That’s why I used to only buy omnibuses. Though it’s pretty hard to find those these days

'bout 20min each I’d say

Back in my day we paid $30 each for VHS Anime, you had to choose Duns or Subs ad it would be like 2 episodes of a 500 episode series.

So, it could be worse.

Then that’s exactly what I have done.

I read a lot of manga at my local library as a kid.

Here, if a volume, or a series, is missing, the Helsinki library system allows you to browse where every library item they have is, in every library in the tri-city area.

It’s in a library far away? You can request it for lending, and it will be moved to a library of your choosing, where you can then go pick it up. There’s a copy in a nearby library? You can still request it be moved, but it’s faster to just go there, borrow it from there. And when returning it, any library will do, no need to travel back to the one you got it from. All the units they have are currently lent out? You can sign up to be in line to borrow one.

I regularly put in requests to be able to check out entire series all at once, binging every single volume that existed of something in a single weekend. Then keeping track and putting in requests to have a copy of any new volumes be available at my local library, right after publishing.

You can request stuff that isn’t in the system, and if there’s at least a couple people interested, it will probably get acquired. One Piece 103 in finnish is not yet out, and HelMet already has info on their site tracking 9 copies that they’ve ordered, with one person in line waiting to borrow one of them asap.

Not everything is available of course, but it’s a lot. The manga category currently has 6940 unique items. And HelMet cares about making sure there aren’t gaps. What’s the point of free libraries if you can’t read stuff from beginning to end?