I’m looking for anime recommendations that fit these requirements:
My background & preferences:
I’ve enjoyed many anime like Dragon Ball Z, Death Note, Bakuman, Dr. Stone, Code Geass, Food Wars, DanDaDan, Blue Box, My Dress-Up-Darling, Sword Art Online, Steins;Gate, Haikyuu!, and Spy x Family.
My current learning level:
I’m using WaniKani (level 3), LingoDeer, and Pimsleur, so I’m still a beginner but been learning ~2h daily for 1 month now. I’d love to find anime that I might be able to mostly follow without subtitles, or at least use for immersion practice. They should be engaging for adults but still accessible for learning.
Here are some anime that AI tools suggested that might fit – but we all know how inaccurate those are, so I’d love your feedback on whether they’re actually suitable for my level, and to hear about other recommendations:
Easier to Understand:
Flying Witch (peaceful slice-of-life, natural modern Japanese)
Tanaka-kun is Always Listless (slow dialogue, sophisticated humor)
Not sure if this is just some advertisement, but if its not, just a genuine suggestion: I think your questions would be better received if not preceded by the AI stuff. I personally don’t really want to talk about whats wrong or right with generated AI responses and I think it kinda just takes the focus away from the question at hand.
given this criteria none of what you have been ‘advised about’ is really plausible without subtitles, a japanese script you can read, having watched these all beforehand or all of the above
It is mostly engaging, although some of the mysteries that the protagonsts adopt and then solve are somewhat detailed and perhaps even convoluted, which effectively belies the ‘approachability’ aspect.
One of the nice parts about interacting with others online is that you can hear the thoughts and opinions of another human being. I think instead of always starting your topics with what Claude AI says, you can try sharing some of your own opinions! Also, no, you will not understand any of these anime without subtitles. You mentioned in your previous post that you were planning to go to Japan in a few week’s time, so you would likely benefit more from studying common phrases you would use every day over trying to learn vocabulary from anime.
@Jintor@servette@Belthazar Thank you, these things are good to know. I might need to change my approach and actually allow for anime targeted to children then, it seems. Or maybe try these first? Do you have any suggestions for Anime that‘s not too childish but still has simpler language?
@Vanilla@Shikaschlep This is not advertising, I‘m just trying to be transparent about how I approached this and I just happen to have a subscription with this specific service, but other AI tools could have been just as useful. Or unuseful.
It doesn’t help anyone though if you just complain about me using a more modern tool to do my research rather than classic search engines. I know AI has limitations, but they can also be super helpful and save time. They can be a good starting point, but you never know if you can trust them. That’s exactly why I decided to get real human input.
So I appreciate every answer that suggests other anime or confirms/denies that I might have a chance to understand some of these Anime without subtitles. Or maybe there’s a method to watch with subtitles and still „immerse“ myself and focus on Japanese listening practice?
Mmm, it’s tricky… I don’t know if I can think of an adult-targeted anime that also has simple language for a true beginner throughout, but loads of anime have simple language (or maybe ‘routine language’) sprinkled in there.
I would probably start with slice-of-life or school-based series purely because the kind of vocab will more commonly reflect real life situations (less talk about dragons, bloodlines, curses, lasers etc). But this doesn’t always work (especially for comedies, for instance, because I think comedies often rely on wordplay or non-sequitars or playing on expectations, which can be difficult if you don’t already have the cultural expectations or the vocabulary).
From your OP I would say Flying Witch and Sweetness and Lightning might be the easiest relatively speaking. But I would still recommend probably some kind of integrated approach - reading the manga while watching or something.
For more childish stuff, I honestly think something formulaic is a good idea - Pokemon, Precure, something targeted more at kids like that probably. (Pokemon would dovetail with your game playing idea).
I will say for everything at a beginner stage I think you’ll still need a vocab list or to look stuff up constantly, but that’s just learning.
I like the idea of slice of life, I think it makes sense. So thank you for the two options! That makes it easy for me to slim down the list of Animes to try.
While I thought about Pokémon initially, I think playing the game will already give me plenty of Pokémon-specific vocabulary that’s not really relevant for real-world interactions, so I‘d prefer to have something that’s different to better judge what to focus on. I‘ll give those two a try!
The other thread got unflagged again by mods immediately upon review, but I did learn my lesson. I will be more considerate in the future!
But if the OP really had been advertisement, it would be pretty bad advertisement given that you immediately had proven with the YouTube video clip how inaccurate of an answer the AI has given!
Thanks for posting that, by the way. Saiki K is definitely too fast for me right now, so gonna skip on that, for sure.
I think that’s not in the focus of the comments though.
And this is exactly the point. In my understanding the criticism was towards you „doing research“ and then asking us to validate (or invalidate) your results. Which is a different question from simply asking for everybody’s suggestions à la „what are beginner friendly anime that are still entertaining for an adult?“.
To put it bluntly, the first is asking to „proofread“ a chatbot‘s answers while the second is asking to share genuine opinions and experiences.
I kindly disagree that sharing examples for feedback is less effective than open-ended questions. In my experience, providing specific examples helps focus discussion and gives clear points to build upon – as shown by the helpful feedback about Saiki K’s pacing and Hyouka’s complexity.
