Easy No Furigana Manga?

Japanese Language Resources
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I have two full manga series in Japanese already; Chii’s sweet home (very readable) and Death Note (harder, more wordy and harder words); both have furigana which makes it easy to read (even though I don’t know all the words, so I compare with the English version), but also makes my mind lazy and not recalling the kanji readings on its own. I also have Graded Readers, which also use furigana, and can read and understand the level 1 books (not tried the higher levels so not sure if OK or to hard) I also just bought Naruto, but could see it too has furigana.

So back to my question. Does anyone know of any good easy to read mangas without furigana? Preferably one with an English version as well so I can buy both and read side by side as help (I’ve found good help in that with my other two sets) Edit: When I say “no furigana” I only mean on common words. Rare words/names and so on is good if have them.

I assume most of these might have furigana, but here is a short list of my favorite manags that I already own in English, in case one of them might be without furigana:
Inuyasha, Fruits Basket, Cat Academy, Pokemon, Zelda, Attack on Titan (including spinoffs), Junjo Romantica, Fullmetal Alchemist.
If nothing else, at least it shows what kind of mangas I prefer :wink:
I do love animal ones, especially cats. But seen some that are hard to read, cause they are handwritten and hard to tell what the characters are ^^;
I also have Crunchy Roll, which have an assortment of Mangas (only English i believe, but hey, if they have it I might not need to buy the English version :wink: )

Any good suggestions? =)

Edit:
Mangas bought so far:
Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok (5 Mangas, English version hard to find) All furigana /side note; I have a cat named Loke :wink: (Norwegian spelling of Loki)/
Mythical Detective Loki (7 Mangas, possibly not translated) All furigana. Recieved! It is all furigana. Which is well enough, since I do still need them really, just wnat some to practice on to see how I do without it and all of mine had furigana =P I do miss having an English version for backing up, but that just challenges me to actually work it out on my own rather than lazily check the translation, so it’s good for me to have some of these (and I have a 7 day average on WK levels, I’ll get there soon enough :wink: )
What a Wonderful World (2 mangas, English version easy to find)
Solanin (2 Mangas, English version easy to find)

Books: I prefer mangas, as I’m better at the spoken language and the images help a lot, but some books are OK =)
Short Stories In Japanese - New Penguin Parallel Text (gives you the translation and only furigana first time you see it, perfect! These stories also looked more interesting than other similar books I have) Received I’m loving this one! Did manage to read the first story in one sitting. It is only two pages, but that also makes it easier to find the kanji you need to look back for, when you are at my little level :wink: The stories grows exponentially, last one being very thick! So it gets harder simply by being longer. I like this way of doing it =)

Other suggestions: I can’t afford to buy them all, but here is a nice list of the suggestions made so far =)
Gantz
Accel World
A Certain Magical Index
A Certain Scientific Railgun
Nijigahara Holograph
New Game
Qualia the Purple (I didn’t find on eBay)
Utsuro no Hako (novel)
Yahari Ore no Seishun (novel)
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (easily available in both languages)

Items I felt like just trying out:
Bought without really knowing what I get, just looked interesting. Most found on Amazon Japan or UK

Nekogahara - I already had two volumes in English, so bought the Japanese ones. All furigana.

Dokyonin wa hiza. Tokidoki atamanoue - (It says so on the front, in our letters! ^^; ) It has a cute cat (sitting on the head of a cute guy) on the cover. Bought three mangas of it. No furigana! (unless name/rare word) Looks easy enough, though I still need more lessons before I can actually fully read it and found no English version =P

Nekomachi Bonsaiten - Again cute cat sitting on the shoulders of a cute guy this time. I have my preferences I guess :wink: No furigana (unless name/rare word) Most pages seem easy to read, but there are some in between with lots of handwritten text which I find harder.

Batman, No man’s land - Rare find in a local manga/comic shop that has a very tiny Japanese selection. the others they had was all volumes 2-3 of series I’m not interested in to begin with, so grabbed this one. It’s big! No furigana unless name/rare. I forgot to look for English version (which is what they mainly do) but being a DC one I assume I can find one =) This seems a good step harder than the cat mangas =P

Have more on the way, will edit when they arrive (tomorrow and Thursday)

2 Likes
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Also interested in any recommendations

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I’m curious to see recommendations too :smiley:

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You can generally check samples online, if you want to see whether a manga has furigana or not.

http://renta.papy.co.jp/

Both those sites have free samples for everything they carry, that you can just open straight in your browser (or app, if you want to).

A good rule of thumb is that shounen and shoujo manga (and kids stuff) have furigana, others do not.

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Give Gantz a try.

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If you pay attention to publishers, you’ll notice certain ones publish very little with furigana. For instance, Blade Comics and Dengeki Comics rarely have any furigana.

