For those who like Anime and Manga…

20 comments

1. Rereading and watching materials I’m already familiar with helps a lot.

2. Watch/read, mine for vocab and grammar, RE-watch/read

   Also important to note: it is not necessary to turn every media experience into homework, it’s okay to just watch anime with subtitles and not convert it into work

   I almost never turn off english subtitles ever. Tho I’d probably get 80% comprehension outside some harder exposition sections, with the exception of a few shows I have seen many times and I really don’t need the subtitles at all because I could probably quote the whole series (like haibane renmei)

   Ymmv, be happy 🙂

3. I don’t really seriously use anime for study – if I happen to hear a word I don’t know I put it in my anki deck, but I’m not specifically looking out for them and always watch with English subs unless I’m watching something that doesn’t have them. I do read a fair bit of manga in Japanese, though – mostly stuff with furigana, but also Azumanga Daioh which doesn’t have any. One manga I’d really recommend for intermediate learners is +Anima – it’s aimed at kids so the language is quite simple and the same words get repeated a lot, plus it’s a cute story.

4. If you care about it then you’ll want to understand it, if not then you don’t need to. I never cared about difficulty I just do what I want. Yes it’s very easy to enjoy something when you don’t understand it. Never could communicate with my cousins because we speak different languages but I still had a lot of fun with them growing up.

5. With manga specifically, I found it easier to engage (motivation-wise) with a series I had never read or watched before. That way it felt like I was actually reading instead of just transcribing sentences I already “knew.” If I wanted to know the story, I had to figure it out myself. It has been a slow but glorious process of going from having to look up most of the words in each panel (and still not really getting it) to maybe looking up a few words per page and feeling more and more like I am reading vs. deciphering. I think enjoyment is key, if something makes you want to learn, then you probably will.

6. I use anime to study, I can’t stand boring and slow anime like the panda anime that is highly recommended around here. Instead, I just re-watch my favorite anime regardless of their vocabulary level. Contrary to popular belief, I have found that shonnen anime is actually not that difficult, and I find it even easier than slice of life anime.

   In my experience choosing long animes like HxH has been a good idea since they reuse a lot of the vocabulary over the show, giving you opportunities to analyze the specific way a character speaks and review your vocabulary.

   At first I thought I would end hating some animes or at least some characters like Kurapika, that enjoy giving real lectures in the middle of the anime, but It was not that bad.

   I NEVER use english subs when using anime for inmersion, only JP subs.

7. Studying and enjoying something goes hand in hand, regardless of difficulty. Reading 仮面の告白 and looking up every single expression doesn’t take much away from the experience, because it’s ‘supposed’ to be a hard book even without the difficulty of language. This also helps you to slowly digest it. Reading a silly romance like 安達としまむら and reading the boring, drawn-out parts, and then suddenly maybe coming across something unusual language-wise, searching and taking note of it. This only helps you to keep being engaged in the material. The same of course applies to animanga. The appreciation of the work only increases.

8. For a while, I didn’t use it much for learning because it wasn’t very enjoyable. After a lot of practice listening and depending on the genre, I can watch some anime with high enough comprehension that I can enjoy it more in Japanese without subtitles than with any subs.

   I think extensive input is the single most important thing at some point in language learning. It’s the only way to learn how to appropriately use words and grammar and phrases. It also helps accuracy, but it is the only way to develop contextual awareness, frequency, and an implicit understanding of nuance. But comprehension is an important part of that, so if you don’t have a strong base in the language from study/intensive immersion/lots of prior level appropriate CI, then it’s not particularly effective.

   But once it’s understandable, it’s a great resource for picking things up, it’s interesting to you, and it’s something you can pour hundreds of necessary hours into with an incredible variety of content to choose from. 

9. For me it’s more feedback on what I have already learned.

   I get excited when I understand an entire sentence without relying on the subtitles for instance and can notice when I go from recognizing 1 word of every sentence to 2 words.

   So I use it less for learning and more for feedback and passive immersion.

10. I haven’t been doing it for long, but I read manga that are probably above my lvl, but that I am a little familiar with and enjoy. I find this helps me more than reading easy material that doesn’t hold my interest. Depending on how well it goes I’ll read from anywhere between a page to a chapter and then read the english chapter afterwards. If I’m confused about a translation I’ll go back to the japanese and see if I can make sense of it that way.

    So far it hasn’t started to feel like study material, it mostly just feels cool to be able to read it. Especially when it is something I haven’t watched or read before (like say I quit a series halfway through originally and now I pass the halfway mark, or a chapter of something completely unfamiliar).

