葬送のフリーレン ・Frieren 🧝‍♂️ (Beginner Book Club) [Reading Vol 4]

Yaay! I’m so happyy. Im burning all my money on this club though :skull: hahaha I hope i can keep up, actually i joined the absolute begginers book club, havent learned anything from N4 yet, but i feel confident about it. Btw, any books that can recommend me for studying contents from N4?

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Like a textbook? Genki II is a popular choice. I haven’t used it but I believe it goes through most/all of N4 grammar. Bunpro is also a popular choice and what I use, it’s not a textbook but a grammar website (the info is free, but the SRS requires a subscription)

If you want to jump right into reading, you can search grammar points you come across on Bunpro (can also use this to study N4), and of course feel free to ask questions in these threads!

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Genki bores lots of people though, it’s geared towards classroom.

Check out your options before just going for it.

Marugoto makes a good series and personally found it more fun.

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Whats the difference between 坊主 (ぼうず) and 僧侶 (そうりょ) ?

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I think the assumption has been that we’ll do an offshoot. I suppose I should run a poll to make that official! I’ll get that up soon.

I’m not an expert as I’ve only seen these words in this manga. In Frieren so far I’ve only seen the former used as part of the teasing when Frieren calls Heiter 生臭坊主 (degenerate monk). And the latter was used for describing his roll on it’s own. So I assumed the latter was more respectful. If you do an image search for them, that seems to be the case. And I found this very brief response here.

And finally, Week 9 is up, see you all there!

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Actually, I have new information! I asked my japanese teacher, and she said that 坊主 is used only for buddhist monk and not other kind (the dictionary says it is also priest but maybe is wrong or not used that way). Also 僧侶 is a very old word that no one uses it anymore, it is only seen in manga, and that could be more priest like. That’s what i gathered from her, i hope it helps

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That’s really interesting, thanks for asking her!

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Would it be too late to join in? I think I should be able to catch up to Chapter 6 by Friday.

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No, of course not. You could even read it after the book club has ended, and ask questions in the thread. We’ll still be here to check.
And the chances of a follow-up book club for the other volumes is pretty big. If you manage to catch up, you could read those at the same time as the rest of us.

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Okay, that’s good to hear!

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Wow, we’re on the penultimate week already!

And that means poll time to see if there is interest in an offshoot club! As there are quite a few people participating in the discussions who have read before, I’ve included an option for you in the poll, too.

What are your plans for this series?
  • I would like to continue reading the series with an offshoot club
  • I plan to continue reading the series later or at my own pace
  • I’m not sure yet
  • I have already read the next volume(s) and would continue discussing the series with an offshoot club
  • I do not plan to continue this series
0 voters

Does anyone see a need to poll for pace and timing? I see most offshoot clubs read at a similar pace and give a 1 week break before continuing. For us that would mean we continue at 1 chapter a week (maybe speeding up after Vol 2 if people want to?) and start Volume 2 July 12th. Comments on that very welcome, even if it’s just to say, yep, agree!

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Yep, agree!

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I like that 1 week break part, gives me time to catch up hehe :grin:

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since it’s the first offshoot, some people may want/need more time to buy the 2nd book

also the pacing is (personally) fine for me, no need to speed up
have plenty of other books reading simultaneously
of course that’s best settled with a poll

if it does get sped up, personally would be ok with it, but would def not want it sped up if the vocab lists aren’t pre populated before starting the 2nd vol.

I am going on a trip soon, so going to try to finish these last two chapters tomorrow, so when I get back can dive into vol2 whenever it starts.

reading this after seeing the anime is just so much more impactful in ways I never expected. Loving it! Makes me want to rewatch the anime (and I’m not one to rewatch much)

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That’s a great point about getting the 2nd book for people reading physical copies.

There’s plenty of interest in the offshoot! So I’ll make an anonymous poll shortly to figure out if we should wait for people to get Vol 2 copies or if everyone who wants to continue already got one. For future clubs, plan on getting copies in time for the next club, I’ll probably keep the one week break to give natural breaks for me posting and anyone who might need to catch up.

