About two months back I decided to post on my exploits when it came to searching for "raw manga". As an anime and manga fan that sometimes has too much time on their hands, finding a sourceless manga can be frustrating. Let's take "Sergent Grizzly" as our first example:
Looks amusing, no? Yet after searching high and low, I was unable to find any traces of it. Well that is a little untruthful; if I wanted to import it straight from Japan I could of. But as a fan that lives in the United States why would I spend all that money to import one book on a whim? This isn't Emma here; this is a manga that sold me based on looks. One has to have tools of the trade to try and find sources for things that might not grab the mainstreams attention.
There are blog sites such as Akiba Blog, Senak Blog, and Earl.Box. These are just some of the countless Japanese blogs that will put up pictures and summaries of newer manga. So where do you go know that you have a preliminary idea of what you're looking for? Well unless you want to troll through things like Winny, Share, or Perfect Dark, you'll need a source that you can understand. Manga Updates, a sister site to Baka-Updates and MangaHelpers are good if you want to search for a title, or just browse a daily release list.
Manga Updates and MangaHelpers are fine if you have a vauge idea of what you want, but what if you want to find art books or full volumes of raw manga? A site like Nihonmaru might be more your speed. After a simple registration process you can browse forums that contain artbooks, raw manga, translated manga, music, and other things you might not have found with your basic Google search. The important thing to remember is that these sites and programs are just tools, and of course if you like the manga you're reading or viewing, why not try to order it?
Unfortunately this poster can't read Japanese, but I do enjoy pretty pictures.
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