So tell me, how did you all get into manga? Because let me tell you something: I didn’t exactly get hooked immediately. During my middle school years I mostly settled on watching anime and anything that aired on Toonami and Adult Swim. It wasn’t until around 8th grade when I finally bought manga, and those manga happened to be Psychic Academy, One Piece, and D.N Angel. I can’t remember how I had come to know what manga was—I may have learned about it in a magazine most likely—but thanks to some silly reasons (for example, I mixed up a character from a fighting game, and that’s why I brought Psychic Academy), I bought these three manga.
I only kept up with Psychic Academy and maybe mistakenly gave up on the others—even throwing them away because they were starting to take up space in my room and I wasn’t reading them. After that, though, I wasn’t all that connected with manga, and stayed in the realm of anime and video games. However, I suddenly had a desire to write and draw around my high school years. Don’t worry, these are stories I’ll be inclined to keep to myself! Anyway, when I attended college, I decided it was time to learn my craft. At the time, purchasing books or anything related to what I did was not an option, so I didn’t know what was a trend or what was really all that popular. So during my sophomore year of school, I believe, I decided to return to the manga world and start reading in general—just to get a sense of what I’d like and what was popular. I wasn’t convinced, though. I had only picked up manga I had heard of like Rosario + Vampire and Negima, and aside from the usual shounen stuff (Rurouni Kenshin, Bleach), nothing really compelled me to read more and take manga seriously.
Then the best thing happened to me when it came to manga: I watched the first episode of Monster on SYFY. That episode made such a great impression on me that I had to find out more on what it was and what it was all about. That was how I found out Monster was a manga series created by some artist named Naoki Urasawa. I brought the first volume at the bookstore, got home, and started turning the pages. And turning. And turning! Needless to say, I was captivated. The story was suspenseful and full of seemingly implausible yet true twists, the art blew me away (as at the time I didn’t believe manga could be like that), and it made me understand a lot of things about manga that I might have glossed over before. Needless to say, this was the time I wanted more.
So you could also approach this as a question of how you got into manga, but let’s try and dig a bit deeper. What was that one manga you read that really hit you and told you to go read more manga? Were you in a position where you read a manga, did not like it, but was convinced by someone or something to check out a different manga? Whatever the case is, feel free to share in the comments the manga that got you hooked onto more manga.
Justin Stroman is the founder of Organization Anti-Social Geniuses, a Japanese Pop Culture Blog that covers anime, manga, games, and more. You can follow him on Twitter and like the Facebook page to get updates and links to Japanese Pop Culture Related content.
Oh man, it’s been so long…I was all into Toonami too (Outlaw Star was the first anime series I ever bought, still have and adore it), leading into manga was inevitable for that reason.
I wanna say Ranma 1/2 was the first manga I devoured like crack. Strange now as I dislike the series because I love Maison Ikkoku so much more, but Ranma 1/2 was probably the first manga I got majorly into. And since it was the 2nd edition, they were releasing like 2 every month or something, so I found that to be awesome. Another early favorite I recall was Tuxedo Gin (which usually came out at the same time as Maison Ikkoku thus I bought new vols together), I used to be into romantic comedy and comedy way more. But Ranma 1/2 was probably the one that I practically idolized for ages (specifically, until I finished Maison Ikkoku, which I only collected because it was the same mangaka, and then realized than Ranma 1/2 was way too long and repetitive), but I do still rec Ranma 1/2 as a gateway drug.
The first manga I actually bought was Tokyo Mew Mew, because it looked like something I should be “expected’ to enjoy. I mean, I read it, liked it ok I suppose (as I clearly picked up more), but I didn’t love love it and was unaware that far better shojo out there (childhood me got way too much junk and not enough Kodocha) Now I look back at that title with nothing but scorn as I don’t even think I thought it was good even back then when I was new to manga. Also because I used to feel obligated to keep buying series that I started even if I disliked them because hey, I’d already started.
Haha, I feel the same way with Psychic Academy (though maybe not with scorn :D) . I ended up finishing it and all, but when I really think about it, I wonder why did I continue to like the series? It is now a series I somehow don’t want to read again…which is actually weird, I should probably fix that—ok a bit off topic! Thanks for sharing :) But I do find it interesting Tokyo Mew Mew is a title you hold with scorn. I thought Tokyo Mew Mew was good…or was I thinking that it was good since the anime aired on 4Kids many moons ago (and that meant no severe editing!)?
