Spain with Norma and Panini! ^-^ Great video! Learned one thing or two about paper which is really interesting.

Dam informative as always my dude 🤘 💖I do think if u did a video on what manga is released in witch countries, that'll be a good video, which long story short, english speaking countries are on the lower end of manga publishing. Unlike with places like France whom are the 2nd largest manga publisher in the world Although it's getting better for us, just a bit more slowly.🤞 Also definitely check out more of seven seas's classic collection line, they 2 more books coming out at the end of the year 😀

Loved The Video Keep Up The Great Work

I thought you would have 100k subs for this quality of a video,you are the coated version of an underrated youtuber Subed

Amazing video. You are S tier imo 👍

This video was awesome man. Just curious, in your section on halftone printing, by native size do you mean original printing size of the volume releases? Because unless I'm misremembering this, the artists draw the originals on much larger pages (about the size of western comics/Berserk deluxe editions). And the screentones used are where the dotted/other patterns come from, no? Either way, this video brought a lot of new info I'd never heard before. Keep up the awesome work and research man!

The Intro gets me every time

Bruh this was great!

I love your comparison with Spanish editions. They are usually a better quality and I love that

Fakku (NFSW manga!!) does use dustcovers on softcover volumes in the US.

eva and pur i didn’t know coated uncoated learned a lot bro ty

TokyoPop used to do the Obi and a little flyer inside

I have manga I bought in Japan in the 70's ... that is still not yellowed. Gambari Ganki in the 70's and 80's was printed in Japan with dust covers. it wasn't usual back then

wow imma bee honest. This Channel is underrated af!!

This was very nice, specially the binding stuff. The dust cover being all lose is certainly a flawed copy. Ivrea has amaxing quality most of the time, and the rounded spines jackets are on purpose. Because japanese jackets are rounded like that.

I have the darkhorse cardcaptor sakura volumes. They're very nice but still suffer from spine damage. I'm collecting the new kodansha hardcover release now. The pages are bigger making it easier for me to read (my eyesight sucks). The spines don't seem to suffer too terribly when reading. I also have volume 1 of fullmetal alchemist's hardcovers. One problem I ran across was the foil flaking off of the spine. My fiance did bring it to work in a bag so it might've been the heat or sweat that did it. I'm now keeping any foil type books and manga at home to keep them nice.

Great video as always😫 and I just wanted to ask, what warrants a series getting a special edition and how do you be attentive for those announcements?

Now Captivated By You manga also has dust cover

Venus in the Blind Spot published by VIZ also has a dust jacket

You should buy the Love Hina Deluxe Edition by Ivrea! It's based on the Shinsoban Japanese edition and it includes new covers and color pages.

I also noticed a difference between yen press's release of Higurashi when compared to the Japanese release. The characters are always present on the covers but on the Japanese versions amid the blood splatters are beautiful backgrounds behind the characters. I always thought that was a strange decision on yen press's part. Maybe to save money?

I heard that you can sometimes find coated editions of Seven seas manga if they are printed in China instead of Canada, do you know about this? also i know you didn't dive deep into yellowing and stuff but have you noticed how common is foxing in Japan, every time i got something used that is with the regular paper it comes with some foxing, is not a big deal for me but i heard that yellowing and foxing spread and i got a little bit freaked out, would love to hear your insights, btw Japanese Kansenban are fucking beautiful and the dragonball full color edition is also beeeeautiful i'm talking about the japanese one i have no idea about the spanish one but probably is very nice too

I don't know why, but you know a Manga volume yellow or chipped if it's bubble wrapped and taped up, whereas if it's just in a small box with paper, it's in mint condition like the shippers are thinking '' Book is lame, but at least the shipping box is neat '' lol

I've started collecting some english editions and ended up here because the quality shocked me so much for that price and I wanted to be sure it wasnt a me thing. Until this point I had only collected spanish editions. So the lack of dust covers which I don't even mind that much but then they have such thin covers, even thinner than my regular manga without their dust covers, how thick but light the volumes are and the paper being so dark and such a weird texture, and they never have special editions? Theyre way more expensive to have a quality like kIoon, for contrast kIoon along with other publishers of the kind have their average manga at 4-5 €, while english manga is 10-12 € for the exact same quality.. and kIoon also has dust covers. Milky way and Norma are 8-9 € just for comparison. Thats why i understand the japone and other european manga quality because they have their manga at pretty low prices which made me even more shocked to get my english editions :/ Im glad to know its not the same for every series publication but it has truly put me off knowing that its the norm. And quick note theres a difference between spanish editors and other country ones, an example would be Ivrea which is Argentine while Norma and Milky way are both Spanish, in a way you'll almost get 3 different version of some mangas, Atelier of witch hat for example has a spanish version by Milky way, an argentine one by Ivrea and another one by panini - Still all different spanish translations of the same manga.

