Some easy to follow anime (listening wise)?

Japanese Language Listening
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Hi everyone,
as someone asked about anime recommendations recently I decided to ask the same, but more specifically aimed at easy to listen anime :hugs:.
I’m trying to really listen as much as possible these comming months, so I’m mostly watching shows in japanese, but the whole immersion it’s been “tricky”. For once I’ve been trying to find some show that looks amusing, but then how much I get to understand after a few episodes comes into play to finally how much I end up enjoying the show actually. So far my experience has been:

うさぎドロップ : one of my favorite slice of life. Easy to follow, nicely paced, and a very clear in terms of language spoken. As heart warming plot as it gets… :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

いぬやしき : currently watching. great action anime. Cool plot. Super habilities granted to both a high schooler and a grand father… action, learning how great newly aquired powers can be, the consequences, and how much different of an approach can turn to be with the two characters.
Greatly paced, the language it’s not difficult to follow and the whole show it’s greatly aided with the action happening.

名探偵コナン: a classic!!! Really a great show to immerse… it’s sort of infinite (still on going). Every episode is self explanatory. Clear language most of the time… specially when solving the cases, it tends to use simple enough language.

銀の匙: just started it. 3 episodes so far . Slice of life about farming… I actually love the plot. Farming school inaka life and all… but still it’s pretty thought to get some of the explanations… so far every chapter is something new… they explain some aspect of farming… problem is been a slice of life, some time the explanations are not necessarily aided with heavy imagery that can help, specially been somewhat specific language… will watch more episodes and update some days from now.

坂道のアポロン: I love this show. Highschool life in Kyūshū in the 60’s, bebop movement emerging and an odd pair of friends digging the movement… whats not to like.:man_shrugging: … the plot was for me supper engaging, the language for the most part it’s ok… but there’s Kyushu ben happening… like a lot… nothing terrible, but a couple of searches of some “odd” ending words might help a lot to get even some basic sentences.

美味しんぼ: Ok, these is one of the longest anime shows about food. And it’s great if you’re a foodie (it’s what brought me to the show :relaxed: ) … A prodigy food reporter with an impecable sense of taste and a vast knowledge of japanese cuisine, is given the mission to elaborate the deffinitive menu for the newspaper anniversary.
So basically every chapter is a about a new ingredient, preparation, dish, etc. Very datailed in terms of content… wich actually doesn’t help with understading, as unlike many shows your vocab doesn’t necessarily grows so much that you’re understading so much more after, lets say, 10 episodes, there’s constantly new vocab (very specific as well). So I your a foodie that can’t stand 食戟のソーマ (:zipper_mouth_face: ), this might be a great replacement, but with the heavy lifting addition of the vocab required… oh … and I was forgetting… there’s not a lackage of Keigo as well :sweat_smile: … so there’s that too. I’ve watched some 20 episodes so far… but now it’s somewhat on the backburner…

Two more that I was forgetting and I might throw them together:
ドラゴンボール and ハンター×ハンター. Both are quite long shows (and you really get more and more as you watch more episodes). I’ve binged these shows more than once actually… The main characters are somewhat plain and very straightforward in temr of vocab. And even if there’s some made up vocab (special techniques and that sort of things), specially when the kanji it’s known, it’s really approachable and sort of make sense.

Specially people that have been working on their listening too. What show have resulted in a good experience? which have fallen in the realm of “maybe someday”? :sweat_smile: (Tbh Oishinbo belongs there in my case).

I would love to find out some gems :star_struck:

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It’s a movie, but you may not have seen it since while Ghibli, it’s Isao Takahara: My Neighbors the Yamada’s

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I would be remiss not to recommend Shirokuma café! :slight_smile:

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I just finished Polar Bear’s Cafe and liked that a lot; the plots are cute, the characters speak pretty slowly and use standard language for the most part, and it’s a slice of life anime so most of the language they use is good for everyday situations. I’d definitely recommend it to people who want an easy first anime to dive into for listening practice.

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aaahhhh, ^^^ they beat me to it!

