I know what you mean. There can be crappy Japanese cartoons, just as there are crappy American cartoons. Anime's not a genre, just like cartoons in general aren't a genre (even though they're both treated as such). I don't see what you have against buying tankoban, though. I mean, I think the prices are pretty good. Eight dollars for about 200 pages. That's not bad. And what's wrong with black and white? You don't see people saying that black and white movies should cost less than color movies (at least, not that I've seen).