レンタルおにいちゃん Volume 1 (Absolute Beginner Book Club) - Finished!

Haha it’s my first time posting on the forum and I wasn’t aware of the rules so take it easy on me please :slight_smile: hmm… Just an idea but why not create a discord server for this reading club?

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I checked around the author’s Pixiv and Twitter accounts.

Here is the original release which is free, and also does not need a Pixiv login. However, there is no furigana, which makes it difficult to read unknown kanji. The commercial release has furigana readings added to the kanji.

Chapter 1) original, creation, original comic / 【創作漫画】「レンタルおにいちゃん」まとめ① - pixiv

Chapter 2) creation, original, sad / 【創作漫画】「レンタルおにいちゃん」まとめ② - pixiv

Chapter 3) original, creation, original comic / 【創作漫画】「レンタルおにいちゃん」まとめ③ - pixiv

The next four chapters were original creations for the commercial release. They were not part of the original content. (This caused the original chapter 4 to become chapter 8 in the commercial release, and is part of volume 2.)

Here is an example of the original release and the commercial release:

Original

Commercial

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There is a Japanese Book Club group (group, server, channel, I’m not really sure which word to use!) on discord in which you can find a number of bookclubs linked to those here on the WK forums. The Yotsuba one, for example, has a weekly reading on its voice channel.

Something like that might be a good idea for this bookclub too, but I’d say it’s too early to tell just yet! However, if you are keen to set it up, and others are keen to join, that would be great!

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Server. The channels are the sub headings starting with # :slightly_smiling_face:

But yeah, generally the Discord is only necessary if we’re doing a live reading of the book.

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Thank you!

I am a very new forum user and first time book club member also.
I have put my preference for starting as late as possible because I am currently stuck away from my house due to covid related building delays but would be fine to start sooner if that’s what works best for the majority :slightly_smiling_face:

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I’m at level 9, and this will be my first book club. Looking forward to learning and some reading practice!

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Actually I was planning to ask if anyone was interested in a live reading, where we take turns reading sentences out loud. Since this is the absolute beginner book club I figured we could all help each other out and maybe stumble through it?

Also I heard something about a vocab list - does anyone ever do a grammar list? Would anyone be interested in one?

I’m open to trying to set up either thing if there’s any interest.

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I’d be interested in both!

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As an absolute beginner I don’t think I would be able to read out loud any sentence, but I would love to listen to others when they read.
I use to learn the Grammar of a new language by reading books in the original language and trying to understand, that means written texts are more important for me than spoken sentences. I am thrilled to read their classics, (Goethe, Hugo, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dostoïewski, …) and also contemporary literature without translation.
But concerning Japanese, I confess that my first goal is to have some basic verbal communication next time I’ll visit Japan which might be in spring 2022! Hopefully I will not talk in the style of a manga character :blush:

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Just got this message on bookwalker, I’ve been given a free レンタルおにいちゃん “digital pinup” for my phone!

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I’m rank 5 WaniKani now so I think I’ll give this a go.

I’ve been studying Japanese for a while but always put off studying Kanji. Since getting into WaniKani it’s so satisfying how much reading all slots together.

I’m looking forward to reading alongside everyone else!

みんなでがんばりましょう。 :blush:

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This looks like something I could manage. But I don’t know how to get a digital copy. I created a Rakuten account but you need a japanese address to buy something.

This doesn’t have any weird stuff in it right? I’d like to know before participating.

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Hi, im not from Japan. But I was able to purchase a digital copy at Book Walker. You can try it as well.

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I don’t know if it’s taboo to mention this here, but I found a Japanese web site that generates fake Japanese addresses and phone numbers. (I didn’t save the URL.) Buyer beware, of course, as there may be terms and conditions against using a fake address. I’ve never tried using Book Walker, but as @21xav was able to buy there, you may want to check that site as it may be the easier path.

Good question. I can guarantee, there is nothing weird at all. If this series had an English release in the United States, I expect it would have a “E – Everyone / A – All Ages” rating based on the contents.

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Thank you for the tip. I try to get it on Book Walker first tho. It seems a bit more legal.

Good to know. There are a lot of manga like this with romantic undertones (or it turns into romance later on) which is honestly not my cup of tea.

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Rest assured, you definitely won’t find that in this series. (This almost feels like it should be marked as a spoiler…)

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Ok, I’ve closed the starting date poll. The top vote was for August 8th, but there were 9 people voted for August 15th. My proposal is we start on August 8th, but we take it at a really slow pace for the first 3 weeks. The first few weeks are the hardest, especially for those who aren’t familiar with some of the more casual spoken language in a manga compared to most textbooks. What I’m trying to achieve is not losing the absolute beginners because we head off at too fast a pace.

The chapters break down like this:

Chapter 1 - 30 pages
Chapter 2 - 40 pages
Chapter 3 - 28 pages
Chapter 4 - 30 pages
Chapter 5 - 40 pages

So my proposal for the schedule is:

Week Start Date Pages No. of pages Chapter
Wk 1 Aug 8th 3-12 10 pages Chapter 1 part 1
Wk 2 Aug 15th 13-22 10 pages Chapter 1 part 2
Wk 3 Aug 22th 23-32 10 pages Chapter 1 part 3
Wk 4 Aug 29th 35-48 14 pages Chapter 2 part 1
Wk 5 Sep 5th 49-62 14 pages Chapter 2 part 2
Wk 6 Sep 12th 63-74 12 pages Chapter 2 part 3
Wk 7 Sep 19th 75-88 14 pages Chapter 3 part 1
Wk 8 Sep 26th 89-102 14 pages Chapter 3 part 2
Wk 9 Oct 3rd 103-117 15 pages Chapter 4 part 1
Wk 10 Oct 10th 118-132 15 pages Chapter 4 part 2
Wk 11 Oct 17th 133-147 15 pages Chapter 5 part 1
Wk 12 Oct 24th 148-160 13 pages Chapter 5 part 2
Wk 13 Oct 31st 161-173 13 pages Chapter 5 part 3
Just a note on page numbers for ebook readers.

The page numbers quoted by the ebook reader often don’t match the paper version of the book. On Bookwalker this is usually because it counts the front cover and inside front cover as pages 1 and 2.

However, if you look at the bottom of the pages some of the pages should have a number on which is the original numbering from the paper book. In my Bookwalker edition I can see page numbers on pages 3, 5 and 6 for example. These are the page numbers we will be using. The first proper page of the manga (starting with the text bubble - おにいちゃん) is page 3.

Any comments?

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I like the idea of the slower start at the beginning. It also gives a good opportunity to learn how to understand one-word and two-word sentences.

Some of the page counts may look high for a first time reader, but there are a good number of pages with little to no text on them. For example, a week one count of ten pages includes four pages with almost no dialogue, and one with no dialogue.

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