Hi there! So, I decided to turn the English subtitles off on an anime I was rewatching and I can understand perhaps one word every sentence, some simple sentences, some phrases, but roughly no more than 3% of the whole episode. Is this a waste of my time? I noticed that after three episodes or so, I was able to make out a teensy bit more, at least be able to more effectively hear sentence structures and speech patterns, but nothing more than that. Does anyone have experience with this? Should I continue? I take note of some common words, verb endings, phrases that I hear throughout the episode, look them up after and then when they appear next have a better idea of what is being said (not that I get very far, but hey, Iâm at least picking up words while listening!). Thereâs a part of me that thinks I should just continue and see if I improve at all, despite how frustrating and tiring it is to watch an anime, ears on sharp and only catch a bucketful of words. I have once decided to watch anime with Japanese subtitles on animelon, but the site hasnât loaded anything in ages, and I found myself pausing it every other sentence because I recognised a kanji and wanted to figure out the sentence, which with my limited grammar knowledge admittedly didnât get me very far! Say, if I do wanikani and just watch a ton of anime without subs, will this get me anywhere, or would I be wasting my time? Iâm looking for enjoyable immersion 
Thanks! Looking forward to hearing your opinions
Not a waste of your time, but I would think you could get the same experience even with subtitles on. 
Iâve watched hundreds of episodes with subtitles on and only picked out a handful of words, whereas watching now without, Iâve picked out a whole lot more. I think that with subtitles (English ones anyway) Iâd just be reading the subtitles and not really be able to listen at all anymoreâŠ
Here are my experiences. Keep in mind that I have a really bad memory, so your results may vary.
Ojamajo Doremi
This is a fairly long series. My DVD set is a Chinese release with Chinese hard subtitles, and no Japanese (or English) subtitles. I watched with the Japanese audio track, and picked up words like crazy. (I also had a very small vocabulary to start with at the time, probably less than 800 words, at the time.)
I still remember learning the word èœăĄă early on in watching this series. I learned many other words, but that was the first, so it stands out for me.
K-On!
I tried this with the first episode of K-On!, using the following method:
- Watch episode in Japanese (no subtitles)
- Read through first sentence of dialogue in Japanese subtitles.
- Learn all the words in the sentence.
- Watch beginning of episode covering that line over and over until I recognize everything being said.
- Return to step (2) with the next line of dialogue.
Over a month, I made it maybe ten or 15 lines in before I stopped. Here are the issues I faced:
- I didnât know grammar well enough, and wasnât properly looking it up and learning it along the way.
- A few lines in, I was having trouble remembering the prior vocabulary (even though I just reviewed them daily for the prior five daysâŠ)
- I would occasionally go long periods (a week) without going to the next line.
I learned the word ăăăă, and thatâs all I can remember.
Sailormoon
Since my K-On! experiment, Iâve learned a lot more vocabulary (Iâm 3,000 words into iKnowâs âcoreâ decks), and Iâve learned a lot more grammar thanks to look-ups while reading through manga.
About 40 episodes in, my experience with this has been:
- I recognize a lot of words I already know.
- I miss a lot of words I should recognize.
- If a word I donât know is used many times in an episode (or over a few episodes), I can usually pick it up (but often forget it in a day).
Cure Dollyâs Method
I havenât tried Cure Dollyâs method yet, but on her YouTube channel, she recommends you take the audio from an anime episode, and listen to a small portion over and over throughout the day, each day until youâve able to recognize everything. (Youâd still look up the words in the subtitles in advance, and use an SRS program for the vocabulary.) Once youâre able to recognize everything in that piece of audio, you can continue on to the next piece.
If this sounds of interest to you to try, check out what Cure Dolly says rather than my summary above based on my bad memory. Here are some related links:
This is true. Reading the (edit: English) subtitles will essentially block hearing whatâs said. Youâll catch some words you already know very well, but thatâs probably about it. (Edit: This is based on my own personal experience. Your results may vary.)
I guess it doesnât work for everybody.
Wouldnât it be better to say that everyone has different learning methods?
I always watch with subtitles, and I constantly pause and look up words I donât know from what I hear.
I agree 100%.
I didnât mention language, but I was referring to English subtitles since the part I responded to mentioned English subtitles. (Iâll edit my prior comment to clarify.) Do you watch with English or Japanese subtitles?