The only Kodansha comics i like is the Vinland saga hardcover editions they do. The paper quality could still be better but other than that they are great.

Where do you get your Spanish manga? I want to get some Spanish to improve my Spanish (I’m Cuban American). The most I can find is the Ascendance of a bookworm from kitsune manga in Barnes and noble.

i hope u havin a good day bruh😂💯🤟

Is Vertical Usually small? I just got Ajin Demi Human. its smaller compared to everything else i have

nice video, but about seven seas, there is a qualilty problem with some of their ghost ships line, i just bought yokai girls vol 11 3 times and the 3 of them the pages fetl off the spine, i dont know why that exact volume came with so low quality

junji ito’s fragments of horror has a dust cover

♡

The Yen Press release for sword art online, paper quality is beyond terrible. I was surprised to see white paper used for the video's example.

Local publishers are much more cheaper. I got my Attack on Titan for only ₱210 ($4.13) per volume but i prefer english more than my language so i rarely buy a manga from our local publisher

Do you think there's a way to send complaints or feedback to american publishers? Because the difference between those and spanish ones are crystal clear

I will write this comment in Spanish because I saw that you have a lot of Spanish manga hahaha. La verdad que la calidad de los mangas de estados unidos es muy debatible , yo soy de Argentina y existía la empresa IVREA en mi pais pero no traía casi ninguna licencia de España y tampoco teníamos licencias para nuestro pais , recién ahora en el 2019 y cuando empezó la pandemia empezaron a sacar mangas a lo loco y tener muchas mas licencias y vino panini comics y OVNI press que es 100% Argentina empezó a sacar mangas de a poco . La traduccion es medio rara tambien , IVREA utiliza los modismos argentinos y OVNI press intento copiar ese modismo ya que esta de moda poder leer manga de esa forma y no con una traducción neutra como la de panini pero quedo en una traduccion media dudosa porque no encuentran bien el punto medio entre los modismos argentinos y el neutro . Con respecto a la calidad del papel , IVREA es el mejor en este caso y trae las mismas ediciones que estan en españa y con la misma calidad y a un precio accesible en el pais , OVNI y panini también utilizan el papel blanco pero no son tan gruesos y algunos tienen el problema de la transparencia . Ahora que ya termine de contar la situación de los mangas en Argentina paso a contar mi experiencia habiendo comprado comics de estados unidos y de mi pais , yo compre bastantes mangas en 2015 porque no había muchos títulos en mi pais , y la verdad es que el 90% ya esta bastante amarillento , mucho mas los de viz media y a la hora de leerlos por primera vez el color de las paginas y el tacto no me gusto mucho pero como no tenia ninguna otra opción los seguía comprando , hasta que ahora actualmente solo compro mangas de mi pais que tienen mucha mejor calidad de papel . Prefiero mil veces que el manga sea un poco mas chico pero poder leerlo con la mejor calidad de blanco y tinta posible que tener que leer mangas con un papel barato y que además me salga mas caro. Por culpa de esa calidad de papel de norte américa deje de leer mangas físicos y recién ahora volví a coleccionar porque leerlos con una buena calidad de papel es una experiencia que no se compara con leerlos de forma virtual , en cambio antes prefería leerlos de una Tablet que tener que leerlos con esa calidad de papel que muchas veces me costaba entender lo que pasaba en la hoja por lo amarillenta que era y que los negros no estaban bien definidos.

What is the point of the obi on Japanese manga? It covers up part of the cover, rips easily, and just all around looks bad imo.

Deathnote another note and L change the world from viz have dust covers i can send a pic if you want

kodansha has to be the worst lmao, my aot omnibus came with the spine cracked. I went to barnes and noble to see theirs and every single one was damaged😅

Uncoated paper just makes me feel at home that's why I don't like coated paper

i've been collecting call of the night from ivrea. Thing is, current vol is n°7 from 17 and in the US they got up to vol 12, so i bought a few in english thinking they would be similar to what i own... My god the quality is awful, they feel like an old book from thrift store, not buying anything from viz ever again

As long as i can read, every manga is good But my money go brrrrr

I wish I had elon musk money man. I would put out sooo much shit in high quality and spend my own money on releases I would want lol

Yen Press is GOD TIER dookie

Who cares about quality, I just get manga to display them, not to read them.

i will never buy kondansha paperbacks