I never actually saw Tokyo Mew Mew on 4Kids, I was rather already over the manga by then. I guess it’s a harmless enough manga, but when I saw the Kodansha reprint, it made me rather upset. There are so many better ex-Tokyopop Kodansha series they could’ve taken and they took TMM and not Planetes? But I’m also upset that that was the first manga I bought, it’s not exactly a good first manga, I got rid of that series back in high school after all. I feel like a better manga could have been advertised. Then again, I bought it in a Suncoast, not exactly known for manga selection ever. What’s ever stranger was that I was enjoying the hell out of Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop on early adult swim, yet I picked a manga so vastly different as something I somehow thought I might enjoy. I got burned by several well advertised terrible shojo and for years I avoided shojo, unaware that there was Please Save My Earth and Basara (I don’t think younger me would’ve appreciated Banana Fish). I even avoided Fruits Basket, which I only read recently and found awesome, because of the shojo burn of all those pretty awful shojo Tokyopop pushed out. It was actually the Princess Tutu anime I credit with making me realize there is good shojo out there.
Outlaw Star wasn’t technically my first anime, but I wasn’t aware that Pokemon and Digimon were anime, Outlaw Star I realized was actually anime. I’m glad at least I still love that series, probably why scifi is still my favorite genre for anime or manga.
…I’m almost tempted to read Tokyo Mew Mew now. I really am. I’m sorry :D
Well, I heard that shoujo was pretty big back in the day, so it was probably hard to keep track of everything, and then you miss out on some of the good ones. That’s not your fault.
Oh. Well, if you makes you feel any better, my first anime when I realized it was anime was Betterman. Let’s just say stuff happens :D
Oh man, I used to watch Anime Unleashed too! The only thing I can remember about Betterman was an evil fetus (I am thinking of the right series, no?), I just miss TechTV in general.
I probably hate TMM more than it deserves, I’m not offended to see other people like it or anything. But it does remind me that I was once a 13 year old girl, a terrible thing, lol.
….The only thing I can remember is the green/brownish hair with (two?) female characters, some dude with long hair, and…and some weird stuff. I’m starting to think I watched Betterman too soon if there was an evil fetus in that anime!!!
(And yes, R.I.P TechTV. Such a cool channel)
I think I must have been really lucky, because the manga that hooked me on manga actually was the very first one I read—Hikaru no Go. Though it was rough going after that, at first. I’d loved HnG so much that I immediately went for a few other sports-manga-type series (like Prince of Tennis, for instance) to follow it up, but I didn’t like any of them. I worried then that HnG had been a fluke. But then I picked up Fullmetal Alchemist and realized I’d just been looking in the wrong places. So though Hikaru no Go is what convinced me to read more manga, Fullmetal Alchemist confirmed that there really was more there for me to read. It deserves credit, too.
Oh man you did get lucky! I still think Hikaru no Go is the best shonen I’ve ever read (Firefighter Daigo is my second choice), though I still can’t decide if it or Twin Spica is the best coming of age story I’ve read.
It is a tie for me between HnG and Gintama (what was published of it). But yeah, Hikaru no Go is great.
………:|
Well…for reading such a great manga, you paid for it by trying to think there was others just like it :D Actually, I remember enjoying Prince of Tennis some years ago…I kind of actually want to read it and see what the series is up to. But too many volumes :(
(
I wish the first manga I read was HnG!)Growing up without cable, I was never exposed to anime on Cartoon Network/Adult Swim like most people in my age group. I mean, I watched Pokemon, but who didn’t? It never even occurred to me that those shows (Pokemon, Digimon, etc.) were from a different country. I didn’t have any idea what anime was, never mind manga. But then one day, a girl on my older sister’s bus loaned her some comics to read. She never read them, but I did. Those first two manga I ever read were Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura. And I liked them okay, but they didn’t really make me seek out more manga. It was kind of a super-guilty-pleasure for me and I didn’t really consider it “legitimate” reading material.
And then one night I was bored at a party and the hostess had some library copies of Fullmetal Alchemist lying around. I recognized Ed from some t-shirts I’d seen at school and I was in that so-bored-I’d-read-a-cereal-box mood. Well. Fullmetal Alchemist was much better than a cereal box. I blew through the five volumes at the party and the next day I went to the library and sat down for a six hours with all the volumes they had. I was amazed. This was actually good! This manga was actually a great, respectable story! After that, I decided to give some other manga a shot.
I don’t remember the exact order, but Tsubasa: RC was another of my early reads because I was already familiar with the character from CCS. And from there I read more CLAMP stuff. And from reading all that CLAMP, I figured out that I really loved manga, all types and genres of manga, and branched out even further. I started collecting old volumes and buying new volumes the day they came out.
And now, about six or seven years later, I don’t even feel one bit embarrassed when I admit that I read more manga than any other literature.
Wait wait wait, you weren’t blown away by Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura? That…that’s statistically impossible!!! (Ok I kid I kid xD)
A party? Was this party at a convention?!? I should have been invited, but I probably didn’t even know manga existed back then (oh well). But wow that’s interesting. I guess the anime was airing at the time which was why some shirts were around at school. Kind of makes me wonder: did you decide to check out the anime after reading the manga?
I liked Sailor Moon just fine, but I read it when I was in fourth grade, collected it for a couple years, then kind of forgot about it. I also enjoyed Cardcaptor Sakura, but I guess it still felt like a guilty pleasure read to me? I like both of them a lot more now, years later.
The party was a birthday/Halloween party at a new friend’s house. I did eventually go to a convention though, about a year later or so.
After reading all of FMA I could get my hands on, but I decided to give the anime a shot. I actually wound up seeing the Conqueror of Shambala before anything else which was… weird. Cardcaptor Sakura also got me to watch the anime one summer.
But I STILL have not watched Sailor Moon. Which is pretty much the opposite of everyone else I know who have never read it.
Wait wait wait…you watched the FMA movie before the TV series? Impossible!!! (Ok, I’ll stop now! xD)
Well, there’s supposed to be a remake of the Sailor Moon anime, so just like me, you’ll get to see the anime that has a worldwide audience. I think :D
The manga that got me into manga reading was in fact the first manga I ever read – Magic Knight Rayearth.
I had seen a handful of episodes of the first season of the show, and my local library had all 3 volumes of the 1st half on the shelf. I had originally wanted to pick up the first few volumes of Fullmetal Alchemist, but they were checked out). I planned on persuing them through the week. I consumed them all in a single evening, and picked up the second half not long after.
I did eventually get around to FMA, although neither of these series were the first I bought – that honor goes to Fruits Basket. Not shockingly, I’ve also been a CLAMP fan ever since.
It’s strange how quickly and deeply I fell into manga reading, considering I never really had much interest in comics (American or otherwise) before, but the variety of stories and art kept me hooked. Such is the power of shoujo, I guess.
Oh. Hmm, it makes me wonder if Rayearth and Card Captor Sakura are manga one can get into if you haven’t read manga before. Yeah, I know, I need to check these works out :)
Yeah, same here. Growing up sure I liked all those superhero shows that aired on TV, but I didn’t know they had comic iterations (or that they were based on the comics) until way later, and when I did, I couldn’t really get into them. In the end, manga just proved to be something more than originally suspected! I blame just the sheer variety of manga.
My first exposure to anime was through Dragon Ball which used to air on Toonami when I was a kid. But I could never really understand the appeal. But then came Pokemon and all that changed – I was obsessed and had to get my hands on anything Pokemon-related which I could afford. But this was hard (especially since I lived in India). One day I came across a local toy shop carrying some copies of the ‘Electrical Tale of Pikachu’ manga from Viz Media (which was then published in the form of floppies). That was my first manga buy. Soon, I promptly forgot about Japanese anime and manga. Years passed & I became a teenager. Then came Naruto & it definitely had a huge impact on me. This was in 2010 and in 2011, I started collecting manga. E-commerce in India had made quite a bit of progress by then and so several sites carried manga titles. My first buys as a serious manga and comic collector was definitely the 1st omnibus edition of Cardcaptor Sakura from Dark Horse, the first 3-in-1 edition of Naruto from Viz and Fullmetal Alchemist. Out of these three, I think it was the latter two which prompted me to look into other manga series. Now, of course, I’m the proud owner of a huge manga library consisting of more than 200+ volumes of manga, which in India is a huge achievement. I’m actively collecting several series now like Thermae Romae, Haganai, Paradise Kiss, Love Hina, Tenjo Tenge etc. and hope to collect many more. Really looking forward to Tiger & Bunny, Summer Wars, Vinland Saga, Kitaro for this year.
