So I recently found out about wakarukana.com which ranks some anime, manga, etc. by difficulty level of Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Very Hard (i.e. Sword Art Online is ranked as very easy, Spirited Away is ranked as easy). Although they’re not currently listed on the site, my local library has Kiki’s Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky, The Secret World of Arrietty, The Wind Rises, and Ponyo on DVD. Currently looking for an indication of which corresponding difficulty any of these movies would fall into. Thank you!
2 Likes
Generally speaking, slice of life will probably be easier than fantasy and sci-fi. So something like Kiki’s Delivery Service or Whisper of the Heart should be easier than Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke.
If you want to try one of the ones you listed, I’d go with Kiki’s Delivery Service. I haven’t actually watched any of them without subtitles, but that’s my best suggestion.
3 Likes
reading this right now, and it’s a walk in the park.
Which one - Kiki’s Delivery Service?
It would probably be helpful to the OP if you could give some background about your grammar level, vocabulary knowledge and / or comparisons to other things you’ve read. And given that the OP is asking about the anime, if you’ve seen that too it might be helpful to know whether the language in the books feels harder or easier than the anime.
1 Like
hard to assess my levels, i didn’t take any tests.
but the book has easy language and the anime is basically slice of life, only everyday language and common vocab. the book is harder than the anime, due to how narration writing works, but even that is actually very easy.
I’ve seen all of those, but only Kiki and Ponyo in Japanese (no subtitles).
I’d still recommend Japanese subtitles if you have the option.
Ponyo was the easiest of the two by far. I think it’s possible to enjoy it without much issue at around N3 in terms of grammar/vocab. (Not talking about 100% comprehension mind you, but not needing to pause either). It might be possible below that, but that may require breaks to look up words/grammar (or accepting a low comprehension).
Kiki has more uncommon vocab and some keigo in places (very few, though), but is fine at N2 (from experience). Again, might be okay at as low as N4 if one takes the time to look things up. floflo.moe has a word list for the book. I don’t know how similar it is to the anime, but learning high frequency words from there might also help (or not at all, that’s a shot in the dark).
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.