English subs.
I usually even go, âWait, thatâs not how I would translate what he just said.â
And it gives me something to look up.
I even do it with English manga.
I read a sentence, like âLet me go!â and immediately think âăŻăȘăïŒâ.
Stuff like that.
watching with subtitles( of your native language) is very inneficient in terms of time investment in my opinion. Especially if you are a male since we usually can focus only on one thing.
But if those subtitles are in Japanese, then its definitely going to be useful.
There are a few services dedicated to that. Animelon- anime with Japanese subtitles with automatic translation to English. Sadly they have been offline for 2 months already
I can remember my experience of learning English. I played countless RPG games with English voices and Russian subtitles. 0 improvement in 2 years because 99% of the time I was focused on reading subtitles. But as soon as I turned subtitles on English, in 1 year my vocabulary grew from 4k words to 15k and I could maintain pretty much any topic in any conversation with native English speakers.
I agree with @Kazzeon. If you are willing to pause to look things up, and if you are able to split focus, you can still pick up a lot of words or at the very least reinforce words youâve learned elsewhere.
It needs to be a conscious effort. If you just want to watch anime for fun without trying to learn thatâs fine. But you can still learn with English subtitles if you focus on the spoken language first. If you just listen without subtitles you may not recognize many words (as youâre experiencing now). But when you read the English after listening you should sometimes be able to associate the English words back to the Japanese you heard. This helps reinforce the connection between the Japanese and English words, and hopefully over time youâll recognize more Japanese words without having to see the English to make the connection.
After doing close to 250 hours of active listening (watching without subtitles), I watched a few shows with English subtitles and I can tell you I barely hear any words I know. That being said, even with subtitles off I still struggle to hear words, but I do notice a lot more words when subtitles are off.
I recently started watching with Japanese subs, and I would highly suggest doing that over English subtitles. However, when youâre watching with subtitles you arenât using the part of your brain that works with listening. Youâre essentially just reading. Of course, you still have the audio to listen to, but it doesnât develop listening skills as well as watching with no subtitles.
Also, after those 250 hours I do think it helped a lot. Iâm able to learn certain words faster because they âsound rightâ. I also come across new words every so often that I just randomly know right after learning them because Iâve heard them before. But mainly, it helped me become a lot more accustomed to Japanese and how it sounds.
Overall, my suggestion is to not listen with English subtitles if youâre trying to help with your listening skills. However, if you arenât benefitting at all, and youâre falling asleep because everything is just too boring, then Iâd go back to English subtitles. If youâre bored or falling asleep, then youâd be better off with English subs because at least youâd be paying attention then. But, if you can get ahold of Japanese subbed shows then I highly suggest it because I find it a lot more fun and Iâm more enganged.
Itâs ok. I had the same experience around WK lvl8 \ BunPro mid-N5. I had around ~5% comprehension, and decided to stop for a while, as I could not pick new grammar (or it was N2-N1) or any new words (all the kanji in them were unfamiliar). I returned back to watching things (with Jap subtitles) at WK-lvl 20 \ BunPro mid-N3 less than a year later, and watching slice of life \ comedy with Jap subtitles is now fairly easy (80%-90%+ comprehension). Other stuff (with more complicated plots) is at about ~50% comprehension, but still enjoyable. Watching without Jap subs (just switching off eng ones\audio only) is harder, and turned out to be less fun and not that effective for me study-wise, as you canât copy-paste unknown words. At WK lvl 20 you should already know enough kanji, so ÂŒ of the unknown words from subs can be directly added to your dictionary, as you know the kanji for them. I still ignore the words that have unknown kanji in them, unless the kanji is not on WK. So only a year into the studies Iâve started seeing watching anime as a non-frustrating worthwhile time investment.
To give you an example from my experience: around WK lvl8 \ BunPro mid-N5 Iâve tried watching an episode with jap subs. Out of it I got lots of frustration, 3 kana words, 1 N2 super easy grammar point and tried to look up another 3 but failed - they were described in a way totally different from the way they were used in the episode (talk about confusing). 9 months later I rewatched it. Iâve understood 95%, had a fun time, got 11 new words not present on WK, reviewed another 20 that I didnât recognise (from the pool Iâve learned), brushed some grammar, practiced reading, and recognised that out of 3 grammar points that Iâd failed to look up in the past, 1 was a dialect and the other 2 Iâve messed up looking up, because I didnât know how to do that right. Needless to say that watching the same episode 12 months into the studies was much more efficient than 3 months in. So there is definitely a threshold below which watching media is not fun and inefficient (compared to formal language study).
