Hi all,

Recently, I purchased a lot of manga from an online seller, and it had some Japanese language books in it. One was a book called "Egoist." As I usually do, I went on Amazon and MyAnimeList and tried to find out a little more about the book, but... nothing. This book doesn't seem to exist on anyone's radar at all- it's like no one's ever heard about it. I even did some Japanese website searches, and found a page for it on Amazon.jp, but, still no real info. No reviews, no links to other books in the series. Even if I search by the series' title on Amazon.jp, nothing comes up.  Of course, I'm now really intrigued, and I'd love to find out a little more about it. Does anyone know anything about this series or where I can find the other books?

Here's what I do know: The book's in Japanese, and the Japanese ISBN number is 479010320x. It was published in 1998. I think the title of the series is "Egoist," and I have volume 9. It seems to be a compilation manga, and has a lot of different artists and authors- some I know, such as Youka Nitta and Hirotaka Kisaragai, but most I've never heard of, and can find little about them. It's also a yaoi manga. (As you can probably tell, I don't read Japanese that well, so my info's a little lacking.)

I guess what I most want to know is, why hasn't anyone ever heard of this before? Is it rare? Did I stumble across some kind of treasure? (Amazon.jp had a volume going for 100 yen, so not so valuable there, but it said it couldn't be sent to the USA, so maybe it's rare here?) And can I get the other volumes?

I'm sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong place- seems like most people here want to just talk swapping, which makes sense, but I think this is the area manga discussions are supposed to go?

Thanks in advance for any help! 

Sounds like you found an issue of Shobunkan's Comic Egoist magazine, from their Diamond Comics line. Most manga are originally serialized in anthology magazines like that, then collected into book form later. Since people collect the books, the magazines become pretty disposable.

It looks like Egoist only ran for 16 issues, and is listed on the publisher's website in the out of print section.

http://www.shobunkan.com/diamondo_comics/anthology/old/030-egoist.html

Thank you both for your help- I checked out that link, and also searched Egoist Shobunkan, and there it was- definitely my book!  Thank you for providing me with that keyword- although I tried searching through a ton of both English and Japanese sites, none of this info came up until I connected it with Shobunkan.  Now I can find out a little more about it!  Yay!  Thank you again!