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I’m also currently rewatching 宇宙兄弟 in only Japanese (I’ve watched it en-subbed once before) and I think it’s pretty manageable.

If you can stomach some bouts of astronaut jargon the characters generally speak pretty clearly.

It’s also a great show in its own right with likeable characters (especially leading man Mutta) and a good mix of humor and drama.

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One more rewatch, one more rewatch! It would be strange to say it’s my “favorite” anime since it is the only anime that I managed to watch for more than two episodes so there really is no competition. Luckily I’m still at a beginner/lower intermediate level and there is still enough for me to learn there.
I also have subs2srs decks for it and it fortunately seems I will just never grow tired of it.

(Sorry for spamming this thread although I obviously have nothing new to contribute. Did someone already recommend Shirokuma Café? It’s pretty good)

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Thanks.
@kansaibutt: I’ll definitely aim at some Gibli movies… I conciously have avoided movies, mostly because lenght… and initially been “lost in translation” for 2 hours sounded like nothing I would wanna sign up … but now depending on which ones it doesn’t look so intimidating… specially the ones I’ve wached before.

@crihak @hardlycore thanks for the Shirokuma Cafe remainder, I forgot about that show, and I actually watched some episodes quite some time ago… I might binge the whole show now, seems quite at a right level.

Great you mention this one. It was on the list of best slice of life anime to watch (alongside with Gin No Saji and Nana). If the astronaut jargon it’s not specially terrible to deal with, I might dig into that… I see there’s the movie as well in Netflix, though maybe I just stick to the anime, as anime to live action it’s mostly a lost cause in my experience (I watched Usagi No Drop, and was like… meh :roll_eyes: …)

@irrelephant :joy::joy: … I guess Shirokuma it’s a great hit!!. Will definitely watch it. I might say that Usagi No Drop was my first anime to watch raw (after several months of reviewing subs2srs cards, listening ripped audio and previously watching it with subs some time ago) … I think it’s a nice first anime to watch as well. I believe it was rated as easy in Jalup too.

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I still have doubts if I will ever find anything that I love even 20% as much as Shirokuma Cafe but I made a note to give うさぎドロップ a try after reading your first post in this thread.

Let me know if you ever need my Shirokuma Cafe subs2srs deck.
I should probably finally get around to uploading it to that one guy who shares subs2srs decks on blogspot…

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The wakarukana website though not very complete yet, provides an orientation to where to start too. Actually now reviewing it I see now Oishinbo in the "very hard category… I should have known better …:sweat_smile:

I would suggest you to just “make the jump” … volume makes a huge difference. I was trying to be very throughout (subs2srs, audio rip passive listening, watching with jsubs and the eng subs) in terms of going through a show… now I feel just finding stuff to watch constantly its a better approach. :wink:

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These sound like great recommendations for me, too! I’m currently watching Inuyasha on Netflix. So far, the first 5 episodes have been fine, aided by having read the manga once upon a time in my native language. :slight_smile: obviously don’t know how it’ll shape up in future.

(tangent, not anime related) Also looked into the first episodes of a couple school dramas, those were unexpectedly easier on me than terrace house, probably because of the structured plot?
(/OK done, sorry)

Where is everyone watching their anime of choice?

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The anime I watch thats non-subbed or with japanese subtitles is over at animelon.com

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If Netflix fits the bill, I prefer it. There’s the subtitles there that I migh use for sentence mining using this add on, with which I can do a quick yomichan search too.:star_struck:

If not Netflix, Amazon Prime has many animes as well.
If I can’t find it in the above mentioned then shadier resources come into play :zipper_mouth_face: …

As for JDramas, my success stories are too few, some foodie shows, detective shows here and there, but overall the quality it’s way bellow what HBO and other big producers have spoiled us over the last decades… Netflix it’s making a change here, japanese originals are evening the odds slightly (僕だけがいない街 :open_mouth: )…
An alternative approach for this has been dubbed shows. Breaking Bad does a good job in japanese :sweat_smile: … strangely enough…
I watch most of my dubbed shows and movies in Netflix (Japan) though.

