We will be running the vote for the next selection starting next weekend!
With that being the case, I’m putting out a last call for nominations this week. Get them in before 2023-10-14T23:00:00Z, which is when I’ll start the selection poll!
There are currently 14 active nominations, so we have room for 6 more nominations.
In addition, I would like to announce that this will be the final time that I am able to run this nomination and poll period. With that in mind, I would really love to hear from anybody here if they would be interested in taking over the administration of this thread following this next selection poll. I will run everything through this period, of course, so I’m not dumping it on anybody last minute, but following the completion of the next selection, somebody else will need to step into this role.
The final thing I would like to bring up for discussion: The BBC has done away with the difficulty poll because it often isn’t getting voted in, and it has a tendency to feel a bit arbitrary because it is so subjective. They have instead opted to adopt only paying mind to the Natively difficulty. I think it might not be a bad idea to consider that here as well, but I will open the floor up for discussion on that front rather than making an executive decision on my way out the door.
I will still be around on the forums and in this thread (I still have at least one nomination in there after all. ), but I have just taken a lot of other things on in my life right now and need to rebalance my commitments a bit.
Thanks for your amazing work here and in the general book club discussions! I always valued your input and I hope you will keep reading some cool books with us
I think I’ll throw two entries in and keep a few in reserve so as not to steal all the slots. First up is the relatively easy one which I think is only a bit harder than 小さな森:
桜井さんは気づいてほしい 1 / Sakurai-san wants to be noticed!
Summary
(Anilist) Makoto is a laidback teen who just wants to keep his head down and get through high school. His busty best friend Sakurai, however, is constantly pulling him into one shenanigan after another! Not only that, but she’s always teasing him in provocative ways. Sure, Makoto’s noticed that his friend has gotten super flirty, but that doesn’t mean she “likes” him, right? Right?
This is maybe one of the easiest books I’ve read, especially if you’ve tried anything in the rom-com space. There’s just enough slang and shortening to keep new learners on their toes, but with low amounts of text and a fairly limited vocabulary and standard set of scenarios to follow, I think it would be a perfect confidence-booster for Absolute Beginners who are eg struggling with ホリミヤ.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
Furigana.
I think it’s among the easiest manga I’ve ever read that doesn’t have irritating baby talk throughout - it’s currently sitting at Natively 15 … though I’m the only person who has rated it.
Limited vocab and grammar structures used, but still well within the ‘realistic’ range of what average high schoolers might say without seeming ‘dumbed down’ like in a graded reader.
Basic high school scenarios you will see often in other anime - think of this as a basis for other shoujo or shoujo-likes.
Art is decently cute imho and so is the main couple.
Looks like it has read-alongs so people can hear how it sounds.
Cons
It might be too easy for some of the more experienced members of our club. I tore through the first volume in like half an hour, and it’s currently occupying my ‘relaxing read’ slot in my reading rotation (though I still have to make the occasional lookup, of course).
Occasional egregious fanservice (panty shot) though this mostly is lost in the cuteness and so on.
Scenarios become fairly repetitive pretty quickly.
People may be bored with the ‘genki manic pixie girl gently teases a guy she’s interested in but who is completely dense’ genre.
The story revolves around a robotic cat named Doraemon, who travels back in time from the 22nd century to aid a boy named Nobita. In each episode, Nobita gets himself into a bit of a caper or has some challenge, and Doraemon has just the invention from the future to help him out, or make things worse…
This is the first manga I ever read in Japanese. The ideas are fun and creative, and it contains everyday vocabulary and full furigana. It’s imaginative and humorous in a Calvin and Hobbes way- easy light humor for kids but clever enough for adults to enjoy.
The manga is episodic so it’s easy to dip in and out of. Even reading it on my own at an early stage, I thought it was pretty easy and fun.
Since I enjoyed it even before 小さな森のオオカミちゃん, I think it’s a perfect level for ABBC.