If I had to write a cheat sheet for someone trying to use anime as a viable learning source, I would note that:
a) Knowing grammar makes a HUGE difference. Watching things with something lower than full N4 is, indeed, frustrating.
b) You need kanji to learn words. I would recommend getting enough kanji (at least WK lvl 16) to start actually finding words in the wild that you can remember right away.
c) Jap subs make things much easier. Audio only will give you less progress at first. Eng subs will result in no progress. Some less popular shows have no Jap subs available, but in this case I watch things with no subs.
d) At first you can pick a show that youâve already watched once, this helps a lot.
e) Your video player matters. Itâs better to pick a player that has hotkeys to jump on sub lines, and support sub text access. There are online services for this like Daiweeb (dead since 2020) and Animelon (gets shows removed, probably for copyright reasons), so I prefer a dedicated video player. Jap subtitles usually need to be timed, but this is easily done by hand for the whole series in a minute in any decent player.
f) Using subs, itâs better to focus on learning words, not grammar (IMHO). The words should be reviewed in any way you prefer (at least write them down).
Honestly, Jap was very different for me in terms of jumping into media content. Iâve previously studied English (not my native language, far from it), German and French, so Jap is my 4th foreign language. In English\French you can just jump into watching things with corresponding subs and learn extra vocabulary, so Iâve tried that with Japanese, and found out that Kanji undermine that process a lot, and itâs better to wait a bit.
Like some of the others said, I have had success learning and hearing things with English subs! It takes effort to listen, but with practice you start seeing things that make you think âhey thatâs not what they said!â. Personally I canât do this well with really long sentences because the subtitles are essentially âbackwardsâ, but it can still work. I do this when watching Japanese content with others.
But since I started watching content on my own with Japanese subtitles only (about 3 years ago how time flies!), even as a beginner it got a lot easier to associate what Iâm hearing with words I know â there are a lot of homophones so the kanji in the subtitles often clear things up.
I often hear people saying âif youâre reading youâre not listeningâ, but this isnât necessarily true. As a beginner itâs hard to keep reading Japanese subtitles at full speed over the course of a whole episode or movie, but itâs ok because your ears will take over! And you also learn to read fast 
As long as youâre ok not understanding everything, youâre studying vocab and grammar on the side, and youâre making a conscious effort to listen, Iâm sure youâll get something out of your immersion anyway (no subs, JP subs, or EN subs). Over a whole season youâll get used to how characters speak, and learn lots of words they often use (either by context or by looking them up).
I started by choosing âthrowawayâ series Iâd never seen and thought I didnât care about, but ended up enjoying them more than things Iâd watched in English, and JP-only became a habit!
There are a lot of detailed suggestions and explanations on here, but Iâm a simple man of simple means.
My suggestion is to watch an episode with subs first. Then right after (or like within a day) re-watch the same episode with no subs or Japanese subs.
This way your able to already know all of the content and its fresh and now your listening more carefully with out the work of not knowing what exactly is being said. I know you said your re-watching the anime but I do suggest having a fresh memory of everything that is said just to squeeze out more detail in your listening.
How is your grammar foundation?
This will be a huge part of being able to decipher anime as you watch
Cure dolly method is actually really good, but she recommends watching her first 20 grammar videos first. I tried to do the anime method last year and it was a terrible experience. After I finished Genki I I tried again and I can pick up a lot now.
Repeating the same episode over and over is really useful
I use JP subs and watch, then I listen to the audio only when Iâm walking or cleaning/cooking etc over and over until its really familiar
Iâm using subs2srs now to make flashcards for each episode which also helps to internalize the new vocab
Using the right method and having the foundations down will really help you make big strides
Good luck!
Iâm glad it works out for you. I just canât. The biggest issue for me is the sentence structure. In many cases the English subs will reference parts that havenât been said until the second half of the sentence and vice versa.
I think of these as two different types of watching:
- Comprehension based, which is what you guys are taking about.
