Anime and Manga Recommendations!

[imsamuka]

Give your recommendations of Anime, Manga and Light Novels for 日本語 learning!

It may be because it’s easy to understand, because it teaches niche vocabulary for some specific area, because it’s fun or rewarding to finally decode the meaning, or unobtrusive to when you just want to relax while you immerse yourself.

So as not to lose the meaning of being useful for japanese learners, give a reason for the recommendation! Also add a image if possible to make the thread more colorful !

To not flood the thread with recommendations you can already find repeated multiple times on the internet, here are already some common ones:

• Yotsubato! (only Manga) - Pretty easy, Slice of life of a young child experiencing everyday problems
• Chi’s Sweet Home - Pretty easy, Slice of life, cute cat adventures. Check this thread out!
• Shirokuma Cafe - Pretty easy, Comedy, Slice of life, Random topics conversations with animals
• Teasing Master Takagi-san - A little harder, Comedy, Romance, Slice of life of middle schoolers
• Dragon Ball (Classic) - Also a little harder, Comedy, Action, Adventure
• Doraemon - Pretty easy, Slice of life, Sci-Fi, Comedy, Kids

A few other related threads

Any recommendations for books to read
Listening Recommendations?
Almost halfway through N4 and can already watch anime without subs!

For completions sake, you may also like these resources:

• jpdb Prebuilt Decks - Big list of anime and light novels, with tons of filters
• Natively - Big List of books with filters as well
• Animelon - Site to watch anime with japanese subtitles

[imsamuka]

I’m going to start!

Wataten (Watashi ni Tenshi ga Maiorita!) - Anime/Manga
Genres: Comedy, Moe, Cute Girls doing cute things

The manga is a 4-koma, very easy to read and funny. The dialogues contain tons of popular expressions, you may be able to understand a lot just by being a man of culture avid anime watcher. The grammar is simple and the vocabulary is very small (2200 unique words). It has a rating of 7.2 on MyAnimeList and difficulty 1/10 on jpdb.

Watashi ni Tenshi ga Maiorita! – Prebuilt decks – jpdb

[Sidgr]

寄生獣

Psych-Horror with Philosophical undertones. Somewhat cheesy CGI used sparingly but the animation is as crisp as any good mid-10s anime. One of my favorite aspect from a linguistic perspective is that the Parasites struggle with natural human tendencies and this is reflected in their language use. The more you watch the more you pick up on it.

Ps manga is ok from what I read of the first few chapters never finished it.

[nminer]

Not sure if this counts as a light novel, but throwing it in anyway:

Magic Tree House (マジック・ツリーハウス）
Brother and sister Jack and Annie go on time traveling adventures in a magic tree house that can cross time and space.

I think a few people may be familiar with these books in English, as they’re a pretty popular children’s series. They got translated into Japanese a few years back (with much cuter illustrations) and they’re pretty good for anyone at the N3 level. Fairly easy grammar and not a lot of kanji, but because each book takes place in a different place and historical setting, it’s pretty good for getting a wide range of vocab. In the later books, the translator also adds notes about the time period/topic which are written in more difficult Japanese and are a bit like mini-textbook entries. So again, a pretty digestible way of getting a wider range of vocab.

(P.S. Because they’re children’s novels there’s definitely been a few times I’ve had to remind myself not to get frustrated at the way the main characters behave lol, so bit of a warning there).

[Superpnut]

I would actually vouch against Dragon Ball classic for anyone below advanced. They way it is written is not as easy to understand as most books. When I bought the series (because I figured it’d be a good series to practice on) I was sorely disappointed by it’s level. I remember actually doing a search on it later and seeing articles about it’s written kind of using slang or something. Anyways it’s harder to read then you’d think!

But if anyone wanted some a manga to read that it is very unlikely any of their weeb friends have, while being cheaper and still easy to read, I would recommend the Kirby mangas.

星のカービィ is what I would recommend searching if interested.
They are easy to understand and all if not almost all kanji have furigana

And a lot of the ends of the book have this cool strip style mini comix I like

[imsamuka]

Thanks for the input on Dragon Ball, i saw somewhere that it uses some specific non-standard japanese words, but didn’t know to what extent it would make it harder.

On the Kirby, it seems pretty cool! I have been thinking on watching the kirby anime in japanese but didn’t think about the manga… Gotta check it out

@Superpnut

cool strip style mini comix I like

Ah, I don’t know if you knew, if you’re interested, that’s 4-koma. There’s tons of manga with this style (mainly comedy), including my wataten recommendation.

[Noxsora]

So, If there is some manga/anime that you enjoyed the translation, I recomend trying it out! Your memory helps fill any gaps in understanding. I read the D Gray Man and Blue Excorisit in Japanese cause I liked the translations.
I read Somoli to Mori manga. It’s really pretty. It doesn’t have full furigana. Main charator is a Golem and a cute little girl who meet magical creatures in a enchanted forest.

Amai Amai to Inazuma (sweetness and lightning) is both an anime and manga. Cooking shows are really easy to follow. They say “Chop onions” while chopping onions. Also a kid being cute.

I read Kyojin Chugako. Attack on Titian Middleschool AU. It’s unsettling that Erin wants to kill all of the titians when teachers treat human and titian students the same.
I watched 氷属性男子とクールな同僚女子 (which totally should have been translated as Ice Boy and Cool Girl). Despite the charactors being late 20s/early 30s gives adorable young love vibes.

I did read the first two tokubon of dragon ball. I didn’t like the potty humor. I don’t remember slang throwing me off.
Nichi Jou is a comedy high school anime. I had to look up some words in a interigation scene.
I read Dragon Ball and Nichi Jou for a book club type thing, so I looked up the words I didn’t know.