Ah that’s pretty interesting. It definitely seems more manga has been made available where you’re at! I also find it interesting you’re the first commentor that has Naruto as a manga that impacted you, mainly because I know how popular a series it is (especially so when it started).
Wow, that’s a lot of manga…eventually one day I’ll have that amount! Eventually! And I’m definitely looking forward to reading the Summer Wars manga, and to see how it compares to the film (which I watched and loved).
Naruto really did have a huge impact on me…especially the first arc. I lost interest after 35+ volumes but am still gonna follow through till the end. :)
There was a time when I thought of taking a hiatus from manga but then I got my hands on Inuyasha Vizbig vol. 1 & promptly ended up buying all 8 volumes (which were available till then), followed by Ozamu Tezuka’s Ayako & the first volume of Sailor Moon & Codename Sailor V. & yeah, all kinds of manga is available here nowadays – even some in French. LOL! Which reminds me, how is Wolf by Shige Nakamura and the manga adaptation of 5 cm/sec (in the pic)? (I’ve wanted to try these out but couldn’t fit them within my budget).
Yeah, I think that would get someone who might have gotten tired of manga or considered taking a break would get right back into it by reading that!
Wolf…is pretty interesting. Admittedly, I read it, and some of the actions bordered on silly and pretty lame, and the art is definitely dated. However, exactly as how it can be in a boxing match, the stronger fighter takes his time analyzing his/her opponent, then when it gets into the later rounds, they start to come on and take care of business. This is how Wolf turned out to me. It seemed like a pretty mediocre manga about a man who desired to get revenge on his father, but by around the middle (and when it got to the fights) and from then on I had to keep turning page after page to find out what would happen next because the characters end up growing into memorable ones. I think to enjoy that manga, you have to have a certain sense of disbelief before you can really get into it. Otherwise, it probably won’t work out for you. I’d probably lean towards avoiding it.
However, you need to spend that cash on the manga adaptation of 5cm/sec. I found it to be the best manga of 2012. Haven’t watched the film? I didn’t either, yet it was a simple, heartbreaking romance story that really moved me. Watched the film? Well, I’ve read reviews that state it definitely holds its own against the film! So yeah, I can definitely recommend you check it out :)
I’m another one who got hooked on manga from the first thing I read, but it’s been so long I actually can’t remember for sure what the first thing was. XD But considering there were really only a handful of titles available in English at the time, it’s a good bet it was either Oh My Goddess! or Ranma 1/2 and I’m leaning towards saying the latter.
Aw come on now, surely you weren’t convinced from the very first manga you read! :D I wish I had been sold on manga in my first try! (is now whining)
I remember when they used to show Oh My Goddess on TV at some point. That was the only time I had known about it. Little did I know it had a bunch of volumes and it’s still going!!! How!?!? When will it end?!? (more whining xD)
I really shouldn’t comment. I might write something highly inappropriate!
………. :|
For me it was Clover by Clamp which was also my first Shojo Manga from the grim cyber punk aesthetic to the languid angst ridden Bishonen it all struck me as so different and this set me on my quest to find not so much Manga like it, but Manga that sparked that same emotional reaction. With that I went on to read everything from Fruits Basket, Alchino, even Little Butterfly. I was completely green and didn’t know my tastes as well as I do now but it all started with Clover which proved that Manga was in a word art and capable of telling an powerful emotional story so I sought out other Manga series that hit such a emotional reaction with me.
That’s why for the longest time I read almost exclusively Shojo Manga and also Moe Four Panel but than I also found myself getting into stuff like Tenjo Tenge if only as an study of Oh Great!’s Art style (he’s still one of my favorite Mangaka from an art stand point even if his story writing skills leave much to be desired). I could go on but as far as what keeps me reading it’s the same reason and question does this move me? Does this make me feel an emotion? Even if it’s a trainwreck throw away title like I Don’t Like You At All Big Brother I feel something when I read even titles like that because even “bad can be beautiful” in a sick morbid fascination kind of way.
In summation it’s all thanks to the emotional impact of Clover that I read more Manga got into collecting it, and it’s that search for the emotional “sweet spot” along with a love of analyzing and interpreting why I like something that keeps me coming back. I could go on from who is a better writer or artist guilty pleasures so on and so forth but in the interest of brevity I stop here.
If there is anything I’m definitely gonna take away from this post, and really, I should have expected this but didn’t: man is CLAMP works popular :D
I think most people who read manga have their guilty pleasures: I mean even though I wonder just where the heck Rosario + Vampire is going I still enjoy reading it now. So that’s definitely not a problem. Also, I don’t particularly mind how much you want to say really…I mean a good portion of the comments are pretty long anyways! If you have something you gotta say, say it.