- Immersion based, which is watching with no subs or Japanese subs and just picking up what you can without stopping.
The former will improve your comprehension but the latter will improve your comprehension at native speed. I think you need both.
I also think a crucial component is just watching for fun with English subs. If the reason you got into this was for anime, then donât forget that part.
Iâll usually have three series going:
- Listen and comprehend. English subs, rewind, look up stuff. I usually do this with series that I love and can rewatch multiple times. Iâm currently doing this with the first adaptation of Hunter x Hunter.
- Listen with no subs or Japanese subs. Iâm currently doing this with Terrace House. For me, itâs interesting enough to watch without subs and you get to hear the way different people talk in various contexts.
- Just for fun. I just finished Season 1 of èĄçæŠç· and starting on the 2nd. Great series.
Itâs never a bad idea to use native material, no matter how much you can currently understand. Exposure helps.
But set yourself up for realistic expectations and worthwhile results.
- What are you hoping to get out of the experience?
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Just listening exposure? Maybe thereâs nothing wrong with keeping subtitles in your language turned on and just trying to avoid glancing at them while continuing with other study.
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Picking up new phrases? Then maybe you want to have Japanese closed captions turned on, so you can identify new phrases and vocabulary more easily.
-
Specifically drilling listening comprehension? Then you should be avoiding either subtitles or captions, but also focusing on that element specifically, and choosing material that will both accommodate the kinds of phrases you want and your current level.
And then, from there, you can determine 2) What kind of, and level of, material will work best for your goals.
It sounds like youâre already getting something out of the experience simply in terms of exposure, but also not at the level where it could replace formal learning fully. So ⊠idk, keep doing both! Watch the shows, take notes (this is so important; you can make basically any kind of study work if youâre actively engaged with it), jot down and look up things youâre curious about, but also continue on with other forms of dedicated study to unlock more of the shows for you, and in turn to be reinforced by them.
I guess, to get right to your specific final question:
I would say thatâs probably a âwaste of time,â if youâre not paring it with any other grammar or vocab learning. But absolutely not a waste of time if you couple it with the elementary Japanese course of your choice to help focus your goals.
Learning Japanese with anime is most useful for introductory and immersion study. What I mean by that is that youâll get the most of anime as a study tool if you use it as a first introduction to Japanese culture and language (absolute beginner) or as an active listening tool once you have a good grasp of basic grammar (advanced beginner / early intermediate).
I watched all of Naruto before beginning to study Japanese, and though I didnât know it at the time, it was incredibly helpful in introducing the languageâs pronunciation, general sentence structure, formal conversational flow, basic honorifics, and more. While Naruto is definitely not the best show to use as an introductory tool (too many fantasy words and sentence enders for example), the seriesâ length (lots of repetition) and surprisingly decent accuracy of normal casual conversation made easy for me to recognize the sounds and and structure of beginnerâs Japanese.
That being said, I wouldnât recommend anime as a way to learn basic grammar. Broad sentence structure sure (topic-object-verb, verbs always have same root and tense depends on the suffix), but the difference between 㯠and ă? No. You should learn this from a grammar textbook for several reasons. A) Anime can be good as a supplemental immersion tool, but it would be hard to learn the nuances of grammar without a textbook or actually living in Japan. And more importantly and specific to anime, B) anime is often a poor representation of real Japanese speech patterns. Yes, some shows are better than others, and people above have recommended good ones above. But you are going to learn super casual (at best) or rude (at worst) Japanese if you try to speak like characters in anime. Once you understand basic grammar, youâll know enough to grasp what is usable from anime.
- Watch the show with English subtitles first to understand major plot points
- Watch / listen without subtitles and actively try to understand what is going on
- Watch with Japanese subtitles to correct misconceptions and solidify what you learned
If you learn anything as a beginner, learn general sentence / speech patterns but also interjections and expressions. I lived in Japan briefly after only a few months of study, and I knew hiragana and katakana, level 5 WK vocab, and a few chapters of TextFugu (RIP) grammar. These were great when by myself in public for shopping, asking for directions, ordering food, etc. But let me tell you, it is amazing what I got away in conversations with friends by just knowing expressions and interjections from Naruto. It was more about the feel or air of the conversation, but throwing in a few ăŻă and ăăă made the conversation flow more smoothly (and made people transition into more casual language which I could actually sort of grasp lol). I learned different ways and contexts for saying hello and goodbye (use ăă€ăă when leaving work) and ways to express emotion (use ăăš to hesitate and ăŸă?! for disbelief). These little things express a cultural understanding more so than one of the language, but they went a long way in helping native speakers feel more comfortable talking with me.
