Amazing! Yes, it would be very useful if you could give me some further recommendations. I fear a lot of the content will be too advanced for me, but ultimately realistic immersion is the way to go and thats how I learnt Argentine Spanish to fluency in the past. As an auditory learner I am obsessed with listening.
The Japanese used in anime (slice of life was my preference) seems to be OK at my level because I recognize a lot of words and expressions, but I definitely agree the characters are artificial and this probably influences the way they speak with each other constantly. I looked up an interview with the boss of Studio Ghibli who criticized the lion’s share of animators for not having a clue how real people interact, because as ultra-otakus they don’t like real people in the real world. Of course, this man enjoys saying controversial stuff but if I look at slice of life animes, which should be relatively close to real life, I started to see a pattern where all the characters are just tropes, one-dimensional cliches, as if the story was invented by algorithms. For instance, every story has an annoying tsundere who feels copy-pasted from the last anime you saw. The production value of many mangas and their animes are just really low. It’s sad that such an amazing drawing and animation culture (in essence, I absolutely love the drawing style/art form) is often so mediocre in many ways. Sure, there are some great animes around, but those too are often sabotaged by lazy tropes and fanservice. Anime is mostly a niche thing for a specific audience, which is sad, because there is so much potential in how the Japanese tell mature stories in comics and animation, unlike the West. It could totally conquer a broader audience if it wasnt stuck in the swamp of churning out so much trash for porn/hentai-addicted otakus and men who like perving on underage girls and even little girls. This is, again, not true for all anime but as a genre it is definitely pervaded.
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