Forbidden Planet Manga Catalog Review 2026: Four Years of Lockdown-Era Obsession, Honestly Reported

Like a lot of people, I got serious about manga during lockdown. The local Waterstones had stopped restocking, the comic shop was closed, and my UK Amazon orders kept arriving creased or with the cellophane damaged. I started looking at alternatives in late 2020. Four years and roughly £2,100 in receipts later, Forbidden Planet has become my primary source for manga in the UK.

This is the honest report on what their manga catalog actually delivers — what they stock reliably, what they can’t get, and what I wish I’d known when I started.

Why I switched away from Amazon for manga specifically

Manga distribution in the UK is broken in a way that Marvel and DC distribution isn’t. Print runs are smaller. Deluxe editions are often single-print with no scheduled reprints. The licensed English versions of older series cycle in and out of availability with no warning. By the time Amazon’s algorithm tells you “in stock,” a deluxe edition can be eBay-only with a £15 markup.

Amazon also handles manga badly in a more mundane way. Volumes arrive bent, creased, or with damaged dust jackets — the kind of damage that means nothing to Amazon and everything to a collector. Three orders in 2021 arrived damaged. The replacements arrived damaged. I switched.

What the catalog actually looks like

The manga section runs deep on the publishers that actually matter — VIZ Media, Kodansha USA, Dark Horse, Yen Press, Seven Seas, Square Enix Manga, Vertical. The catalog covers:

• Active shonen series. One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, My Hero Academia, Chainsaw Man, Demon Slayer, Spy x Family, Solo Leveling, Frieren. All current volumes in stock, with previous volumes maintained as standing inventory.
• Seinen and classic series. Berserk Deluxe Edition, Vagabond VIZBIG, 20th Century Boys, Monster Perfect Edition, Akira 35th Anniversary, Vinland Saga. These are where Forbidden Planet’s stocking discipline really stands out.
• Junji Ito hardcovers. The full Smashed, Uzumaki, Tomie, Gyo, Frankenstein, No Longer Human line. Reliably in stock.
• Box sets. Naruto, Bleach, Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist, the Tokyo Ghoul complete box. These are the items most likely to sell out elsewhere, and Forbidden Planet usually has a steady supply.
• Shojo and josei. Smaller section, but they carry the major releases — Fruits Basket Collector’s Edition, Sailor Moon Eternal Edition, Witch Hat Atelier, A Bride’s Story.
• Recent indie and one-shots. Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Look Back and Goodbye, Eri arrived in stock the week of their UK release.

What’s missing: out-of-print volumes from the early 2000s. If you need the original Tokyopop release of a specific Fruits Basket volume or an early VIZ Naruto with the old cover treatment, you’re back on eBay.

The deluxe edition problem, and how Forbidden Planet solves it

This is the manga-specific killer feature.

Take the Berserk Deluxe Edition. Dark Horse prints these in limited runs, ships them to international distributors, and then doesn’t reprint for 18+ months. If you miss the initial wave, you’re either paying £80–120 on eBay for a volume that retails at £40, or you wait. The same pattern repeats for Akira hardcovers, Junji Ito’s Soichi hardcover, the Vagabond VIZBIG editions, and almost every “Collector’s Edition” release.

Forbidden Planet allocates pre-orders for these. Place a pre-order three months before street date, and the book is yours at £40 even when eBay has it at £100. I’ve done this for every Berserk Deluxe volume since volume nine, and every single one has shipped at retail without issue.

Pricing reality

Manga at Forbidden Planet sits at RRP for standard volumes. Amazon will be £1–2 cheaper on most current paperback manga when they have stock. The break-even calculation looks like this:

• For standard volumes you’re reading once and shelving: Amazon wins if they have stock.
• For deluxe editions, hardcovers, and anything you actually want to keep in good condition: Forbidden Planet wins on packaging alone.
• For pre-orders of limited editions: Forbidden Planet wins by default because Amazon will cancel half of them.
• For the 10% VIP discount: kicks in after £150 of orders, stacks with seasonal sales, easy £20–30 saved per quarter.

Shipping and packaging

UK: next-day if ordered before noon. Packaging is genuinely manga-appropriate — single-volume mailers are bubble-lined, multi-volume orders ship in boxes with corner protection. I’ve had two damaged manga in roughly 80 orders, both replaced inside a week.

EU: 5–10 days. US: 7–14 days. The shipping math gets worse for US buyers — a single $14 manga becomes a $40 transaction after shipping. For deluxe editions and hardcovers it still works out, but for single-volume reading, US buyers should stick with RightStuf or Crunchyroll’s manga store.

Where it falls short

Three honest gripes:

• The search treats “manga” as a single category. Finding a specific publisher’s output (everything from Seven Seas, for example) means going to the publisher page rather than searching.
• Indie publisher coverage is thin. Glacier Bay, Star Fruit Books, and similar smaller English-language imprints aren’t well represented.
• No notification when an out-of-stock series gets a reprint. When VIZ reprints a series after a year out of distribution, FP lists it and it’s gone within days. There’s no email alert system for VIPs.

None of these would push me back to Amazon.

Who this is for

If you collect manga in any serious way in the UK or EU — deluxe editions, complete series, hardcovers, current shonen runs — Forbidden Planet should be your default. The catalog depth on premium editions is what makes the difference, and the pre-order system saves you eBay scalper pricing on every single Berserk Deluxe release.

If you read manga digitally or only buy the current volume of one or two series, Amazon’s slight discount may still make sense.

Ready to browse the shelves? Head over to the Forbidden Planet manga catalog here. New releases land Tuesdays for VIZ titles; Kodansha and Yen Press drops tend to hit on Thursdays.