I would say there are multiple levels of Japanese difficulty.
Level One - Reading manga. You have all the time in the world and you can look stuff up, and it ties nicely in to what you learn on WK.
Level Two - Japanese subtitles. Ideally use a plugin like language reactor. This is basically like reading manga but at a higher speed. You’ll be pausing a lot.
Level Three - No subtitles. This is where is gets really difficult. The speed is relentless and you will constantly hear words you don’t know. WK only scratches the surface of the vast, vast Japanese vocabulary.
Level Four - Speaking. Exhilarating but you really are in the deep end now. Speaking takes no prisoners, as the people you speak to, speak back at you.
Personally I’m around level 2.5. Some anime I can watch raw, but a lot I find I miss so much it’s pointless. Level four I have tried a few times and lived to tell the tale, just.
As someone who has been there, done that, I think this advice is foolish.
In my first year and a half or so of learning Japanese, I watched a lot of anime without subtitles in order to try to learn by immersion, etc. However, I eventually decided that that was foolish and started watching anime with English subtitles instead.
Now I’ve been studying Japanese for 4.5 years, I’ve completed Wanikani twice, I passed the JLPT N2 last year, and I still watch anime with English subtitles. If you’re watching for entertainment, there is no shame in watching anime with English subtitles. Even if you’re at a high level, there will always be a lot you miss without subtitles.
Additionally, with English subtitles on, you can often quickly read the subtitles to understand what’s being said and then pay attention to the Japanese dialog for the same line, and knowing what they’re going to say already can help recognize it.
Thank you ! Yes this and several other commenters have made me realize that just hearing Japanese isn’t going to teach me to understand.
So I will turn back on the English subtitles to still enjoy the media that brought me here in the first place! I figure I’ll know when the time is right to be comfortable enough to switch over to Japanese subtitles and then to none at all once I am ready.
I think this already got recommended in this thread, but I’ll link it for good measure:
This is a great tool! You can even have both English and Japanese subtitles on at the same time. I’ve found that it helps a lot with gauging how “ready” I am to watch a show entirely with Japanese subtitles. I still don’t watch enough anime or dramas to really use them for study material, but as my comprehension speed and listening ability keep improving through other practice, learning through anime/dramas becomes more in reach.
So you weren’t watching anime to study and just using it for pure entertainment?
If that’s the case then yeah you don’t need anyone’s permission to watch with English subtitles. This is a forum about studying Japanese, so I think a lot of people interpreted your question as you wanting to use anime to study Japanese. If that’s not the case then do whatever you want honestly.
I’d say EN sub can be brought back later on as well. I wouldn’t care much about hard subs.
At a lower listening comprehension (e.g. N4), listening with EN sub may help with vocabularies and phrases, but probably don’t bring you up to N3 or something. And people can get stuck in N5 or N4 like forever.
JP sub has pros and cons IMO, so it sometimes makes EN sub better for real listening. Otherwise just avoid subs. (And you won’t get subs with some listening materials, anyway.)
I am learning Japanese primarily because I enjoy a lot of Japanese media such as video games, manga, and also anime. So that is the reason I am here.
So the dilemma of my question, if you were not able to discern, was: how to balance still enjoying anime while also learning from it in an optimal way.
I’ve been actually just looking for advice and I don’t think I was asking anyone for permission about anything. Looking for other people anecdotes and suggestions, which many people have very graciously provided.
I actually find speaking quite variable in difficulty because it’s easy for both parties (or multiple parties) to adapt their ‘difficulty level’ in realtime, especially if both share at least one common language (to a greater or lesser extent).
I think you already got the answer to this question and you just didn’t like it: English subtitles need to go ASAP. ASAP doesn’t mean right now necessarily, and no English subs doesn’t mean you can’t use Japanese or even check the English when you get stuck. But like just having the English subs on the entire time is going to imepde your learning significantly compared to the alternatives.
