I am taking inspiration from this post:
I watched a JoJo episode 50 times to learn Japanese, and was surprised to see how well it worked
byu/Burn1nsun inLearnJapanese
My Japanese comprehension has been extremely poor. I’ve been living in Japan for almost 2 years, and I constantly struggle to understand even half of Japanese conversations. I should be in the same place as when OP made their post, knowing plenty of grammar and having >5000 vocab.
The anime I’ve been watching is Skip to Loafer. I think it’s a good because it a 12-episode slice-of-life school rom-com. There’s no sci-fi, fantasy, or politics. And none of the characters have quirks where they use unusual first-person pronouns or archaic particles. Dialogue revolves around school-life, friendship, and interpersonal drama.
For each episode, I’ve been doing this:
1. Watch it twice without any subtitles.
2. Watch it once with the raw Japanese subtitles overlay. I jot down any new vocab or grammar on to flashcards. (usually around ~30 cards per episode)
3. After going over the flashcards for the episode, watch it again without subtitles.
A big problem is that even when I know all the vocab, none of it registers in my ears because its so goddamn fast. After adding subtitles, I realize that none of the words or grammar are new, and I was supposed to understand everything which feels bad.
I did all of this, but I don’t feel a difference. I can understand this specific anime really well now and identify the new vocab as they’re spoken. But going outside and listening to people talk is still the same struggle.
Should I continue grinding more anime with this methodology?