Appropriately subtitled That Time I Read So Much Manga That I Needed This Tracker To Record Everything From The God-Tier Volumes To Trash Faves and Must-Reads! (an in-joke for overly exhaustive light novel and manga titles), My Manga Collection from nerdy journalist Vernieda Vergara quite literally ticks all the boxes for collectors.
Readers of the non-pictorial kind might wonder why something like this might be useful. If you are, clearly you’ve never invested heavily in a 50+ volume shonen epic or tried to defend a walking red flag male lead in a romance story that should have your feminist badge revoked. In short, manga readers are a unique, separatist breed from regular book folk, trained to read in multiple directions, obsessively rank everything, and worship the all-purpose Kallax unit for collection housing.
My Manga Collection is therefore not a simple checklist book but an indepth auditing system for tracking, rating and reviewing books, physical or digital. Starting with a fill-out-able contents section, each tracking section is surprisingly detailed: you can record genre, author and publishing details, track and rate individual volumes and the series as a whole, and add notes about the art, plot, characters and more. Spread across 200+ pages, there’s room to record 40 series in total, and the final pages include Vergara’s Top 50 manga recommendations (great for newbies or oldies), space for your own Top 50 and a wishlist.
The interior design and layout by Priscilla Yuen and Colleen Cunningham smartly mimic the dot grid shading found in most traditional printed manga, while the variation between tickable, shadeable and writable boxes and shapes stops the repeated process from feeling laborious. While not essential, this is a cute supplement for any avid journaler and manga fan’s collection, no matter what stage it’s at.
My Manga Collection, Vernieda Vergara (Adams Media)
Price: £9.99. Info: here
words HANNAH COLLINS