[Now Voting] Beginner Anime Club // Now Watching: のんのんびより

Welcome to the Beginner Anime Club!

Now Voting

Now Watching: のんのんびより・Non Non Biyori


In this club we choose a Japanese anime together and watch it following a weekly schedule. We help each other with grammar and other questions. At the moment this is the only current ongoing anime club, and is focused on beginner level material but we don’t set a hard limit on difficulty. Users are welcome to watch both with Japanese audio only, or with Japanese subtitles.

If you’re interested, just grab a copy of the upcoming anime or find the streaming service on which it is available (we vote ~6 weeks before finishing the current pick) and join in! You are always welcome to ask new questions in the threads of any of our previous picks as well :slightly_smiling_face:

Previous Picks

Browse on Natively

We always watch just the first season of a series. Sometimes, if a particular pick was enjoyed by many people who want to continue watching it together, that pick will continue to run as a parallel offshoot, watching the subsequent seasons. Seasons are determined by seasons on sites such as Natively or TMDB, and may have originally been split cour seasons. If a one cour season wins the poll, then we will watch both the first two winners, to avoid polling again immediately.

Proposed Anime

Feel free to nominate something you’d like to watch using the template below! Suggestions must be appropriate though; please read the guidelines.

Browse on Natively

Guidelines for Proposing Anime
  1. Nominate something you are ready to watch
    We want to maintain lively discussion throughout the club, so don’t nominate something you yourself will struggle to participate in. You also can’t rely on there being more advanced learners available to help with all questions.

  2. Do not nominate anything clearly NSFW
    We try to maintain a wide appeal, so don’t knowingly nominate anything associated with fanservice or gore.

  3. Do not nominate anything difficult to procure
    Picks must be readily available at online stores or major legal streaming sites. If it’s not available on any major streaming site in the US or Japan (consult JustWatch if you live in a different country), please consider whether it’s still worth nominating and list this clearly as a “con”. Unlike book availability, anime availability varies much more from country to country.

  4. Well-known works are more desirable
    Guidance only: the viewer pool will be much larger for well-known works, and background knowledge of the premise will make it easier for people to understand the content and help each other out.

  5. Anime that fail to score at least 15% on the last three round of voting will get automatically removed.
    This approach ensures that the list remains reasonably small and dynamic.
    You may nominate a removed anime again, but please think about it before hand. Do you think there’s reasonable interest for that nomination?

Proposal Template

Copy this template into a new post when making a nomination.

# Insert Title Here

Natively: [Level ??](Natively Url)

(cover pic here)

## Summary
Insert summary here, taken from wherever - Wikipedia, Amazon, etc. Improve the description if you would like / feel it necessary.

## Availability
Insert purchase links for physical: preferably Amazon JP and CD Japan.
Insert Just Watch link for streaming availability. You may also list which streaming services have it in your locality or major localities like the US or Japan, but please include the JustWatch link so people can find where it is available for them.

## Personal Opinion
Insert why you think this anime would be good to watch, personally and for the anime club.

### Pros and Cons

**Pros**
* Insert pros here.

**Cons**
* Insert cons here.

## Preview

[details=“PV”]

Insert links to PV if available on Youtube or elsewhere

[/details]

[details=“Additional Clips”]

Insert a few more representative clips here, or screenshots with JP subtitles

[/details]

List of Removed Nominations

N/A

Current Proposals

See the linked nomination posts for more information, including sample clips.

The difficulty scores come from Natively, where they are ranked by other language learners.
Last updated: 2024-04-08
4/20, 16 spots available


Where to View Anime

Western Streaming Services - Raw

If you want to view an anime raw, you can just go to your favourite provider of subtitled anime (e.g. Crunchyroll) and turn your local subtitles off

Western Physical Media - Raw

As with Western streaming services, if you have media with Japanese audio (e.g. it’s sold as an English subtitled release), you can just turn your local language subtitles off.

