Also, with how much Japanese people seem to love puns and anthropomorphizing, where’s the manga about mountains turning human and going to school? さん is already in the name!
ふじさん gets uncomfortable when someone calls her ふじちゃん because it erases her mountain heritage.
I would absolutely read this manga.
Great idea!
Same here.
I would ask one of the AI art generators to do it, but it would probably kill 5,000 trees to cover the energy costs.
Mt. Fuji is a real volcano, and not something that would actually wear clothing.
I’m so glad we finally have Google AI Overview to provide important insights like this to us.
… I don’t think I can facepalm loud enough.
Looks like our winner is:
drumroll sfx
@hotdogsuplex , as the nominator are you ok to run this book?
No books are eliminated this time, as no books were up for elimination prior to this poll.
Maid dress campaign was a success 
A little nervous but yes I will run the club. I’ll start working on a home post within the next few days. Since Pokemon will end on June 14, we’re looking at a start date of June 28 right now.
Want to know what to expect from 「夜の名前を呼んで」 as a learner?
Here are some stats.
Disclaimer: These stats are estimates.
Looking at the vocabulary count of manga read by the Beginner Book Club, 「ルックバック」 is a clear anomaly, with only 940 words (and 563 unique words).
Excluding this outlier, our next pick should feel like a breath of fresh air. From 「ひとりぼっちの○○生活」 having 2,661 words (1,046 unique) to 「ポケモン」 at 2,629 (1,165 unique), it’ll be a palpable drop to 1,303 words, with a triple-digit 674 unique words. (Note: I reduced the numbers after removing a character’s name from the vocabulary list.)
If you knew zero words from 「夜の名前を呼んで」, and you started learning words based on the highest frequency, how many words would you need to learn for substantial coverage?
| Words | Coverage |
|---|---|
| 116 | 50% |
| 349 | 75% |
| 479 | 85% |
| 544 | 90% |
| 609 | 95% |
| 673 | 100% |
Subtract the words you already know from that, and 50% should be attainable for anyone who puts in a bit of effort pre-learning words over the next five weeks.
There’s no requirement to prelearn, but if you create Anki cards, I recommend putting furigana on the front of the card when you don’t know the kanji in it. While it’s true that you won’t see furigana in the manga (for most kanji), the goal is to learn new words. Learning something with fewer unknown parts is always easier, and adding furigana helps with that reduction.
Looking for a frequency list? Here you go:
One of the interesting aspects of the Beginner Book Club is that we jump around between reading manga with furigana and manga without. (Or sometimes partial furigana, such as 「耳をすませば」.)
The latest pick is very much in the “no furigana” category. Some words include furigana, but it’s rare enough not to count.
The kanji count for 「夜の名前を呼んで」 is comparable to that of 「ルックバック」, even with an additional 50 pages.
| Volume | Kanji | Unique |
|---|---|---|
| 約束のネバーランド 1 | 3,362 | 727 |
| ひとりぼっちの○○生活(1) | 2,432 | 506 |
| ルックバック | 1,010 | 350 |
| ポケモンスペシャル １ | 1,694 | 505 |
| 夜の名前を呼んで １ | 1,133 | 374 |
If you’re on the WaniKani forums, you’re undoubtedly using WaniKani for learning kanji. (Right?) So how prepared can you expect to be based on your last completed WaniKani level, assuming you’re flawlessly learning every kanji the Crabigator is teaching you (and who wouldn’t be)?
Looking at the total kanji (which is what counts when reading), the minimum “comfortable” zone will be around having completed level 12. This is where you should recognize about 60 to 70% of kanji, depending on your retention.
By reaching level 20, you reach the 80% recognition zone, although likely a bit less depending on actual retention.
If you’re doing well with WaniKani, there’s no reason to jump ahead on learning kanji. But it doesn’t hurt if you do, as WaniKani lets you look up future kanji and their radicals.
Here is a frequency list for this volume’s kanji:
If you pre-learn kanji, focus only on readings for words that appear in the volume. For example, 流 has multiple readings, but only one appears in this volume.
If you plan to pre-learn any kanji or vocabulary, good luck!
If you plan to go in blind and hope for the best, good luck!
Isn’t this assuming that repeat words need to be learned multiple times? I thought with 674 unique words it would be 100% with 674 words learned, or am I misunderstanding something?
Oops, mistake on my part. I’ll go back and fix that. Thanks!
No thank you, your amazing charts tickle my data loving brain
The good news is I’d only made a mistake on the “100%” number. The rest were good.
The “bad news” is that I found a katakana character name in the vocabulary list. Once I removed it, the numbers of words to learn shifted a little higher to reach those percentage targets.
I’ll tentatively try to join. I’ll be a few weeks into the upcoming ABBC by then, so maybe I’ll reconsider, but currently I’m feeling like joining this too
EDIT: 本はBookwalkerで買った
Here we go folks:
Hey everyone, exciting news for any Slam Dunk fans. There is now a digital edition (Bookwalker link)!!
It’s been a popular series despite being paper only until now. If you’d like to join in and read it, there is an informal club with several active members.
Also, we recently suffered from a major emoji poll update disaster (what this means: I had emoji in the polls, and when Discourse updated emojis, our polls broke and I had to delete them). So for a bit of fun, if you’re interested in Slam Dunk (or you voted in those polls before, or you just like polls), head over and click some polls in the home post!
If you’re looking to dip your toes into novel reading with something easier, the Children’s Book Club on Natively is voting for the next pick! Come all ye readers and cast your votes~
The upcoming pick 夜の名前を呼んで is currently 60% coin back on Bookwalker:
ヤマノススメ* currently has a huge sale where people who want to bet that it’s going to get voted for at some point can get the first 5 volumes for free and the rest very cheap. Maybe this is more motivating than maid’s dresses.
*affiliate link
