Hi all, not sure whether there have been previous topics on here. Just figured I’d post here.
I’ve joined a couple of book clubs on Wanikani so far, and these are going well. I think I want to read more to accelerate my learning. I’ve looked into previous entries to the ABBC and BBC, and I’ve also seen that there are lists on Natively that have some suggestions at various difficulty levels.
But, in more general terms: When I go on Bookwalker, I’m absolutely lost in the huge amount of books on offer. Even just when looking at the weekly sales or free trials. I would really have no idea how to filter, find what’s within my level, or even get an impressoin of what’s generally considered a good story. I’ve googled a bit, but that usually ends up with a general list of ‘good manga’, most of them written from the perspective of someone who reads English translations.
Any suggestions for how to make my own choices down the road, taking into account difficulty level and my developing taste in story type? How do you all filter and choose?
Yeah, there is an absolute ton of manga available and trying to navigate an aimed-at-natives UI as a learner is pretty tricky (just reading abstracts can take a ton of time and still not give you much idea of whether something is any good). My approach back when I was reading more manga was a mix of:
more stuff by authors I knew I liked (eg the first thing I read in Japanese I think was ミントな僕ら 1 | L20?? because I’d already read Marmalade Boy in English and enjoyed it; I started BASARA | L25 in English but switched to Japanese a few volumes in, beginning with rereading the part I’d read in English previously)
series where I’d read a recommendation or review in English somewhere (eg ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 1 | L22 )
things I’d heard of as being “classics” (eg らんま1/2 | L23 )
manga where I’d watched and really liked the anime already (eg 魔法騎士レイアース 新装版 1 | L24 )
Initially I just chose manga from the anime I’d watched, and then from the recommendation free samples on amazon. If you know what genres you like then it’s easier to narrow it down a bit, and if you get picky about art styles that rules out quite a lot too.
Thanks for the answers so far, everyone. It seems like it’s a bit of trial and error. Starting with the natively list as a jumping off point seems like a good idea. And just trying out various things to see what’s what.
In English, I usually read fantasy, sci-fi and mystery. There’s enough of that in manga, but the vocab for those make them a bit less suitable for beginners. (I’m looking forward to Flieren, in de BBC). Romance and slice of life are enjoyable, as long as there’s enough story content. And that is something that’s hard to judge from just a blurb or review.
Finally, I’ve found so far that artwork is a big factor for whether I like reading a book. Luckily, there’s usually preview pages available.
i think unless you are supremely motivated i generally recommend you start with stuff based on difficulty, ideally something easy you have an interest in, but for beginners i think difficulty should be the definining characteristing (thus Natively). That does mean a lot of high school romance content alas lol
Once you get to a more comfortable level you can begin branching out, but iirc it’s important to get lots of little wins first even if they’re not necessarily in your most-loved genre or whatever, rather than a single win that takes an entire year and is so difficult you throw your hands up in the air and give up
I would generally aim for around 60% → 80% comprehension without needing to learn too much new as a good difficulty range imho
I do find I read a different genre balance in Japanese compared to English: a lot more mystery/detective fiction, and a lot less SF and somewhat less fantasy. I think this is partly that I find the mystery books easier to read because they have less of the fancy vocab and philosophical musings SF can have, and partly because I’ve found a set of authors I like in the mystery genre and I have more trouble reliably finding authors I like in SF.
BASARA is really good (shoujo) fantasy manga with full furigana, by the way, although at 27 volumes it’s not short. 魔法騎士レイアース is also fantasy and full furigana, with strong RPG influences; it’s one of those “isekai before that was a genre” stories. I recommend both, as and when you feel they’re in your difficulty range.
In my own search for stuff I want to read I play the long game: Any time I see something I want to read in Japanese I add it to my wishlist on Natively. Any time I want to read something, I order my wishlist by difficulty and pick something.
After doing that for two years I have 37 manga in my wishlist right now, ranging from L14 to L35. I won’t run out of level-appropriate stuff to read any time soon
There’s also the Bookwalker freebies thread, which regularly posts lists of highly rated manga that is currently free, along with the (English) tags used for them on AniList (and you can click on the AniList links to read a summary in English). It’s a great way to find a bunch of stuff to try out at no financial cost to yourself.
Very helpful, thanks all! I think the first thing is to make my own Natively account and list, just to keep track of what’s what.
Fully agreed with @Jintor that easier is probably better. In that regard, I’m already way ahead of where I was 20 years ago. Back then, I had picked out some manga to read from the book store, based solely on genre and art work. They’re gorgeous and I still want to read them one day, but I can see now that I bit off way more than I could chew, especially with the tools I had available back then. (For the curious: 無限の住人, xxxHolic, 最終兵器彼女, Gantz)
@fallynleaf, that thread was actually one of the reasons for asking this question here. Finding free or cheap manga seems great, but I didn’t find a good way to filter by difficulty and was overwhelmed by the large amount on offer. Should I cross-reference manually with Natively when I scroll through the list and see some things that might appeal to me?
What I do is I go on amazon (my store of choice), and just scroll through their recommendations, maybe even new releases. If something seems like fun, both from the cover and the description, I open up the provided sample and read a bit. If I like it, I either purchase it or I at least place it on a shopping list.
With the free manga, I confess, I have a tendency to just grab anything that sounds like something I might potentially read without giving much thought to my current level of language ability . I just read a volume of manga this year that I picked up for free over two years ago. I’m probably pickier than the average person though because I primarily read LGBTQ stuff and won’t read works which strongly center heterosexual romance. So I grab basically anything that has an LGBTQ tag in the freebies thread. I’d say just grab the ones you think look potentially good now and worry about reading them later. You might graduate from very easy manga sooner than you think!
If you’re willing to mess around with installing a new program, there’s also Mokuro (and ChristopherFritz’s BookWalker manga screencapper), which will let you use popup dictionaries and such on manga. Thanks to Mokuro, I’m able to read manga with lots of unknown vocab much, much quicker because I don’t have to do manual lookups. This can make difficult manga much more accessible!
I personally didn’t find manga to be the most helpful learning source for me, so I ended up sort of avoiding it for the first year and a half or so (with the exception of one ABBC book club manga), and only recently have really started to dive into it because I’m able to enjoy it a lot more now that I can read at a decent speed (thanks in part to Mokuro) and can read the manga that I actually want to read. So I effectively skipped almost all of the classic beginner manga, except for Yotsuba, which I’m reading as an upper intermediate learner instead of a beginner because I love the series in English and wanted to read it when I could enjoy it more.
Back then, I had picked out some manga to read from the book store, based solely on genre and art work. They’re gorgeous and I still want to read them one day, but I can see now that I bit off way more than I could chew, especially with the tools I had available back then. (For the curious: 無限の住人, xxxHolic, 最終兵器彼女, Gantz)
. I just read a volume of manga this year that I picked up for free over two years ago. I’m probably pickier than the average person though because I primarily read LGBTQ stuff and won’t read works which strongly center heterosexual romance. So I grab basically anything that has an LGBTQ tag in the freebies thread. I’d say just grab the ones you think look potentially good now and worry about reading them later. You might graduate from very easy manga sooner than you think!