I personally don’t like open-ended questions. They often feel like someone is being lazy and letting me do the research work they should actually have done first before getting back to me and asking more specific questions they couldn’t find an answer for. And that was my original intention. To be respectful of people’s time.
I do understand the concern that it seemed like I just did a quick AI prompt and wanted validation though. The reality was way more thorough research exploring various Japanese immersion options. But I see how leading with AI results and even mentioning it on the title gave that impression.
You’re right that framing it differently – focusing on requirements and potential anime suggestions from various sources being just a side aspect of the post – would have been better. I have learned my lesson! ごめんなさい！
Yes, you’re right, asking a question like „give me a list of 10 suitable animes“ wouldn’t cut it either (and it’s not even a question to begin with…)
Alternatively you could ask for everybody’s experience (which is at the same time not easy to research generally), e.g. like „What was the first anime you successfully managed to watch without subtitles“ (plus, if you’re interested, „at which level of Japanese were you back then“ or „what did your study routine look like leading up to that“ etc) which might give you good results as well.
Oh, no need to apologize, really! I didn’t want to make you feel bad about your approach, I just tried to point out different ways. Now it’s up to you to find out what works best for you
I am currently reading Frieren, the manga is nice to read because they use lots of formal speech easy to follow, and the names are all in german, so you don’t get lost deciphering a kanji which is actually someone name. This is my big recommend. There is anime too.
Then there is Anya sometimes hides her feelings in russian, it is a dumb comedy but they speak clearly and use lots of easy to follow basic grammar and common recognizable words.
Lastly, there is this fresh anime coming out in right this season, I may be a guild receptionist but I’ll solo any boss to clock out on time, there is only one episode so far, but it was kinda funny, I’ll be watching the second one.
I’m enjoying Azumanga Daioh again. They don’t speak too quickly, and there are a lot of pauses between dialogue bits, so it’s a lot easier to follow and not overwhelming at all.
Looking at learning level it might be very difficult to find something aimed at adults, or even middle/junior high school that you can follow without subtitles.
I will ignore the AI recommended things as it’s been discussed.
I will give this though! The first anime I understood without needing subtitles was when I went to watch a movie in Japan. It was the Suzume no Tojimari or whatever it was called in English but done by the same director as Your Name. I would consider it being aimed at older elementary schoolers just in terms of looks and messages etc.
A few things:
I did not understand everything completely, the details of what the big monster/bad or why it was happening was the most ambiguous of all, but I understood everything else.
I went to watch it on a date, so I was able to ask my Japanese partner about the parts I didn’t quite catch.
This was a year and a half after living in Japan after getting a degree in Japanese at university (just a bachelor’s), and basically speaking and reading Japanese every single day since I had arrived in Japan.
Not to say you don’t have a single chance of understanding anything at all, because the common things that get repeated and especially if it’s a long anime series with words that will be used often, (for example like learning the word “keyblade” or “gumi” from kingdom hearts. That’s also a thing too, you don’t know what’s going to be a specific anime only word and what’s a real life word. ) you will learn to associate them very quickly.I agree with those suggesting slice of life, real world type of words to use.
I might’ve missed it but, a common piece of advice is to rewatch animes you’ve already seen in only Japanese with Japanese subtitles. The benefits of knowing the material so you don’t get lost, and also having the vocabulary to know what might be a non-native anime word will help. Plus with Japanese subtitles it will be added reading bonus!
Although with what you’ve written for background, there aren’t any slice-of-life in there… From what I see, Spy X Family can be an attempt, but it’s really really really fast, like Saiki K so I can’t recommend it even as a rewatch unless you really really reaaaaaaaaaaaally like it.
EDIT to add
If you don’t mind something very veryyy small and it is aimed at children so take that with a grain of salt, but there’s this thing called ちいかわ and it’s a very very very small short episode (like I think 5 mins or less) of these creatures. It’s not supposed to make much sense, and that ambiguity can make it a bit difficult, but it can give a slight insight of what childrens already know. All episodes are free on youtube.
When I was an upper beginner I found Azumanga Daioh and Cardcaptor Sakura to be quite good.
Azumanga Daioh is a lot of skits so if something goes by, it’s not a big deal. There’s also a good bit of physical comedy which provides visual context.
Cardcaptor Sakura does have magic and some action, but if you really look at the episodes, a large amount of time is spent on the real life dynamics: family, friends, teachers, school. So there are a lot of everyday normal conversations and cultural elements that take up screen time.
Coming back to Japanese after a long hiatus I tried an anime that had a low difficulty ranking on crunchyroll. 私に天使が舞い降りた！ S1 | L18
And erm… It was indeed mostly easy, but it was one of the most uncomfortable anime I’ve watched because the main character has a rather unhealthy obsession with cute elementary school girls. And while it never crosses the line, it’s still very awkward and if the main character had been a dude it would totally be inappropriate.
But it was easy for sure. So I don’t know if I’d recommend it, but I also don’t not-recommend it.
(and it’s not even a question to begin with…)