Why? Because it takes a ton of work off your shoulders. And yeah that’s going to make it easier to enjoy the content. It’s realistically going to be difficult to make the transition whenever you do. You’re always free to watch anime outside of study time with English subs too. But when you start using anime seriously for studying it’s gonna be “optimal” if the English subs come off and you are mentally prepared to be stopping a lot, confused, or needing to skip some stuff you just don’t understand. It’s not going to be easy nor is it going to resemble your experience watching with English subs. It’s work. I wouldn’t expect to have “enjoying the anime” be your main source of enjoyment. You’ll need to extract more excitement from the act of learning, engaging in difficult “puzzles”, and doing something new. The experience of consuming a story is going to be objectively much worse than if you were doing it with your native language subs.
If you want to learn the content while watching/enjoying anime, the English subs probably gotta go. I think if you intend on wanting to make anime a part of your study routine, no English subs. If that isn’t something you are willing to do, find other forms of input with no English subs and keep English subbed anime outside of your study routine until you are ready to incorporate them with no English subs.
It may be just me, but I enjoy anime a lot more when I have no English subs to back up on. It’s like a puzzle, figuring out how the sentence is structured and putting it together with the possible nuances.
SIDE NOTE: I have heard of watching an episode once with no English subs, and then seeing how well you interpreted the episode by turning on English subs. Granted that requires watching the same episode TWICE (which I have no patience for)
Not sure if this is a controversial take, but I would actually watch with en subs first if youre gonna watch twice.
I too have no patience for watching the same episode back to back twice. But there was stuff which I had consumed in the past in English that I reconsumed without English assistance. I’d say it’s a good way to get started.
Not a controversial take at all. I think it would actually make sense for some people. And I would actually completely agree with this take if you come back to the same content after a month or more.
I know that at least for me and a handful of other people I’ve chatted with, it is super hard to not recall the English words from content that was just read/watched. I’m currently rewatching a show in Japanese with no subtitles after watching it with English subs 2-3 months ago. Fortunately, I forgot most of the sentences and just have an idea of what may have been talked about.
Any content I’ve consumed in the past month will instantly be recalled and kinda spoils my second attempt at watching/reading in complete Japanese.
I think its ok to remember the english so long as you still can manage to hold yourself accountable for actually trying to understand the japanese.
Even if you remember the line from the english, the actual learning comes when you look at
俺の蓮華を使って、妹とエッチなことしやがったからやり返しにお前のお父さんに同じことをしてやる。
And ask yourself why that means what it means. It can be a pretty helpful hint to understand how some grammar works since you know the “end result” that you’re trying to get to. To kinda go off on a tangent I feel like its even pretty easy for people to skip over this step when doing things they haven’t seen in english before either. Like they will understand the context, and when they see a japanese sentence they will more or less identify its meaning and move on. But when I ask them to break down the sentence for me, or how they know it means what it means, their answer is more along the lines of “oh because i know these 3 words and it just makes sense that the thing you would say in this situation is xyz if you’re using those keywords”. Completely just ignoring the grammar and focusing on keywords. Like if you don’t know the grammar at all and are stuck then guessing and moving on is an option but I’ve witnessed people whos default mode is to put in the least amount of work possible and just “guess translate” everything. Needless to say those people were making very slow progress.
Yes I would say that my take away from everyone’s advice, is that: Yes it is probably a little too early in my learning career to be spending significant amounts of study time trying to watch raw anime, but I shouldn’t feel bad about watching with English subs for now.
I’ve only been learning Japanese for 5 months now; I should probably still focus on studying with reading and listening from Japanese content that IS more appropriate for my current level like graded readers and shows/programs for children. But also that I shouldn’t worry that watching with English subs on the side is going to delay my progress.
I am not native to English language but I could say I am quite fluent today but since 2005 when I started watching tv shows and movies with Eng subtitles, until today I turn them on.
Let alone in Japanese with only 3 years of wanikani, of course I use subtitles and only watch anime with JP subtitles. You have to use the tools you feel comfortable, not because someone is stating you to do.
Recently I tried EN sub. Turning on EN sub made me more focused on vocabularies rather than grammar or overall sentence meaning. So, rewind and turn off sub, and considering for the next episode if I don’t turn on sub.
Different pros-cons from with JP sub, where turning off sub might result in not hearing some vocabularies.