No. No it’s not. Now that that’s cleared up, see you all next Monday for my next update.
Fine, I’ll go into a little bit more detail I suppose. I’ll start this off by talking about my uncle for a bit. He’s a massive history and media enthusiast. He also properly knows his stuff and can talk about his interests for hours. He has a massive, massive collection of books, movies, posters, and all kinds of things that relate to this. I’ve asked him from time to time if he can ever read everything that he owns. To which the answer was a very convincing no. He has more books than anyone could read in their lifetime, let alone someone in their sixties. But after a certain while, that’s no longer the point. The point is to collect, to go up and down stores and book fairs to find something interesting you don’t yet have. It’s like collecting Pokémon cards in a way.
That’s not the only way to enjoy collecting, obviously. My uncle is a nice person, but he needs an office outside the house to be able to store everything. He’s arguably one bad day away from being a hoarder. He kind of is already, but since it’s all stored away and there’s nothing in the living room etc. there’s not really anything wrong with it. I’ve started a little bit of a collection myself. Now I don’t have nearly as much stuff as he does, and I probably never will. But I have gotten an affinity for collecting manga and light novels. There is something very satisfying about reading the actual volumes as opposed to reading the chapters week by week. You get some extras. There’s some translator notes, a little excerpt that the author wrote, cool cover art, advertisements for other manga, and last but not least you can put it on a nice shelf. Here’s a picture of part of my manga collection, interspersed with my signed Ninja Sex Party CDs, which I like to mention whenever I can, because they’re super cool.
I personally believe it enhances the experience. But both can be enjoyed separately as well. You can enjoy collecting something without ever touching it. To bring back an earlier example, I doubt the streamers that spent tens of thousands of dollars on Pokémon cards not too long ago are now playing the actual card game against each other. Then again, I could be wrong about that. The point is, there are different strokes for different folks. Some people like collecting something they can put in a box or on a shelf, to look at, but never do anything else with. And some people like collecting things that are actually useful. And me? I like both. I like stalling out a collection so I can look at it, but I also like taking a book off of the shelf and reading it. I hope to one day adorn it with lots of figurines as well. A portion to look at, and a portion to read.
What do you think of this? Do you like collecting manga, or something else? What’s your favorite thing about your collection? Mine is the often beautiful cover art.
Opal Kaharis 