You know what’s sadder?
I’m having less difficulty reading the furigana than the kanji in that screenshot 
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I can read all the kanji, but for example, I couldn’t tell if the furigana for 秒 was ひょう, びょう, or ぴょう if I didn’t already know the word.
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definitely a good thing for your reading (if not the quality level provided…) i feel like one of the functions of furigana is to fade into the BG so you only have to look into it if you need to jog your memory. Like a manual text hooker
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I mean, the scan is awful, but I can actually read the furigana on that one!
Compared to some of this from Horimiya:
Honestly, it probably did help me. It’s hard to stop my brain gravitating to the easiest thing to read. So if there’s a romaji version it will read that, if there’s furigana it will read that, only after exhausting those options will it attempt to parse the kanji first.
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Looking at Kanjis in isolation, for example:
While I can read ねむ (it’s giving me Captcha quality vibes), the kanji is just a mystery.
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Yeah, that’s only legible because I know the kanji and the reading.
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There’s an argument that reading is training your brain to such an extent that you just need a vague blurry shape in combination with contextual information to be able to read something (handwriting recognition etc). However, god damn that is a pita for learners trying to look stuff up lol
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I disagree. I read physically or digitally on my phone. When reading physically, I don’t have a way to do OCR that is super convenient. (T̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶G̶o̶o̶g̶l̶e̶ ̶T̶r̶a̶n̶s̶l̶a̶t̶e̶/̶G̶o̶o̶g̶l̶e̶ ̶L̶e̶n̶s̶̶, ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶G̶o̶o̶g̶l̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶v̶a̶c̶y̶ ̶n̶i̶g̶h̶t̶m̶a̶r̶e̶,̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶k̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶.̶) And good manga reader android apps with good OCR support are hard to come by.
When reading digitally, this is only a real problem with manga though, since you can easily look up words from novels/light novels since they use proper text instead of pictures.
I have definitely felt the difference of 1-2 levels in shows that I have watched when they are close to my upper limit of what I can understand. If I am watching something easier for me, then 1-2 levels doesn’t really make a difference, but if I am pushing myself to more difficult material, then 1-2 levels can be the difference between mostly understanding what is going on and being completely lost.
Oh no! I rather enjoyed that show and was really excited to read through the manga eventually. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to buy it physically. Hopefully the shipping won’t kill me.
Another one to buy physically then. Even if the shipping doesn’t kill me, I think I might run out of space at this rate.
Also, I’m now realizing that a “scan quality” tag/rating of some sort would be nice since manga scan quality seems to be all over the place. It’ll be nice to know ahead of time what to buy physically vs digitally.
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However, some stores have different scans of the same Manga. From the time it was in the Wanikani book club, Horimiya seems awful across the board, but I have seen some where e.g. Kobo is clear and Bookwalker is a mess or vice versa
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I assumed that the publisher would scan the manga and send the result to the digital stores that they wanted to be sold at, but it sounds like each digital store does their own scans instead?
That would surely be more convenient for the publisher, but also a lot more complicated when trying to find a good scan. I don’t wanna search through 20 different stores just to buy something. 
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I think there’s other factors too, like maybe some stores convert each manga into their preferred format and compression settings too.
You’d also think the store owned by the original publisher would also have the digital assets used for printing and not have to scan it, but there’s plenty of poorly scanned Kadokawa manga on Bookwalker, for example.
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A bit of a different furigana rant, but here goes:
Two of the first manga that I read intensively since getting on natively are 放浪息子 | L26 and チェンソーマン (1) | L24 . The fact that Chainsawman is rated as easier (by a bit) really made me doubt how people are rating the difficulty of manga. 放浪息子 has very basic vocabulary - simple, common words that are appropriate for the elementary-aged characters to use. There are no furigana. Chainsawman, on the other hand has the word 仲介手数料 on the fourth page, with furigana.
It really made me think that people rating the manga aren’t grading based on understanding, but on their ability to “read” the kanji. Like if there’s furigana, I can “read” the kanji, so therefore I understand the word (whether or not I actually know what it means).
Anyway, maybe a bit too much of a rant on a minor grade level difference.
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It’s possible that people are reading Chainsaw Man after they’ve seen the anime and the knowledge of what is happening makes it feel easier.
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I won’t do that for this series because it’s too long and would take up too much shelf space. So realistically it just means I’ll never read it which is a shame. The sad thing is that the volume that came out only a few months ago isn’t much better.
