Are anime from the slice of life genre and vtubers generally safe to use to learn some extra japanese from?

So, must say say my japanese learning journey it’s going to be decently long, like will probably be able to speak basic sentences in a few years since i have a bunch of issues getting it done all in one sitting, but I’ll eventually get to it, after some Duolingo drill (pretty insufferable but still kinda effective) and studying hiragana I’m starting to pick up some words and phrases from when i watch anime, or even vtubers even if I’m not very much into it anymore (they produce large amount of content in Japanese, that’s why I’m interested)

I was wondering if vtubers and most slice of life anime have a speech and vocabulary accurate enough to whatever it’s present in real life.

I need to know this because it works very well for me.

i learned English in a similar way, after basic grammar i sat and did nothing for a year but just figuring out speech some from subtitles some from the dictionary and some from context, eventually i got it without even studying further. I just pick up language mainly from speech and reading.

though i must admit i picked-up quite a lot on internet slang and meme culture, now i’m kinda into it also it’s fun, but was still close enough to actual English to never cause problems, i just adjusted to everyday English naturally.

5 comments
  1. I think they’re both great choices. Slice of Life deals with a lot of common RL situations, so you won’t run into as many made up words or difficult to understand phrases as with other genres. Vtuber content is really useful because it’s unscripted dialogue, so you get a lot of listening practice of casual, more natural speech.

  2. Well I’d say any form of contemporary japanese media is a great way to pick up speech and this includes Anime and V-tubers as well. My japanese is very basic at best so take it with a grain from salt but I think it’s a great and efficient way to learn japanese (you can even use Animelon which enables japanese subtitles and making it easier to dissect and analyze the sentences). You should just keep in mind that most of the time in slice of life the protagonists are younger people speaking in a friendly environment and you don’t necessarily want to speak like that to a person you just met (so using -masu form would be the safe option) but nevertheless it’s a great way to pick up colloquial phrases, greetings etc… I don’t really watch V-tubers but I assume they speak pretty informal to their viewership as well so the same thing applies. I can also recommend japanese Reality TV Shows like Terrace House, because you find all forms of speech in these.

  3. Any form of media is good. Even if it is space opera – it still deals with the real japanese language. You wouldn’t think star wars would be an “absolute no” to your goals if you were learning english

  4. Yes, they’re fine for listening practice and for getting used to the language, and you could probably say that they’re a better choice than battle-focused shonen anime or anything with highly stylized speech.

    You seem to be taking a slow and steady approach to your Japanese learning, which is of course fine, and I wish you the best of luck. That said — and I’m not sure exactly under what circumstances you learned English, how old you were, what other instruction/exposure you had, etc. — but I’d caution you that just using Duolingo, learning kana, and expecting to “pick up” the rest from watching anime and Vtubers is unlikely to result in meaningful proficiency in the Japanese language.

    If you’re serious about learning the language (even if you’re okay with taking it slow), I suggest that you supplement this with some type of structured study of grammar and vocabulary, whether it’s from a textbook/class, online resources, Anki, or some combination of the above.

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