Like others, I started watching anime on the Toonami block, and when CN stopped airing Naruto, I wanted to know what happened next. So I started buying the monthly Shonen Jump magazine. I wasn’t really interested in buying other manga, so I just read the magazine for awhile. But then, I started wanting something else, and I wanted to start something from the beginning, but I didn’t know what I would like, or what was out there. Jump would do some ads for their other manga, and there was one that always had a really weird and funny blurb, and another that looked kind of interesting. So the first manga I ever bought were Gintama and D. Gray Man. After reading several volumes of both of these series, I picked up the Vizbig edition of Rurouni Kenshin. Weirdly, reading RK helped me to get more of the jokes in Gintama, and I wanted to read more, so I would appreciate more of the drama and humor of Gintama. (Incidentally, when Viz put Gintama on hiatus, wanting to know what happened next led me to the anime. That and Tiger & Bunny got me into anime again.)
Huh. Well that’s pretty interesting, I wouldn’t have suspected Gintama would be a work people would buy without reading other manga (though in your case you did say you were reading Jump). But surely the aliens and samurai blurb didn’t convince you :D But now that I think of it, I pretty much enjoyed Gintama when I read it in college. I blame the fact that it ends up parodying a bunch of anime and manga franchises (Dragon Quest lol), and by the time I read it, I already knew some of the jokes, so I didn’t quite have to know a bunch of Japanese history. I still wish Viz published it…but for now, the anime suffices.
For me, it was Ranma 1/2—back before it was licensed in English, one of my friends went on a trip to Japan and brought back some laserdiscs of the anime. Even without subtitles it was hilarious, and I was hooked on the show! (My friend provided a basic summary, and besides, the whole “people changing forms when splashed with water” thing was pretty obvious even if you didn’t have a translation.) So when Viz published the manga in English, I immediately went out and bought it, back when they were still releasing it as single comic issues, before the graphic novels came out. Eventually I started reading other Viz titles like Maison Ikkoku and Inu Yasha, and Dark Horse’s Oh My Goddess (I picked up that one because of the anime, too). My all-time favorite manga that actually got me to become part of a fandom (seeking out discussion groups, fanfic, etc.) was Pet Shop of Horrors, but my whole manga/anime obsession started with Ranma 1/2.
Laserdiscs? Single issues? Oh man, I’m too young for this xD
I want to check out the Oh My Goddess manga, I really do because just like you, I saw the anime. But…so many volumes… :(
Haha, I know, most of the comments here are making me feel kind of old, like I should be shaking my cane and saying, “You young whippersnappers don’t know how good you have it!” ;-) And I still have the first Oh My Goddess OVA series on laserdisc!
I’m still reading the Oh My Goddess manga, although you’re right that it is a very long series with 40+ volumes and still going. Maybe you could see if the public library has it, or suggest that they add it to their collection if they don’t have it? I do spend a lot of money on manga, but there are still way many more series out there than I can afford, so I do a lot of my manga reading at the local library.
Well, my local library doesn’t have a bunch of manga in the first place. I think I can try and make suggestions, but who knows, that might be a challenge considering how it’s hard to find Oh My Goddess manga in regular bookstores and conventions. I might instead suggest they stock more Case Closed (Detective Conan) so my wallet can be safe for other things!
In my house Toonami was kind of a family event, when it played on the weekdays I’d have my cousins over after school or I would go to their house and we would watch Toonami together. The first manga that got me hooked and that I needed to read more of it was the ever popular Fruits Baskets. I had already known what manga was and borrowed a few volumes from my friends and the library that I enjoyed but then I was introduced to Fruits Basket in the 9th grade (I’m now in the 12th) and I immediately fell in love with the series. Ever since then I have been a loyal collector, I mainly collect shoujo series but I have a fair amount of shounen, my favorite being D.Gray-Man at the moment.
Oh wow that’s pretty cool. I would always just turn to Toonami either if I was home or if I was at my Grandma’s house. Nothing too special!
