I second what Memoria said. Even after a lot of study you will need time to get accustomed to the real casual patterns found in manga if you ever want to get comfortable with them. So it certainly is easier later on with more vocabulary and grammar but it will never be easy (in the beginning). At some point you have to jump over that hurdle. But with which material and at what point is is totally subjective and depends only on yourself and your goals.
What I found too is that reading (even if it is more deciphering) really helped me to reinforce A LOT of the grammar and words that appear all the time. Jumping back into my grammar book felt so much easier after having read my first manga.
It shouldn’t feel only as chore. At least some enjoyment from the art or the story should help you get over the hurdle.
Also make use of the linked vocabulary sheet a lot. Looking in there if you are unsure or can’t follow the story is not cheating. It’s a lot easier than tackling a manga on your own since the correct translation is already selected by someone and you can see how the sentence is broken up into its parts. Asking questions for anything you unsure about also helps a lot. Don’t be shy!
I don’t know where exactly you are struggling but I’d like to add that the first part was pretty hard with lots of katakana words and the news cast so I don’t expect all of the chapters being equally as hard. Maybe try sticking with it a little longer and decide after some more time? You will find that many words are pretty common and when you get used to them it will get easier.
Take it simple, 2 pages a day can get you through the whole thing in time. Heck, some pages are very simple and some are very difficult, if you just say, that “I will do an hour of reading today” or even just half an hour, that should further your japanese speaking ability tons. Even if you can’t quite keep up, that’s alight, being a bit behind a bookclub can actually speed up your progress, because you can read the grammar explanations others put out.
I’m so happy this bookclub is finally beginning ! The manga was calling me from the shelves for far too long now
So… I read the first part and I have to say, I was not ready for this newscast
But at least I learned the passive form of する, even if i’m not sure i’ll remember the rest of the vocab on this page.
I still have a question after the second reading, if someone can help :
When 布田くん says “僕がやらされてたこと”. I don’t get the grammar, it seems to be a passive form, with a て form, with the past form… I understand the use of たこと, but how come there is a て before ?
I’m sure I’ll have more questions after a third reading (especially on the newscast part), but for now I seem to understand the general idea, which is more than I was excpecting.
I can’t wait for the next part
And I loved the graphic style of the first few pages, I hope we’ll see more of it later on !
To all my fellow readers : I hope you’ll have fun as well !
Finished this week’s pages! I have a bad inkling that something drastic will eventually occur between the main character and his classmates down the line, as that’s usually the case for someone to escape the position of being an errand person. I just hope Okazaki and our mvp-so-far Nunota will stick together as a team. Looking forward to how the story unfolds with that hook in the beginning.
Now for a question! Regarding what’s on the news,
On page 17 (physical) / page 19 (digital)
警察は何らかの事件に巻きこまれたものと…
I’m having a bit of trouble interpreting this incomplete sentence. Given that the verb is not present, is it not possible to fully know what’s being said?
We know that it’s talking about something related to the police, and about something or someone who got involved in some sort of incident. It could be saying that the police is investigating… or the police has reported that… or even the police themselves are involved in some sort of incident (although unlikely given the context of the news).
Gorbit99’s translation was a good reference (thanks @Gorbit99!). How should I go about interpreting a partial sentence like this when reading myself? Do assumptions have to be made here?
I seem to remember someone saying the と at the end of the sentence is just omitting the verb (言います in many cases). It usually indicates that the speaker themselves is not sure about the sentence which と refers to.
For reference, that was a really difficult sentence, and the translation I’ve read actually said something along the lines of “The police think that he may have been a victim of a crime”.
What I did was I translated most parts and tried to puzzle together a “solution” that fits my idea of what’s happening
Loving the early art style as many have said. The overall topic of the series is what appealed to me most about this series. I followed along with this pretty well which was a nice surprise. Nice to have something fun to do rather than endless JLPT study.
Hey nice you enjoy it so far! It is “causative passive progressive past tense” to be precise. やる put into causative → やらせる put into causative passive → やらせられる apply shortening sound shift → やらされる put into progressive → やらされている put into progressive past → やらされていた shorten casual by dropping い → やらされてた
For causative passive see also the last part here Causative and Passive Forms - Tae Kim's Japanese grammar guide
Is that enough for you to follow or should I try to explain it a little more?
You’ll build up the skills of translating as well… it’s not the same as reading… don’t be worried about a bit of ambiguity. If you think you know what’s happening more or less move on, if not, check the vocab sheet, chuck it in ichi.moe, bung it into deep learning… ask questions… anything to help you move forward
My first book club (the last one), the early chapters I would agonize over ever sentence, demanding to comprehend everything 100%. After a bit you get into the groove with it…
You’re pretty much correct! If you are interested in an in-depth sentence breakdown:
Sentence breakdown
You can think about the sentence as having two parts: The main part is 警察は言う. As @MagicalGrill pointed out correctly, the verb is often omitted after と. So our main part is: The police is saying that. Now what are they saying? They are saying what is marked with と, so: 何らかの事件に巻きこまれたもの. 何らかの事件 means some sort of trouble/affair. まきこむ means to involve, but here the passive version is used, so to get involved. In full: [he] got involved in some sort of trouble.
And thanks @MagicalGrill for bringing this usage of と up! Coincidentally, I was taught how to use と to quote others earlier this week during class. Looks like it slipped my mind until I read the replies; I interpreted the と as “and” initially.
I was taught that 「…」と would be a direct quote and …と would be an indirect quote, and that if it’s a noun before the と in an indirect quote, we’d have to add a だ. Presumably then the full sentence would be something like:
警察は（小林浩二さんが）何らかの事件に巻きこまれたものだと（言います。）
The police says that Kobayashi Kouji got involved in some sort of trouble.
I haven’t read enough to know if it’s common to drop だ, like how the い is dropped when 布田 said「…やらされてた…」as mentioned in one of the previous posts. Definitely gave me some good food for thought! Thanks!
That is a very good point. There should be a だ if it was indirect qotation. The da cannot be dropped and since it is a news cast they wouldn’t drop anything either way. They wouldn’t have dropped the い in the other example either. It’s like in english news you wouldn’t use “wanna” for “want to” probably ^^.
But you have to understand that it is an incomplete sentence and you are not NEEDED to know how the sentence ends because the first part carrys the important meaning. Its not that important if they said it or speculated it or wrote it in a newspaper article. The important part is “WHAT” was said/written/assumed.
Also get comfortable with japanese being vague or having double meaning sometimes. That’s just the whole stick in japanese with being context dependent and I think one of the great joys of learning this language
I accidentally missed the part where we were only supposed to read to page 19 and read the first full chapter instead The story seems like it will get interesting later on although the MC is a bit of a weirdo page 19 in particular when hes thinking back on that panty shot. The grammar seems relatively simple so far, I’ve mostly just had to look up some words I don’t know yet. Looking forward to seeing how the rest of the story goes!
I still have a question after the second reading, if someone can help :
When 布田くん says “僕がやらされてたこと”.I don’t get the grammar, it seems to be a passive form, with a て form, with the past form… I understand the use of たこと, but how come there is a て before?
I could be wrong. This is only my second ABBC book club. But I looked at it this way:
やらされてた - is やらされて + いた where やらされて is the て-form of the やらす meaning to let someone do something. いた is the past tense of いる but the い gets dropped. So it all becomes “having let someone do something”
こと - is functioning to nominalize that verb so it can be the an object and take the を particle.
Essentially, 布田くん, is apologizing for having them bully 岡崎くん.