I like a mix of of physical and digital manga, but I hate feeling forced to buy physically just because the digital quality is garbage. I prefer to buy physically mainly for series with good art or good print quality (like 4-koma series from Manga Time Kirara).
I think part of the difficulty with this series (and really every series from this mangaka) is that the mangaka loves to jump around in time and not provide context. 放浪息子 was the first full series I read, so I read it way back in 2019. But even series from her that I’ve read in the last year or two are more difficult than many manga I’ve read for this reason. I have not read Chainsaw Man for comparison, but personally level 26 seems fair for 放浪息子.
Ha, possibly! I’m sure it’s significantly more popular than the 放浪息子 anime (which I did actually watch and got me to read the manga).
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I know you don’t do Bookwalker, but for those who do, the scan quality is substantially better there: 魔王城でおやすみ（１） - マンガ（漫画） 熊之股鍵次（少年サンデーコミックス）：電子書籍試し読み無料 - BOOK☆WALKER -
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Yes, I heard that for this manga specifically. Still funny to share how bad the Amazon one is though.
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Personally I’m torn between physical and digital.
Physical is nice because used physical manga tend to be cheaper than digital manga (assuming you can find a good deal on shipping). Digital manga tend to be priced closer to new manga pricing rather than secondhand pricing.
But digital manga is so much more convenient in many ways. (it doesn’t take up space, you don’t have to wait for shipping, you don’t have to carry anything with you to read your whole library on the go, etc.) You do have to deal with DRM though. And the aforementioned quality control issues.
For series that I am a big fan of I definitely want to own it physically. Also, if I already own a physical/digital version of a volume then I won’t want to switch for the rest of the series.
Usually it’s more up in the air though. Do I want to wait to find a good deal on shipping to save money? Or do I want the convenience of digital manga?
Speaking of dealing with DRM, it looks like I have another series to rip from Bookwalker eventually. The work around for their DRM is obnoxious, but they also seem to have better deals than other digital stores (at least in my limited experience).
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In general I trust the levels here, sometimes with a +/- 2 lvls sorta thing. The thing is levels don’t tell you why something is hard… like 犬夜叉 | L23, ホリミヤ | L23 and 「マンガ」 君の名は。 | L23 are all hard for very different reasons; same for say NEW GAME! | L25, ツバサ | L25 and 鬼滅の刃 | L25. Depending on how those line up with someone’s particular strengths and weaknesses, they might feel very differently about the difficulty.
Ironically, ホリミヤ is one of the few series that I’m really perplexed by the level (I think it’s too low)… but it was also a pick for WK’s Absolute Begginers Book Club - so maybe it’s just a “me” thing.
I’ve seen (and left comments like) “I think Lvl xyz is slightly too high/low” in reviews, but sometimes those series move 1-2 levels (at most) over time anyway.
I’m surprised to see people say they don’t take furigana into account when grading… like it’s part of the work. Tho it doesn’t always equal “easier” (in fact, it often correlates with harder grammar). OCR aside tho, it can greatly reduce the amount of lookups, since it eliminates “forgotten reading” lookups, and/or you may realize you know a word (but didn’t recognize the kanji at first) from seeing the readings.
I do get why folks who are really strong with kanji wouldn’t take it into account though - and think it’s fine either way… was just surprised tho.
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Fwiw, Suruga-ya does free shipping multiple weekends each month. Also full sets on eBay often have free shipping as well.
Personally I’ve been getting more and more into physical lately. The quality is just nicer… but I do have some of the same hesitations - and it can be a bit more cumbersome. I also have a rule w/ physical that I’m 100% sure I will read anything I buy (even if not in the immediate future)
Surprised to read that Bookwalker often has better deals (not counting their coinback promotions). One of the reasons I sometimes buy from Amazon JP (kindle) is that things are usually at least slightly cheaper there.
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I actually just bought some manga from Suruga-ya during their last free shipping weekend. Definitely going to check in with them semi-regularly for physical manga. For some reason checking Ebay never even occurred to me. I’ll look there next time I’m looking for a full series.
And I was including coinback promotions in what I said about Bookwalker before. During their 50% back promotion a couple weeks ago I managed to get $300+ of manga for around $100. Their coin system is extremely generous. You even get coins back for spending coins. Multiple times during that event I spent all my coins (And little to no actual money), just to end up with several thousand more coins to spend again because I got 50% of my spent coins back. And at least once I got nearly 100% back somehow. It’s honestly a bit broken.
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