Western Streaming Services - JP Subtitles

For licensing reasons, western streaming services rarely natively provide Japanese language subtitles. However, if you acquire the subtitle file seperately, you can use ASB Player for Chromium browsers on most major streaming services or Jimaku player on Firefox for Crunchyroll. This will allow you to load your own subtitle file. For forum rule reasons, we cannot link you to where to find the standalone subtitle files.

Western Physical Media - JP Subtitles

For licensing reasons, western physical releases rarely natively provide Japanese language subtitles. However, if you acquire the subtitle file seperately, you can play it on your PC and load a external subtitle file with your media player.

See instructions for loading external subtitle files in VLC or MPC.

Importing Japanese Media

Physical retailers:

Note that you need a separate account for each ‘instance’ of Amazon, so you won’t be able to use Amazon JP with e.g. your French Amazon account. Amazon adds an estimated customs charge to your bill which will be refunded if you don’t have to pay customs (or pay less).

CDJapan has economy shipping options which take longer to arrive but cost less.

If you can’t find an online store that will ship to you, you can use a forwarding service like Tenso or White Rabbit Express. If you live in the right place, you may also be able to find the book at a local Japanese book store such as Kinokuniya; just Google your area.



Historic Polls


“Next Anime” Polls
Other Polls


15 Likes

Haikyuu

Natively: Level 24

image

Summary

Haikyu!! is a story about a short athlete (Still taller than me) who wants to jump higher than everyone and reach the pinaccle of the voleyball world.Follow his journey of reaching the peak of his craft with his team.

Availability

Physical:
CD Japan
Streaming:
Crunchyroll and Netflix

Personal Opinion

It is easy enough to understand and is one of the few animes which are popular enough to fit most of the criteria’s.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Easy language
  • Available
  • Easy to find raw and japanese versions.

Cons

  • Voleyball and school related
  • Too long of a series

Preview

PV

Youtube

Additional Clips

6 Likes

ロマンティック・キラ - Romantic Killer

Natively: 24

Romantic Killer

Summary

Living her best single life, romance is the last thing on Anzu’s mind — until a tiny match-making wizard suddenly turns her life into a clichéd romcom. And she’s clearly not ok with this.

Availability

Not available physically.
It’s a Netflix series

Personal Opinion

The heroine is hilarious : she’s an otaku who refuses to have a social and sentimental life to spend all her time gaming. When her life is turned into an otome, she refuses it with all her might, faithful to her values.
I love how the tropes of otome and romantic comedy are turned upside down in this anime. You might think it’s meant to be your typical love story, but it’s not. It was really a nice surprise.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Pretty easy language
  • Funny
  • Surprising

Cons

  • Not available physically or easily outside of Netflix.

Preview

PV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcmnHOJm8-A

Additional Clips

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lc2pHADznM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWIfd6ytBQw

11 Likes

Thank you @araigoshi for opening the club ! \o/

4 Likes

I really wanted to add campfire cooking in another world but i couldnt find japanese subtitles and Hajime no ippo is level 31 in natively.
Haikyuu is not my first choice and it is also too long. :smiling_face_with_tear:
And i would love to watch romantic killer more than haikyuu.

2 Likes

If I can nominate more than one, I’ll recommend Sasaki to Miyano too, which is less funny (but cuter) and more available than Romantic Killer.

3 Likes

This is supposed to say watch right?

2 Likes

Yes, thought I’d replaced all the book references >_<

5 Likes

My gut feeling, based on the interest poll, is we probably won’t fill up on nominations, so I think nominating 2 should be ok.

Stuff may be listed under romaji or partially translated names too (e.g. I found subs for this as “Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi”)

3 Likes

That’s a good point.
I just gave the english title and could’t find it.
I will add it after sometime for nomination.

2 Likes

とんでもスキルで異世界放浪メシ - Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill

Natively: Level 21

Summary

Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill is a story about a guy named Mukuhoda who happened to get the worst superpower “Online grocery”, Or The best? Follow Mukuhoda’s journey through the land’s cooking for people and making everybody happy.

