Any simple anime/cartoon recommendations?

9 comments

1. You could try クールドジ男子 which has both anime and live action adaptations (based on a manga). It’s a very relaxed show which the dialogues aren’t too complicated. It’s a show about four clumsy guys who are quite socially awkward, so they usually just speak simple stuff.

   But since it’s very relaxed (slice of life / iyashikei), it could be boring to you too 😅

2. I see Shirokuma cafe recommended a lot and its pretty fun imo

3. Id recommend watching disney movie dubs, disney + has the option built in

4. Doraemon. It being specifically for kids isn’t going to help things being slower, in fact they tend to talk more and faster. What will help is a more slow burn type if you’re looking for something you can follow along to read

5. Pokemon is far from simple lol. You gotta re learn 1000s of japanese pokemon names/item/moves and then differentiate between them and the actual Japanese language in a sentence while you listen. For something more simple id say maybe Doraemon

6. If you have Netflix, you can get Japanese subtitles on most of their anime , which you can use either to toggle on and off to test your self or read along with for practice. (weirdly… no Japanese voice or sub for Pokemon. huh. licensing issue maybe.)

   The same is true for quite a lot of other shows besides, particularly Netflix Originals, but English language original shows often have different translations or the Japanese dub and sub which isn’t ideal for practice.

   You may have to set your OS and/or browser and/or Netflix settings to Japanese first for the option to even show up though.

   Card Captor Sakura, Little Witch Academia and Sailor Moon Crystal are all relatively easy going. I recall 凪のあすから being pretty slow spoken and not overly complex as well, but it’s been a long time… there was some in-depth backstory revelations in later episodes that might have used harder language.

   ドラえもん and クレヨンしんちゃん are the long running classic ‘kiddy shows’, but of these Netflix only has a couple ドラえもん movies and I’m not sure where you can legally and/or easily stream the actual shows. They’re very simple language but also in very unnatural cartoon voice.

   On Crunchyroll you can turn English subtitles off for raw Japanese viewing which helps avoid accidentally reading.

   Chi’s Sweet Home and Polar Bear Cafe are often recommended. Although Chi’s voice takes some getting used to the humans speak slowly and normally though, and it is very simple dialogue. Polar Bear Cafe has these wordplay segments (not exactly puns, but soundalikes anyway) that can pull up a lot of obscure vocabulary, but you can look that up or ignore it as you like, as a one-off gag the words won’t repeat anyway. Poyopoyo is another short series about raising a cat, but with wackier gags, not quite as simple of language as Chi. Flying Witch was pretty easy as I recall (except for the dad that speaks in the local dialect, but you’re not supposed to understand that).

   Slice of life shows tend to be easier going, but Crunchyroll’s ‘slice of life’ tag seems to have become unreasonably inclusive. Hmm.

   In any case, if you’re not sure where to start then (once you get used to the cat’s voice) it doesn’t get much simpler than Chi’s Sweet Home, and beyond that it’s a bit more dependent on what you’re already used to hearing.

7. For more basic Japanese I kind of like Crayon Shin-chan (if you can stand the oshiri/chin-chin jokes that appear occasionally). They speak about normal things in Japanese suburban life and most of the dialog is pretty straightforward. Plus it can be pretty funny especially since Shin-chan makes some of the same mistakes I’ve made.

8. chibi maruko-chan

9. Chi’s Sweet Home, tale of a kitten adopted from the street, from her point of view. ~5 min episodes, most of the dialogue is the adopting child/family interactions or the kitten’s simple thoughts.