The series ran to 45 volumes and has spawned many offshoot products. In the spirit of this being the absolute beginner’s club (and an informal vote), I’m nominating the recent collection aranged by school year starting from grade 1. These are original episodes from the original manga, just ordered by grade and complexity. That’s great for this club, as the first graded volume introduces the most accessible episodes of Doraemon and is noticeably easier than volume 1 episode 1 of the original. Also, the newer version is printed larger, starts in color, and to me it looks like better resolution on the digital samples. The downside is they only show 1st grade kanji (full furigana), increasing coverage by year. The language is so simple I thought it was still easy to read but have a look at the sample pages yourself. Finally, this edition includes some essays (all kanji/full furigana) discussing the episodes from an educational perspective. I haven’t read them yet and suggest voting on whether to read them together at the start of the club.
An offshoot club can ramp up complexity over the course of 6 graded volumes. The most keen Doraemon fans could go on to read all 45 original volumes.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
Full furigana
Episodic so people can jump ahead if they get behind or join the book club late
Simple language
light-hearted, funny, creative
An accessible entry point to the Doraemon universe, which includes anime, movies, every children’s study material you can think of (dictionary, vocab and kanji trainers), books and merch
An offshoot club could read all six graded volumes and complexity would gradually increase
Cons
No story development, although you do get glimpses of Doraemon’s backstory
Lots of kana as they only include grade 1 kanji, see the sample pages. Kanji for each grade are added with furigana in each subsequent book.
I’ve never found the votes very helpful and have relied on the sample pages and Natively level myself so I would agree with dropping. It was a pre-Natively solution to judge difficulty that was helpful at the time but seems clunky and redundant now.
Thanks for all the work you’ve done running the club!
Both of those nominations are added, and we are down to 3 nomination slots! Thank you for posting nominations, everyone.
And thank you for feedback, @mitrac, I agree it feels a bit like a relic of the past. Not to put my thumb on the scale, so to speak, but were I continuing to run things, I would likely have just opted for eliminating it without much of a vote, frankly.
Oh, I remember reading that translated at one point. It’s been ages though, so I don’t remember the first thing about it, except I think I liked it I think I’d join in with this book club
It does seem really easy even with these stats, which is surprising because it’s relatively long. We had a very slow creep up in difficulty over time, which was also a creep up in length, and this belongs among the longest ones. But seemingly there just aren’t a lot of text in this.
This is very obvious when you compare it to the king of all textless mangas, Happiness
Though, certainly I’ll say this, I went through a ton of books on amazon, and I clearly remember seeing this, but the reason I didn’t consider it was the amount of fanservice already present in the sample pages. I see now that it does let up somewhat, but it’s certainly a consideration after the talk we had earlier.
I really like the accessibility of Doraemon, to me this sound perfect for an ABBC.
Even if i’m little bit curious of Nagatoro (not nominated for now if i don’t mistaken), despite i’m not in fan service at all. But i get a lot of good review from people that are not in either.
Nagatoro doesn’t contain that much fanservice. It certainly does, but the bigger issue with it (as in why it isn’t getting nominated really) is that the first volume is a bit rough. It has the most fanservice (possibly) out of the entire series in my opinion, and you can’t forget about the heavy bullying that’s happening in it. The series does mellow out a lot.
I’m not so sure about that, the art club president and her cousin make a fair few appearances for instance.
But yes, the heavy bullying in the first few chapters damn near turned me off the series and I’m not particularly sensitive to that. Glad I gave it a chance though, it comes around very quickly.
Bit late to this but as always thank you so much for your hard work! I’ve been there with taking on too much so hopefully we haven’t been adding too much to your stress
On Natively vs Voting, just putting my voice out there but I’d go with the Natively level over the voting myself. That said, I do think more data is a good thing and there are times Natively does lack data on a book. For example, if I recommended:
We’d not have anything to go on so an additional data source like the voting could be useful…although honestly I’d go with @Gorbit99’s tool as the secondary data source but that’s just me!
Not gonna mention any names, but because of someone accidentally recommending very difficult manga in ABBC in the past, I now never recommend manga without having read them first. This ensures that A) I’m actually interested in it and B) I know exactly how hard it is and how it stacks up to other manga I’ve read.
Manga analyzer I’ve originally made to act as a prefilter, especially the number of words seems to correlate really well with difficulty (given regular, more slice of life-esque manga). But it just can’t replace human judgement.
), but I have just taken a lot of other things on in my life right now and need to rebalance my commitments a bit. 