Several series from Blade Comics did get made in to an anime, such as ARIA and Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok. Both of those titles were also translated in to English, but I’m not sure how easy it is to come by those volumes anymore. Also, Loki initially started it’s run in GanGan Comics, which I believe did have furigana.

Even more of the Dengeki titles get made in to anime. It looks like Yen Press has a relationship with Dengeki, so manga like Accel World and A Certain Magical Index have been published in English by them. A couple also went to Seven Seas, like A Certain Scientific Railgun.

There are several other publishers that primarily publish without furigana. Usually, the genre is listed as 青年 or 女性.

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You can check out this thread from the other day.

Also “easy” manga tends to have less furigana because the publishers kind of assume you should know how to read all the kanji in them.

Oftentimes, for all published things, there will be furigana every once in a while if a funky word pops up or if it has a different reading than normal. And books/novels tend to have less furigana but obviously the reading level is much higher. You could try picking up some kids’ books though.

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Thanks for coming with specific suggestions =^_^=
My god Loki?! Hey, I’m Norwegian, so he is actually my ancestors god, and I do love my trickster :wink:
I managed to find a set! jumped the gun and bought a set of 5, then I found a set of 7 when looking for the translated version D=
Oh well… English version was harder to find though =/
I’ll see how I do without them =)
If I may link to eBay, these two sets are so different, do you know why?
I bought this: set of 5
Then I found these: set of 7
I have a feeling I should have bought the second one =P

I will try google some of the others you mentioned too, see if I might like them =)

1 Like
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The second set looks to be a reprint of the original series that ran in GanGan. The series was originally published as 魔探偵ロキ in 月刊少年ガンガン (Monthly Shounen GanGan). These chapters were released as the first 7 books. Then, the author switched publishers to 月刊コミックブレイド (Monthly Comic Blade) and released another 5 volumes as 魔探偵ロキ RAGNAROK.

It looks like after the author switched publishers, Blade Comics re-released the first 7 volumes that were originally published by GanGan. According to Wikipedia, these volumes were never translated.

And unfortunately, finding the English version for the other 5 volumes is pretty tough because they were published several years ago by ADV Manga.

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So are they different stories? I should buy both?

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ソラニン by Asano Inio（浅野いにお）
2 volumes, slice of life, great author.

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Well, the series is a mystery series, so there are different arcs for each mystery. It’s been a while since I read them, so I don’t remember how the original 7 transitions in to the last 5 volumes. I seem to recall that the first volumes in the original 7 didn’t add much (aside from some character backstory) to the overarching plot. So you might be able to read the set of 5 without knowing much about the original 7.

It is the same characters in the same universe, though. If you like the series, you’ll probably want to read the original 7 volumes.

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Found it at decent price. Couldn’t seem to find an English version, do you know if there are, and if so what it is called in English? (bought it anyway though =) )
Also picked up Wonderful World, as I found both Jap and Eng version while looking for translated version of the first one; and it looked very interesting! =^_^=
I kinda like that they are short, makes it easy to complete set =P (but keeps you wanting more if you fall for it :wink: )

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That works for me :wink:
Picked up both, since the big set was at a fairly low price =P

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And it looks like I’m misremembering the amount of furigana in series published by Blade Comics. I just looked at some preview images of the Loki and the ARIA manga, since I’m not near my actual books. There was a lot more furigana than I remember there being.

If it turns out I was wrong about the amount of furigana, I hope you enjoy the story anyway.

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I noticed on the preview image after buying that there where some. But is it it all, or just some? Now in the beginning it would actually be good if only the easy ones didn’t have :wink:
And do you know if the set of 7 have? It didn’t have a photo of pages =)

Also, I earned this badge:
Editor
“This badge is granted the first time you edit one of your posts. While you won’t be able to edit your posts forever, editing is always a good idea…”
It suggests there’s a limit to how many times we can edit a post. Know what the limit is? I want to come back with an update after receiving and looking through the mangas and let others know what my impression is

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Yeah, I’m a fan of no-commitment miniseries (:

Yes, it’s Solanin in English, single volume I think.
I haven’t read Wonderful World yet, I’ve got Nijigahara Holograph（虹ヶ原ホログラフ）which is pretty fucked up but I liked it.

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Probably all the volumes have it. I don’t remember an instance where a publisher changed the amount of furigana midway through a series.

I’m pretty certain the set of 7 will have furigana as well, since they are reprints from GanGan. Most of the books I have that were published under GanGan Comics have furigana because they are considered 少年 (series that are aimed at preteen boys).

As for the editting limit, I’m not sure. I haven’t gotten the badge.

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Ah! that one I did see =)
Should have realized they where the same, typical R=L =P
The outside s where so different and no number made me not look too close :wink:
goes back and picks it up
So far I’ve picked all on eBay by the way =)

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I recently started on New Game which doesn’t have furigana and hasn’t been too difficult with an iPad nearby for kanji lookups. Be prepared for lots of katakana loan words though in case katakana isn’t your friend.