Availability

Not available physically.
Streaming :
Crunchyroll
Netflix
Youtube

Personal Opinion

You might think this is very fanatsy based but fret not, Becuase this is a very wholesome slice of life anime with lots of japanese cooking. It is a very funny and wholesome show to watch

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Slice of life
  • Funny
  • Youtube

Cons

  • Fantasy (Little)
  • Have to set up japanese subtitle (providable)(Very easy to set up)
  • In youtube You can’t remove the english sub (You can make the overlay bigger and opaque to hide the english sub)(Check additional clips)

Preview

PV

Youtube

Additional Clips

Netflix


Youtube



9 Likes

佐々木と宮野 - Sasaki and Miyano

Natively: 24

Summary

It all started like a typical old-school boys’ love plotline—bad-boy senior meets adorably awkward underclassman, one of them falls in love, and so on and so forth. But although Miyano is a self-proclaimed boys’ love expert, he hasn’t quite realized…he’s in one himself. Which means it’s up to Sasaki to make sure their story has a happily ever after…!

Availability

I’m not sure, but it seems the anime dvd is sold in a collector edition of the volume 9 of the manga on CDJapan
Where to watch it : Just Watch link
The japanese subtitles are easy to find.

Personal Opinion

It’s a high school story, so to begin, the language is pretty easy.
But moreover, the story is sweet and cute. I haven’t watched many BL but I was totally hooked on this one when I watched it. Even in shoujo, I haven’t seen a lot of love stories this nice. Also, the voice actors are incredible. They sing the anime ending, by the way.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Pretty easy
  • Very sweet love story
  • The voice actors

Cons

  • I suppose if you don’t like the pitch nor the genre, you won’t like the anime :sweat_smile:

Preview

PV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyy5Hx_rFTE

Additional Clips

6 Likes

@araigoshi this is an excellent idea ^^ thanks for setting it up!

4 Likes

Should probably change this when you have time.
Also I think 20 spots for anime is too much maybe reduce to 8 to 10 as it will take too much time to get the nominations.

We don’t need to fill all 20 spots - in fact for most of the book clubs, it’s only a recent thing that they’re filling all 20 nominations. It’s a limit (mostly because that’s the limit on discourse polls), not a goal. I’m thinking we’ll probably run a poll in a week or two.

1 Like

@araigoshi one thing that wasn’t really talked about in terms of scheduling, you mentioned in the first post that you wanted the voting to begin 6 weeks before finishing the current pick, however, since each pick would be roughly 4 weeks (12 episodes for most shows, 3 episodes a week), then that would mean that 2 would be needed to be picked each time at the very least. Is that how you envisioned it?

1 Like

Yeah, I kind of covered that in the first post in this thread:

If a one cour season wins the poll, then we will watch both the first two winners, to avoid polling again immediately.

Maybe people who don’t usually watch anime aren’t aware of the cour/season distinction, though? There’s plenty of 26 episode season 1s as well (though admittedly less in recent years)

As for 6 weeks, I just copied that timeline from the book clubs in case people wanted physical media. I get that streaming is a thing and physical anime imports are expensive though, so I suspect less people will be doing that than for books, so if turns out there isn’t much interested in waiting for CD Japan economy international shipping times, then we can look at shortening that.

3 Likes

Maybe we could add the number of episode in first season in the nominating post ?
I thought that maybe a section trigger warning would be nice ^^

2 Likes

My thought was with the guidelines for content selection, it’s probably a rare enough need to not go into the basic template.

Anyway, sorry for going quiet here, I’m pretty busy this weekend. My nomination plan was for Non Non Biyori season 1, but content licensing being what it is, season 1 (And 2) seems unavailable in most of the world right now. I may come up with another nomination during the week, but either way I’ll start the poll next saturday.

7 Likes

Are we adding anime movies?

1 Like