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Oooooh this is perfect, thank you for posting! I can’t believe I wasn’t aware of this before.
I just went back to Netflix only for Japanese and this will be so helpful.

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If you are not interested in moe/comedy/slice of life, you can probably skip all of my recommendations.

I have made a habit of listening to one episode of the following three anime in bed every night before I fall asleep – I think they are pretty easy to follow:

Gabriel Dropout (ガヴリールドロップアウト): Angels and demons have to go to a human school as part of their education. The anime follows the school life of 2 angels and 2 demons who all become friends. One of the ongoing jokes is that the 2 angels are not really that “good” and the 2 demons are not “bad” (for example: the angel Gabriel becomes addicted to video games and turns into a shut-in).

K-On! (けいおん！): This one is about some school girls forming a school club to eat cake (and play music in a band).

Non Non Biyori (のんのんびより): This one is about some school girls living in the countryside.

I haven’t tried watching School Live! (がっこうぐらし！) without subtitles yet, but I think this one is also pretty easy. There is a twist at the end of the first episode, so don’t look up the plot and go in blind (or don’t go in at all, if you don’t like moe/slice of life with a bit of action). As you might have guessed, this one is about some school girls. Yeah, I know. The diversity of my recommendations is incredible.


All the mentioned anime are available on Animelon. However, their videos are hosted on Google servers, and Google seems to limit the number of video accesses. It often helps to try again a few days later.
The more legal way is probably to use Crunchyroll, which now allows to turn off subtitles. Or if you want Japanese subtitles, use a web-browser extension like Substital to inject your .srt subtitle file into the video (subtitle files can be found on Kitsunekko).

Zombieland Saga (ゾンビランドサガ) – the manager is too Hououin Kyouma to understand. After two episodes I turned the German subtitles back on – oops.

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Thanks!! I checked those titles… and … there’re school girls as the main character in all of those :disappointed_relieved::disappointed_relieved: … They are like the kryptonite of my immersion :joy::joy:

For now I’ll check モンスター and 宇宙兄弟, as those are actually something I would probably watch wether learning japanese or not… then Shirokuma Cafe… it’s … well… a lazy Panda… whats not to like :man_shrugging:

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If I were to ever visit Japan, I would probably end up being the tourist that talks like a school girl. ｶﾜ(・∀・)ｲｲ!!
Maybe I should rewatch Ore Monogatari!! (俺物語!!) to change my speech patterns to that of a school boy in love. I can’t decide if that is an improvement.

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This was the first anime I watched without subtitles and was like “yeah, I can follow this”
Although I stopped studying Japanee after that and never saw the second season, which is apparently great. Some day…!

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Hi!

As an avid anime watcher, its reallyyyyy hard for me to pick up the dialogues as there’s always too much going on (and i focus too on the animation) or the pace is too fast and i end up not hearing anything. So I’ll recommend some calmer/slow-paced animes and hope it’ll help!

  1. Spice & Wolf
  2. After the Rain
  3. Mahoutsukai no yome

What i do recommend is checking out drama cds or anime radios! I can pickup the dialogues even better! Drama cds tend to talk in a slower pace whereas anime radios use a lot of common vocab which is helpful for daily usage. My fave is the boku no hero academia anime radio (i search for the snippets on YouTube) :grin::grin::grin:

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@Harik0 Thanks!! I’ve added those to my list.
Most likely if the first episodes are easy enough I’ll just binge them :yum: …

I’ve taked the approach of quantity over “quality” (you could say), specially because I’m focusing more on listening for this, so if the vocab or pace isn’t specially difficult I’m in.
Even so, at least one of those is in Netflix (Mahoutsukai no yome), so if there’s some troublesome vocab I might be able to go over it.

@kansaibutt Thanks for mentioning Ghibli also… that was a hit!! Last weekend I watched Nausicaa and Kiki’s… I can believe I didn’t think of watching those before (Kiki’s even has an audiobook available :star_struck: )

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