What a name... "Manga Force", wrrroar!  Anyways, I usually swear at the TV when I see serialized rip off things advertised. Like build a doll house in 20 installments. The first issue only 29p! Or learn how to cook, free ingredients with each edition! So when I saw the Manga Force one advertised I had the same reaction.

To summise what Manga Force is would be to say it is a subscription to a magazine that comes out fortnightly, each with a Manga DVD movie to accompany it. What swayed me was that 2 of the first 4 DVDs (Ghost in the Shell and Akira) were DVDs I once owned and would very much like to replace.  So I took a look at their website and saw an offer that said that if you subscribe you get issues 2 and 3 for free. And posters and stuff. This for £8.99 I thought, "what the hell".

I then forgot about this.

3 weeks pass and the postman wakes me up to hand me a package. Inside it was the first three magazines, two posters and a t-shirt. The posters I shall ignore (they have Manga Force on one side and Akira on the other). The t-shirt is a medium (no, it can't talk to the dead. If it could it would ask my gran what size to be and she'd say "He sure ain't an medium".  To which the T-shirt would say, "I didn't want to know if he could talk to the dead").

On to the magazines. Well, calling them magazines is the stretch of the imagination but they are 6 pages of glossy information. I've read the first and it's okay, a moderately interesting piece on the director of Ghost in the Shell and a bit about what Manga actually is. And a quiz at the end to see if you were paying attention.

The DVDs themselves are Manga Force editions of the movies, so I'm not sure what extras they come with and/or what language tracks they have. Or even if they're dubbed or subbed or both.

So, I have in my possession now:

1) Ghost in the Shell
2) Blood, the Last Vampire
and
3) Macross Plus, episodes 1 and 2. (...and I wonder if more episodes will make up future editions of Manga Force?)

4) Will be Akira, but isn't here yet.

Did anyone else subscribe?  You could probably shop around and get these cheaper, but I kind of like the idea of being spoon fed the movies


Cheers

Chris