Yeah, Fruits Basket has been pretty popular. I never read it though D: So yeah, I missed out. I did read D. Gray Man though. Maybe I should try and get back into the series…
If we’re being strictly technical, it would be Sailor Moon. I watched the first Tenchi Muyo movie first (that was my first anime), but Sailor Moon was the first anime that I realized there was a comic connection as well since about a week later I went to the comic book store for the first time and WHAM there was a Sailor Moon artbook. That led me to ask about it and at the time the girl who worked there was also a big manga nerd so she excitedly showed me everything related to Sailor Moon. “We need to foster the appreciation for other cultures young!” were her exact words (I was 13 at the time).
From there it was kind of a slippery slope. Sailor Moon, No Need for Tenchi, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, X, Video Girl Ai, Fushigi Yugi—I was seriously spending about hnn $70 a week on manga alone (meanwhile my American comic book habit began and I was spending close to $40 a week on those). I can only be grateful that my father was so side swiped by the divorce that he didn’t notice how much I was spending for that first year.
I don’t know why I keep coming back honestly. A lot of my friends from school who were into manga or comics grew out of them a decade or more ago in HS. Or their tastes have changed—mine have of course, I wouldn’t have read “A Bride’s Story” or ” 20th Century Boys” a decade ago and I probably would have LOVED “Skip Beat” or “Fairy Tale”. There’s just something…not so much better about manga, but that appeals to the reader in me.
There are always reasons we come back to manga. Some are easy to identify; others are just mysterious. In the end though, there’s a charm or quality about manga that keeps people reading, and keeps us coming back. Especially since there are different types of manga for everyone as well!
But again, why didn’t I get hooked on manga the first time :D !!!I know I’m replying to this a little late but, well, I’ve been a bit distracted lately.
Anyway, I also happened to be hooked on the first manga I ever tried – Inuyasha. Of course, I don’t think that’s the full story – while Inuyasha was enough to get me hooked on manga, it wasn’t enough for me to get hooked into all kinds of manga. For example, the first shojo manga which hooked me was Mars – before then, I didn’t consider myself a part of the shojo audience, when in fact, I totally am a part of that audience. There have also been times when my interest in manga (or certain kinds of manga) has lulled, only to be rekindled upon discovering the right title. The most notable of these is Rose of Versailles, which re-awakened my interest in shojo after a period of focusing on shonen, and is still my favorite manga. Hooray for being able to understand languages other than English!
I have finally started reading Japanese manga again (something I haven’t done in a while, due to my focus on other Asian comics), though I have yet to find a title to bring the passion back in full force. Re-reading one my old favorites in Chinese would probably do the trick, but I think it would be better to pull it off with a manga I’ve never truly sunk my teeth into.
Haha, that’s perfectly fine. My hope anyways is that this post manages to be useful and fun even two months from now and all sorts of people can tell me and everyone else what manga they got into, whether it was the first time, or maybe after a couple of tries. I’m glad you decided to reply to this post anyways, and I definitely don’t consider it late :)
Lucky! I would be able to read so much more if I had only learned a few more languages ;_; That’s pretty great, that means you can enjoy all sorts of comics!
(Also, seriously, what’s with all this Takahashi dominating this post? Why xD)
Probably because back in the day, Takahashi *WAS* much of the manga, particularly addictive manga, widely available in English. Back in the day, Takahashi was some of the easiest manga to get a hold of, and was the only artist I can think of who had multiple works that were readily available (CLAMP fit this description a little later, but Takahashi fit it first). I remember that, when I started reading Inuyasha, there were less than ten volumes available in English – and they still had the monthly issues presenting the latest chapter in translation – and each volume cost something like $16 each…
Yeah, whenever I go to conventions or to the MangaNEXT library, I would always see old Viz imprints, and a good portion of it was from Takahashi. Her works definitely seemed to be a hit.
….. :| I’m kind of glad I don’t quite have to spend that much money on manga today!
My first manga (as well as my first anime) was Sailor Moon, but like Myrah above the series didn’t really hook me onto manga. This is kinda unfair to choose, but I’d have to say it was the entire Shojo Beat magazine that got me into manga. Before that, I only really read manga that were based on anime I’d already enjoyed, but the Shojo Beat magazine got me into so many series I’d have never tried like Nana and Sand Chronicles – and then into shojo manga, period.
Sailor Moon was my first anime too, though somehow I missed on the manga until much later (by then I was already into manga, so the manga wasn’t a gateway for me).
Is that what inspired you to start a Shoujo manga blog ;)
Wow, I’m a bit surprised Sailor Moon didn’t get you right away…hmm, it makes me wonder if the series is all that it’s cracked up to be…I think :D