John Jakala at Sporadic Sequential has recently shared his list of re-readable manga. David Welsh at Precocious Curmudgeon has also chimed in with a post on why he re-reads. Since I’m always re-reading books I love, I thought this would be a great subject for a Friday Five!

In general, I’ll re-read a manga series for one of the following reasons:

• to refresh my memory before starting a new volume;
• to see how revelations from recent volumes were foreshadowed or set up in early ones;
• to wallow in the sheer joy or fun or [insert emotion] of my favorite scenes (aka “the good bits re-read”).

I think that very long manga series particularly reward re-reading, especially for the second reason I mentioned above. However, my sense of this may be skewed by my fondness for such series.

Anyway, five series that I find particularly re-readable are:

1. Saiyuki and Saiyuki Reload: This is one of the first manga series that I fell in love with, and it’s remained a favorite. The new volumes come out infrequently enough that a refresher is usually helpful, and the occasional revelations also make me scurry back to consult earlier volumes. In addition, as the series has gone on, I’ve become more interested in a certain characters, and re-reading gives me a chance to see their appearances in early volumes again in a new light. Finally, Minekura’s a very clever storyteller–she’s very adept at using foreshadowing and parallels to underline her character development. Being able to enjoy those subtleties in re-reads has significantly added to my love of the series.

2. Fruits Basket: Like Minekura, the creator of Fruits Basket, Takaya Natsuki, is wonderful at foreshadowing later developments. Some of the huge revelations and events of the most recent volumes are established very early on through seemingly light-hearted episodes and off-hand comments. Re-reading the early volumes with knowledge of these later events makes the story of Tohru and the Sohmas as a whole even more moving and interesting.

3 and 4. Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and xxxHolic: These two series from CLAMP feature numerous crossovers, both with each other and other CLAMP series. This might seem like a gimmick, but at least it’s an incredibly effective gimmick. The revelations in one series can shed light on the mysteries of the other, which means that re-reading can add a lot to the total experience of both series. And half the fun comes from catching the small crossovers as they happen, like the way that Watanuki’s errands for Yuuko sometimes have consequences for Syaoran and Sakura and vice versa.

5. Fullmetal Alchemist: Like Tsubasa and xxxHolic, this series encourages re-reading because its mysteries are so complex. Each new volume is basically a challenge to readers to try to figure out what’s going on, which means consulting previous volumes for clues is a must. I’m still terribly confused by what Ed and Al’s enemies are up to, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying to puzzle it out.

Honorable mentions: Bleach, Naruto, and Hikaru no Go. The first two call for re-reading because they’re such long series-in-progress, while the latter rewards second, third, and fourth reads because it gives you the pleasure of seeing the lead character grow up before your eyes.

It’s worth noting that there are some series that I like a lot but have not owned for very long time (see: Honey and Clover and Mushishi). I suspect my list might change when I’ve owned them long enough to get a sense of how enjoyable they are to re-read.

Also, there’s something to be said for making a distinction between series that are fun to re-read relatively often (usually those in regular serialization) and those that are fun to re-read every once in a while. For example, I’m a fan of Blade of the Immortal by Hiroaki Samura, but it’s not something that I want to re-read very often: it’s too graphic and intense for that. However, I have enjoyed my occasional re-reads of my favorite volumes of that series; just last month I re-read and loved volumes 12-14 of it.

What have all of you re-read lately?