The pre-populated spreadsheet was made by ChristopherFritz! I wouldn’t expect him to make one for every volume, though. He has written up instructions on how to do that if there are any takers? Alternatively, the manga kotoba site has all Frieren volumes! And you can set it up to show the words by page - almost as good as the vocab spreadsheet, but you can’t modify it. Anyway, here’s a poll, maybe it helps to see how many people who are continuing with the series are finding it useful, so that any kind souls willing to put in the work can better decide if it’s worth it!

Would you find a pre-populated vocab spreadsheet for the offshoot club helpful? (anonymous)
  • yes!
  • a bit
  • not really
0 voters
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There is definitely enough interest for an offshoot club! So far the plan is to continue at 1 chapter per week pace.

The question is - do we need to wait for anyone to get a physical copy? Currently, if we take a break of 1 week after Volume 1, that would leave 3 weeks until starting volume 2 on July 12th.

Alternatively, should we wait an extra week to leave 4 weeks and start volume 2 on July 19th?

This poll is anonymous!

If you are participating in the Frieren offshoot - when will you have your copy of Volume 2 ready to start reading?
  • I’ll be ready to start July 12th
  • I’m ordering now and need until July 19th
  • Wait for me! I’ll need longer (July 26th or later, please comment)
0 voters
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If anyone is interested, I can be available via Discord to help out.

Minimum requirements:

  • Digital copy of volume (with DRM removed)
  • Mokuro
  • Willingness to see all pages from the whole volume in the process.

After the “sentence collection” is done (longest manual step), I can run the output through Ichiran to extract sentences, readings, and English translations (shortest manual step, but takes a while to run). Then we can go over how to manage the output in a spreadsheet (almost longest manual step).

Disclaimer: This feature of the site requires creating a login (no cost).

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I’m definitly interested to learn how to do this, I don’t think I’ll have time to do it for the next volume or the next chapters, but it is sure a usefull thing to learn. Maybe I’ll contact you later or I could read your instructions?

Not sure where they are though…

Edit: also, do you think it’s better to make a spreadsheet rather than using manga kotoba site? Why so?

Looks like they may be scattered here and there and not all in one place.

It’s a tiny bit outdated, but here’s the main steps:

https://community.wanikani.com/t/x/60351/50

For step 7, you are identifying the order that word balloons occur. Each is assigned a number, and you can type that number to identify that as the next one. Or press 0 to identify the word balloon with a green border (lowest number).

There’s a video a couple of posts down from there showing what it looks like in action.

(I’ve since replaced 8–10 with Ichiran.)

They both have their strengths and weaknesses, but generally Manga Kotoba is better for before a book club begins.

Manga Kotoba strengths:

  • Better for knowing which words to pre-learn.

And a pre-filled spreadsheet is better for while a book club is running.

Pre-filled spreadsheet strengths:

  • Better for looking up words while reading, as you can easily glance at the words on a page.
  • You get a different tab for each week’s material, and accurate page numbers, making it easy to find words for the page you are on.
  • Can fix mistakes.
  • Can add notes/comments.
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Frieren Volume 2 - confirmed for July 26th 🧝‍♀️

Polls are in

  1. We have more than 30 people wanting to continue the offshoot, yay!
  2. Almost 20 people would like a pre-populated spreadsheet. So if anyone from the community wants to work with ChristopherFritz to learn how to do that it would be a great asset as right now he’s the only one very generously creating those across several clubs. Give him a tag here if so. Otherwise, I can whole-heartedly recommend using manga-kotoba mentioned above.
  3. In the final poll, four people are ordering paper copies, so let’s start July 26th so we don’t lose anyone, this is for fun after all! I hope that allows a couple people a bit more time to catch up, as well.

From there, as per the votes / discussion above, we’ll read at 1 chapter per week, with a 1 week break between volumes. So for paper copies, depending on your shipping method, you may already want to order vol 3 at the start of vol 2 and so on.

And with that, the last week of Frieren Volume 1 is live. Thanks everyone for your stellar participation. I’ve really enjoyed exploring this manga with you all :hugs: and I’m looking forward to continuing together :star2:

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