11. Not gonna lie, despite being my initial motive to learn Japanese, I’ve barely consumed any Japanese manga or anime, mostly because I’ve stopped constantly regurgitating what I’ve already consumed and started consuming new titles. That and I’m consuming a lot of hololive conent so…

    That being said, whenever I watch a new anime I always try to pay attention to what they’re saying as much as possible.

12. personally i only read manga in japanese and only watch anime with japanese subs or with no subs if i can help it, but i don’t beat myself up if it’s just easier not too

    took a lot of effort to get to the point where it’s enjoyable to do it this way tho

    i wouldn’t necessarily call it studying though, since if i don’t actually understand something there’s really only a chance i’ll look it up and it depends on my mood tbh

    i would say tho if your goal is to read in japanese and watch anime in japanese then you’re gonna have to just take the leap and do it regardless of comfort level eventually. so ya know, if you want to then just do it! and if you don’t that’s obviously totally okay too lol

    edit:
    as for the question re enjoying while deciphering – i feel like once you get to a certain level, you’re simply not required to decipher anymore, and it’s well before understanding 100% of everything. i mean i don’t always have perfect english comprehension but i can still enjoy things in english too of course

    japanese is obviously different, but it’s just nice to catch what i catch and still follow the story you know? i feel like i’ve felt this way since i was able to catch maybe 90% of japanese – which is easier than it sounds since the most common words are orders of magnitude more common than less common words

    edit 2:
    also probably helps that sometimes i’m actively in the mood to decipher lol

13. i usually do it with manga (i didn’t find yet some site with anime without subtitles. For me it’s good for vocabullary and finding expressions

14. I like slice of life so it isnt much of an issue

15. I prefer games has “manual dialogue box”, like Genshin, Baldur’s Gate, Pillars of Eternity.

    Firstly, I wouldn’t have to click-stop every time I need to look things up and click-resume like I did when watching stuffs. Also, I got the voiced dialogue and even the narration which absent in Manga and novel

16. I personally use manga in my studies by translating it from japanese to english in a word file. I don’t know japanese at all, i’m an absolute beginner, i don’t know 90% of grammar points and i know maybe 5% of basic vocabulary but by translating a manga i actually learn a lot of kanjis and their different pronunciations, some grammar points and a looot of new vocabulary. I translate with the help of official english translation for double check and with online translator such as mazii and deepL. I chose one piece because it’s really popular and i’m not the only one who does it so i can find a lot of answers to sentences that aren’t clear to me online on the formus, but if i had to choose again i would definitely try to translate a slice of life manga with more realistic conversations and grammar. Something that would be way more applicable in real life, maybe something with an office worker since i also work in an office. (I’m open to ideas of such managas btw, i don’t watch anime or read mangas other than one piece i so have no idea which office manga is good). I don’t think this is a good way to learn grammar but for vocabulary and kanji it’s great, mangas have one theme and most words keep repeating themselves so it’s really good for memorizing them. With one piece, i now know a lot of vocabulary revolving around the sea, pirates, ranks etc. Which i guess isn’t that useful in real life but i still think it’s cool how i can recognize words on the spot without actively “studying” them with flash cards. I don’t have a feeling like i’m studying at all actually, it’s like a fun hobby to have and learning japanese as i progress through chapters is a bonus feature.

    Doing this translation didn’t ruin the medium at all for me, in fact it did the opposite, i started watching one piece again after dropping it in highschool so it kind of rekindled my love for manga and anime.

17. I do a bit of both. Easy manga that I’m not so attached to is great for keeping me motivated. It’s the “I can do this!” and “Look how far I’ve come!” boost I need when I inevitably get frustrated from banging my head against harder but more interesting series.

    For the enjoyable ones without translations, I’m still able to enjoy the media. I first use what I am able to decipher without help to try to get the gist of what’s going on, then get some enjoyment when I was wrong or found some new nuances. The parts I couldn’t figure out without help get put into place and the story that was only somewhat interesting due to limited understanding becomes much more engaging. It’s only “study material” if the series isn’t interesting to me.

18. I work through media I’m interested in, kind of regardless of level. But I know the higher level stuff is going to take me longer to get through and will likely result in burnout before I get far.

    Picking through and learning from media is an essential step in learning a language, but find that a large barrier for most learners is that it becomes study time and isn’t enjoyable to the prospective learner. Their immersion is broken, it aggravates them, and so they abandon it and return to traditional learning hoping to bridge that gap.

