Top 6 Rankings: second-hand manga stores

So you want to buy used manga in Tokyo? I’ve spent a long time browsing stores over the last few years, and built a collection of over 100 manga books for abooouuut 10,000 yen ($75). In doing this, I’ve done my share of googling for the best places to buy manga, but found that many of the recommendations were not great. In fairness, they were probably once the top places to go, but now at the end of 2022 many places have changed/shut down. So here is my rankings for the 5 best shops to buy second-hand manga in Tokyo.

Note: my taste is very mainstream, and follows popular mainstream anime series. So keep in mind that this list focusses shops selling shonen manga (少年漫画), which is manga targeted towards junior and senior high school students. This includes series like Dragonball, Haikyuu!, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Attack on Titan, One Punch Man, Fullmetal Alchemist, Promised Neverland, Death Note, Gintama, My Hero Academia, Dr. Stone, Demon Slayer, Cells at Work, Jujutsu Kaisen, etc. The reason shonen manga are popular amongst foreign language learners is that they have furigana (small hiragana above the kanji) to make reading a whole lot easier.

Just before we get to the list – BOOKOFF is a chain second-hand goods store you can find everywhere in Japan. It’s one of the best places to buy used manga in Tokyo and made 4 of the top 6! Here’s what the storefronts usually look like.

#6. BOOKOFF Shinjuku Station West Exit

110 yen used manga! Manga is on the 5th floor of this shop. This shop is always a little crowded, so browsing the aisles thoroughly is kind of difficult. There’s only one isle of cheap manga, the smallest selection on the list. But location is primo, right inside Shinjuku station! Hot tip – the drawers underneath the shelves has overflow stock, so if you find a manga series you’re looking for but the volume is missing, try the draw under the shelves. This goes for the other Book-off shops on this list as well!

#5. Mandarake Shibuya

Others highly recommend this shop but it’s in the #5 spot, and not higher on my list, for a few reasons. The used books are not 100 yen. Prices vary, but they start at about 220 yen. And they have a great selection of complete sets, but a smaller selection of individual manga. Location is super handy in the middle of Shibuya though!

#4. BOOKOFF Taito

This store is in the wider Asakusa area, about a 10-15 minute walk from central Asakusa. Great selection of individual books (plus a good 110 yen section). Much better than #5 and #6 on the list in this regard. But this store only has a small section of completed sets.

#3. BOOKOFF Akihabara Ekimae Store

110 yen used manga! Manga on 5th and 6th floors. Not as crowded as the Shinjuku branch, but this shop is the second most crowded on the list. This is getting into the really good shops now, #3, #2, and #1 on this list are worth making dedicated trips to for your manga hunting! There is a great selection of both individual books, and completed sets here. I picked up volume 1 and 2 of Cells at Work! (はたらく細胞) here, which I couldn’t find second-hand anywhere else!

#2. BOOKOFF Kameido

110 yen used manga! All manga on the 2nd floor. As far as success finding books that I wanted, this store is definitely up at one of the top spots. They have a great selection of individual manga and completed sets. This shop also seems to have all of the hard to find volumes (generally volume 1 of popular series are harder to find), so this shop really helped complete some sets where I was missing a book or two. They also had Yotsubato, which is harder to find as it is probably the top choice among Japanese beginners!

#1. Furuhon ichiba nishioshima ekimae ten

Try saying this shop name 10 times fast haha. This shop is round the corner from my house but is genuinely the best second-hand manga store I have been to in Tokyo. They have a huge section of 80 yen manga with top series like Dragonball, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Attack on Titan, One Punch Man, Full Metal Alchemist, Death Note, Gintama, etc.

This store is by far the biggest on the list, with 5 long isles of manga plus a big wall of completed sets. And they seem to have most volumes. (I like to buy the equivalent of season one of the anime, which is typically 7 or 8 book volumes). They also have other sections of used manga for 100 and 220 yen for newer titles. Sometimes the same titles appear in both the 80 yen section so check there first.

Where not to go

Some other blogs had recommended places that I really would not recommend, they were either way too niche, or barely had any selection anymore (end of 2022).

• Melonbooks Akihabara 1st Store. Niche selection. Near non-existent selection of mainstream titles.
• K-BOOKS Akihabara. Unbelievably, when we went in October 2022, there were no books at all!
• Nakano Broadway Mandarake. Controversial, I know, as many other blogs recommend this place. It’s a neat place, and granted, Mandarake does have a lot of Manga (new and used). Pre-pandemic this was the place to go. Unfortunately, now it’s just not the same as half of the shops are permanently closed down. The Mandarake here has a unique collection, but I feel it’s like the left-overs of the left-overs. If you’re there for other reasons, check it out, but otherwise I don’t recommend making a dedicated trip out to Nakano Broadway for buying manga.
• Shosen Book Tower Akihabara – only has new manga (no second-hand books).