TL;DR Set up realistic expectations and goals. Aim for either learning the basics of overall sentence structure or full listening immersion, but try to avoid something inbetween. You can slowly pick up vocabulary and grammar thatâs interesting to you from anime, but use WK and textbooks to learn the essential things.
Thatâs the way it is for me as well⊠indeed my brain tries to simultaneously comprehend the spoken Japanese and written English and just fails at both because nothing happens in the same order!
I would recommend one of two methods personally:
- Find something you can watch and enjoy even with whatever comprehension level you have. (I like starting with Youtube videos even before I start learning the language), then look up words that occur enough to grab your attention. Another option is to watch stuff youâve already seen recently enough to know the gist of.
- Use a tool like voracious video player and pause whenever you encounter something that seems +1 to you (i.e. you understand almost everything, except for one word). Then make that into an anki card and practice it that way.
As for grammar, my approach is to study it separately if and when it becomes the biggest obstacle to my comprehension.
For me (and my personality), itâs really difficult to enjoy something without comprehending it. No anime exists that I can enjoy without comprehending the dialogue, no matter how beautiful the animation or soundtrack is. Even with anime I tried rewatching without subtitles, I never managed to finish the whole thing. I always get too annoyed after a few episodes and dropped the show.
So at the very least, this doesnât work for me with anime. I suppose that would be fine if I could find another type of audio/visual entertainment to try this with, but I donât know where to look. There are very few topics that interest me.
It seems like this topic is already pretty fleshed out, but I thought Iâd add my own thoughts since this hits pretty close to home.
I agree with others on these general points:
- No Subs is useful for immersion study and just getting your brain to recognize speech patterns in general
- The less Japanese you know, the less watching raw is useful
- If you put on subs, your brain will take the path of least resistance and ignore the speech most of the time
To add to these points:
Spanish Case Study
- I donât have the source, but I read once a study was done on Spanish speaking immigrants and language learning through TV. It turned out that Spanish subs didnât improve English at all, whereas no subs improved slightly.
- What improved significantly was English Subs + English Dub
This is to say that having both foreign audio and foreign subs is actually much more useful than audio alone. I would like to add that Japanese is different because if you canât read kanji, its much harder to push through text you physically or mentally cannot produce an associated sound with.
It will help though if you know the word, but not the kanji. If you see the kanji and hear the word, it helps form a connection in your brain better.
Process of elimination & Easy Lookup
- I found that after a certain point I was able to benefit from English subs only after I could understand everything except for an occasional noun or verb here and there.
- If you understand an entire sentence except one word, it is very easy to focus on the one word you donât know, and to use the subs as a dictionary.
- Iâve found that quick lookup times is essential for learning new vocabulary, and I would prefer this method of learning (listening) over reading and fumbling with a kanji dictionary every 15 seconds.
Re-immersion & De-rust
- I lived and worked in Japan for a year, but after I came home I took a break from studying out of pure exhaustion. When i came back to study I was actually pretty rusty and almost embarrassed at how much I remembered.
- After binging a few shows over a couple weekends, I was already subconsciously close to where I was before.
- Using TV as a de-rust tool is something I can highly recommend to get your brain working and thinking in another language again.
- Watching passively will make it comes back quick, but doesnât necessarily improve your skill unless you actively watch.
Helpful study method (intermediate-advanced only)
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Watch shows that use real Japanese
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Do a short exercise of self-conversation about what you watched
- talk to yourself in Japanese about what you watched and confirm what happened
- Do you agree with the characterâs decision?
- Who do you side with from the argument you just watched?
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Watch with JP subs, then re-watch segments you didnât understand with EN subs
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Listen and Sing in Japanese
- this isnât TV and maybe not related, but I find this more helpful than listening to the TV since its repetitive (and you donât really re-watch TV shows that much), its fun, and its easy to remember lyrics you donât understand and its fun finally realizing what youâve been singing about months later by chance.