Sites I use for manga purchases

It's been hard keeping track of all the different sites I use for my manga fix, so I'm just gonna list them here:

Comikey - Officially translated digital chapters as they come out. My go to for Kengan Ashura, Kengan Omega, ST☆R: Strike it Rich (aka ISSK, or Isshou Senkin). I've also enjoyed Are You Okay with a Slightly Older Girlfriend? and Baki.

Book Walker (English) - I go here for How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? (a Sandroverse series that's NOT on Comikey along with Blue Ursus), but these are officially translated complete volumes, not just individual chapters. Also available: Blue Lock and Apothecary Diaries (manga and light novels). JP page example here and yes I was able to buy one of those JP comics there and read them on my EN account, though the series I really wanted to double-dip on are still region-locked:

• はじめの一歩
• BLUE LOCK

Update: They're splitting the JP and EN sites after all, but at least we're not losing the ability to read or purchase from the JP sites. 

Viz - Official English translations of weekly Shonen Jump chapters and Viz Manga... though I'm having a hard time figuring out what the difference is. It says I'm a Shonen Jump member, so I can read the latest chapters as they're released as well as everything that ever was on there (or most of it anyway), meaning the Viz Manga membership is for... something else?  I notice stuff like Ranma 1/2 and Welcome to the NHK aren't on Shonen Jump, but are available by volume on Viz Manga.

Kinokuniya - I use this link to buy physical Japanese-language manga from the Sandroverse. I very much regret buying used manga from eBay that ended up costing the same or more and often didn't even have the obi! 

Manga-One - Kengan Omega （ケンガンオメガ）original Japanese source. Originally at Ura Sunday.

Manga-One - ST☆R: Strike it Rich （一勝千金 ）original Japanese source. Originally at Ura Sunday.

Manga-One - Blue Ursus original Japanese source.

Manga Poke (Kodansha Shonen Magazine) - The original source for Japanese manga by Kodansha, maybe others. It's got some heavy hitters like Attack on Titan and Blue Lock. I made an account for Hajime no Ippo but I spent way more than I probably should since they're individual chapters and not the volumes, and navigating to the chapter you want is difficult. You have to almost close your eyes to avoid the thumbnails and hitting "more" a dozen times is annoying. They take overseas Visa at least. My own personal Hajime no Ippo bookmark: 760

K MANGA - Official English Kodansha site. It's nice that the site looks exactly the same as the Japanese site, though they are separate sites requiring separate accounts unlike Book Walker. I'm linking to Blue Lock here. Hajime no Ippo is here but they're only, oh, 1,311 chapters behind. That's 1,540 days, or put another way, 4 years, 2 months, and 17 days behind. Mind you, that's the date the manga was put online; the manga actually goes back to the 1980s, I believe. 

DLsite - All sorts of manga in Japanese and English, including the kind that makes you want to remove articles of clothing. Some of them require a VPN to purchase, like Hajime no Ippo and Baki. Others, like Bleach or Dr. Stone, you don't. I guess Viz is cool like that. Anyway, you'll need to add points with a gift card, turn the VPN on to Japan, then add to cart and purchase. Or you used to for a brief time; now they're okay with US credit cards again.

Fanza Doujin - More eguti.

Irodori Comics - More eguti.

Storage cases from Amazon - I use these and love them. These used to be about $20 shipped and now they're double the price. FRUCK TUMP

A not inexpensive lesson in buying anime

(TLDR: Skip the Honey and Clover DVDs, but do get the Blu-rays.)

Got nostalgic for the last two fansubs I ever downloaded:

• Welcome to the NHK
• Honey and Clover

The budget DVD rerelease of Welcome to the NHK was cheap enough on Amazon, with the whole package coming in at six episodes per DVD and four DVDs. I have to wonder if the original releases were of better quality, but I'm not gonna do anything more about it.

The DVDs of Honey and Clover, however, were far too expensive on Amazon, so I hopped on eBay to check prices there. I saw the entire set for $30 so I had to get it. Then I felt bad because there were actually Blu-rays available, but naturally more expensive; the first half of the series alone was $40. So I thought I could at least be happy that I got the whole series for less than even that.

The DVDs arrived in great condition, and the "book" style packaging was quite attractive. Video quality was as good as you can expect from pre-HD sources. But the truly awful subtitles crushed any enjoyment I could have gotten from it. As this review and this forum post mention, if you hear can clearly hear the surname, you damn well better have that name in the subtitles instead of the given name! Not only is it confusing hearing one name and reading another, but relationships can change, and if and when characters become closer, they'll drop the surnames and call each other by their given names instead. So what what happens when given names were used all along? As a translator, you're boned. As a viewer, you're more confused than you have to be.

Not unrelated: I was almost going to blow a stupid amount of money for the rare, out-of-print physical English manga of Welcome to the NHK, but it's available digitally at both Comixology and Viz. Of course, had I known that it was on Viz from the beginning, I probably wouldn't have gotten it at Comixology first. While the reading experience is equally good on tablets, you want Viz for browser-based vertical monitor for single-page viewing; Comixology can't seem to do single-page viewing on manga other than the cover page. But if you want to view both pages at the same time on a TV, again with a browser, you do want Comixology because Viz enforces this stupid border at the top and bottom of the screen that you can't get rid of. Viz has the border in browser-based vertical monitor viewing, but that almost perfectly centers the image, making it even better than if you had hit the full screen button.

Welp, more money to splurge on the physical complete Japanese-language manga!

The Five Ws and One H... in Japanese!

What can I say... I get a kick out of those old kanji readings.

誰 / だれ / dare / Who
何 / なに / nani / What
何時 / いつ / itsu / When
何処 / どこ / doko / Where
何故 / なぜ / naze / Why
如何 / どう / dou / How