    There is no bridge for that gap. I wasted too many years trying to find it.

    There’s also a kind of level you have to be before doing it. At the start it’s already a slog and high risk for burnout. It’s worse if you have to look up the majority of every sentence.

    And even when you’re only looking up between 1 and 3 words per sentence, in the very beginning you often have to orient yourself to natural Japanese phrasing. Coursework is phrased unnaturally to help non Japanese speakers pick up vocabulary and grammar. So when you first get into media there’s a lot of instances where you understand all the words being said, and theoretically understand the grammar, but the entire sentence is just gibberish.

    I started with Pokemon… one of the games… and at first I was miserable and just forcing myself through out of desperation. But as I went I found that I was looking up less and less and I was reading, playing, and enjoying more and more. For pokemon I don’t even need to break it down anymore if I don’t want. But I still gather new vocab as it arises.

    For other works sometimes I pick them up, abandon them, pick them up, abandon them. I don’t think I’ve gotten through the first episode of Daredevil. But today I got through the first episode of Erased.

    I’m able to enjoy the story while actively deciphering it, yes. For some things… mostly games… I’ll quickly look up a word in my dictionary app and keep going. Though other times I’ll stop, write down the sentences with new words, write down the words and definitions, AND THEN continue on.

    Other people write down new words as they go and look them all up later, but I rather understand in the moment even if it causes me to continuously pause.

    I watch most of my shows with subtitles. For shows that are originally in Japanese the subtitles match. This is better for training my ears. I have an audio processing disorder so some words (new ones especially) I will mishear. Sounds will flip, change, or get mushed together. So having the subtitles to match helps straighten that out.

    Currently I watch a lot of American shows dubbed in Japanese. The dubs and subs don’t match en verbatim, but are often close enough that I can still capture new vocab.

    And of course, it’s not a crime to get tired of studying for a bit and to just let a show play. I do it often, I pick up what I can pick up, and when I have energy to study again I go back to where I left of studying and pick back up.

    My notes tend to look like this:

    この**状況**だと俺が母親殺しの第一**容疑者**

    * 状況【じょうきょう】 situation, circumstance
    * 容疑者【ようぎしゃ】 suspect

    I’ll also grab sentences I’d like to remember or anything I find particularly interesting even if I need neither vocabulary or a translation from it.

19. I recall some phrases and words I heard before from reading and watching manga and anime. Helps with vocabulary.

20. tl;dr Watching anime and reading manga is a great way to naturally pick up parts of the language and to hone your listening/reading ability. If you are interested in the content then it won’t be ruined for you, instead it will likely make you more excited to learn Japanese.
    –
    I use a mix of simpler and more difficult anime with no subs (or occasionally Japanese subs). I usually have the English subs ready in case I completely miss something important, which happens a lot on the more difficult shows.

    In order to find shows that are at the right difficulty for me I use Learn Natively (They have 1000’s of shows rated by approximate difficulty, so it’s easy to find loads of stuff that I am interested in). I find that I am able to understand easier shows pretty pretty well without much effort, almost as if I am watching them in English, but more difficult shows take active effort and I have to look a lot of things up.

    While going through the more difficult shows takes a lot more effort, it doesn’t ruin the show for me because I can still enjoy it despite the additional effort. Also, if it gets to be too much, then I can start watching an easier show instead for a while.

    I usually don’t need subs for the simpler shows, but for more difficult shows it’s fairly common for me to turn on the English subs to get the meaning and then rewind and listen to the audio a few times to try to actually understand what is being said once I know the meaning in English.

    In the few months that I have been doing this I have felt my comprehension skyrocket. In part because I had a lot of latent knowledge of the language and I needed the listening practice to be able to hear the words/grammar that I already knew, but also I have been picking up vocab and grammar naturally while watching so much content in the language (I’ve averaged around 3.5 hours a day so far this month).

    I haven’t been reading a ton of manga yet because I have been focused on listening comprehension, but I plan on reading a lot before too long. And hopefully start my first Japanese novel before the end of the year.

    Consuming content in the language you are learning is a great way to naturally pick up parts of the language and to hone your listening/reading ability. If you are interested in the content then consuming it in the language won’t ruin the content for you, instead it will likely reignite your passion for the language. I still remember the first time I read a manga chapter in Japanese (it was Yotsuba to!) and how excited I felt. It was a simple manga and I struggling a bit with even the hiragana, but the fact that I was able to read native content at all felt incredible.