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
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 )
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 (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 )
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 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 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)