Free Manga for Absolute Beginners - Crystal Hunters

Japanese
#1

Book 9 of Crystal Hunters was released today and until March 14th book 1,2,3 and 9 are available for free in (learners)Japanese, English and Natural Japanese. (and book 1 is always free)

I know that these books are somewhat controversial as they are not native content and such, but I think they are a great place to start for anyone who is not ready yet for native material, specifically manga. I would suggest reading the “Japanese Guide in English” for each volume before tackling the actual book, as it covers all of the grammar needed to read the associated volume (see link below).

I have made a vocab deck for the first and second volumes and can publish the rest if people are interested.

Links to their guides and at the bottom of the page the links for the free chapter 1 in Japanese, Natural Japanese, and English:

And here are the amazon links to the free volumes in Japanese
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08N4DHYT6

Natural Japanese
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08N4W6YZ2

and English
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JCTKQHL

I love the series because it was the only thing I could read at the beginning that was even remotely interesting, and am planning on reading through all again, this time in the Natural Japanese.

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#2

Ok, I just sent all of the decks for up to volume 8 for review. If anyone reads these books and sees that there should be changes to the decks, please post here or message me, and I can update them. I tried to get all of the grammar for the first volume, but just mainly did the vocab for the rest of the decks.

I will work on Volume 9, and try include the grammar this time since I am actually doing it fresh.

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#3

I’m guessing “Natural Japanese” is closer to what you’d see in other manga, right?

“Japanese” seemed to be heavily simplified, included furigana, and even altered the speech of characters in some panels. (The guard seems much nicer in JP rather than in NJP to me)

Either way, I have heard of this before but never looked too deep into it. My original goal for learning Japanese was to be able to read manga, so I should probably check this out for some help.

Thanks!

#4

Yeah, it is ‘closer’, but still not 100%, especially in the first several volumes.

The reason is that they try and keep it super simple, which Japanese is not, so the first volume is kinda like neanderthal speech, but it gets more natural and complex as you go along. Not great for mastering the language, but nice when you are super thirsty to read manga in Japanese but Yotsuba&! kicks your butt. I feel (and I have only read them in “Japanese” so far and am only 18 months into my learning journey) that it didn’t start seeming more like real Japanese until volume 7 or 8… So I would treat all of this more like a graded reader that happens to be a manga.

The nice thing is though, is that if you read the guide you should know every word and understand every grammar principle that you read. So if you don’t, you know that is a weakness and then you need to study up. Too often with native content I just assume if I don’t understand something it is because I haven’t learned it yet… but that is not always the case.

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#5

Crystal Hunters had been my first venture into written material, too. And I hated every second of it :sweat_smile: After that I decided to never read a manga made for language learning again. The story was non-existent and very bland (at least in my opinion, but it’s a genre I usually don’t read) and the repetition of the same ten words and three grammar points over and over again made me feel like the authors thought us readers to be stupid, even though I totally got why they did it.

That being said, folks come in all kind of flavors and there are tons of people who really love this approach AND learn well with this series! So anyone who is still beginning to learn and/or hasn’t read any native materials, should give it a try while it’s free, just to see if it would be something they enjoy :slight_smile: