For my first manga I read through, sometimes I thought I was seeing some grammar for the first time in my life. Then I did a web search for it, and half the results came up with purple links, meaning I had visited them before. I didn’t remember it at all!
But for the common grammar that comes up often, I found a lot of it I recognized and understood at least somewhat by the end of the first volume. Some I still didn’t really “get” until a few volumes (and many lookups) later.
I found one! In Volume 1 of しろくまカフェ 
I know other people have already posted examples but I was really excited to coincidentally spot one so soon after it had been discussed so I wanted to share it!
You’ll see a lot of 擬音語 (onomatopoeia words) become an adverb with と, especially. In fact, I think this まんまと comes from まんまん, but that’s pure speculation.
Last one for today
This is a tough one for me, perhaps it’s the hardest sentence I encountered till this moment.
Page 5
しかもオレがやろうとしたことを先に…
I’m lost here… the fact is that it’s hard to understand where words begin and end here because there is a lot of possibilities and not having experience I’m not able to tell from the context
Here’s some of my many possible interpretations.
First of all, しかも means ‘moreover’ and then we have オレが. Nothing difficult till here, but…
やろう → is this the volitional of やる or the expression ‘Seems/ I guess’ ? (There are two other possibilities I’m going to exclude)
とした → I’m not sure wether it’s と (quoting やろう) + する (した) ; or the verb とす or the verb とする. ことを先に I know what both こと and 先 mean but at this point there is total confusion and don’t know how to put pieces together
How do I make order with these kinds of sentences? 
Typing the whole sentence into https://ichi.moe/ should help out with this. It’s a good resource to have bookmarked.
Wow! This website is awesome, I’m checking the sentence right now!!
Now that I think about it, I’ve seen some Cure Dolly videos that address it, it was a very interesting concept. It’s basically possible to quote an onomatopoeia with the と particle to describe something that comes after, if I’m not wrong
First of all, this is a perfectly normal place to get tripped up. Nishikata’s monologues are probably the hardest parts of the series, because it’s where he pontificates the most. I expected this sentence to come up (I did a quick re-read of the chapter yesterday evening to prime myself for being able to answer questions without having to open my tablet) because it is one of the more complex sentences grammatically.
To break it down:
しかも = moreover
オレが = I with the が subject marker
やろう = volitional of やる, as you suspected
とした = a grammar point, when combined with the volitional form of a verb, that means to attempt to do～, in past tense
ことを = thing, object marker
先に = before (something or someone else)
I’m betting the part that is tripping you up the most though is that you have all of those verbs preceding a noun, which feels totally backwards from how Japanese is supposed to be. Often, we are taught that verbs always come at the end of the sentence in Japanese… which is true, for the main action of the sentence (if there is one). But the plain form of verbs can also precede nouns and modify them.
A simple example:
“The child is over there.”
would be:
子供がそこにいる。
“The child, who is playing, is over there.”
would be:
遊んでいる子供がそこにいる
In this case, the verb 遊んでいる is modifying the noun 子供.
Back to our sentence:
しかもオレがやろうとした is modifying こと turning it into:
“Moreover, the thing I was trying to do.”
When you combine it with the 先に (this sentence is technically incomplete, by the way, which also doesn’t help much), you get:
“Moreover, the thing I was trying to do, (was done) before me.”
This is him reflecting on the fact that Takagi-san beat him to the punch. He was trying to make a jack-in-the-box to startle her, but she got him with it first. The part in parentheses is the part that was left out. This is something else that Japanese does a lot. If, from a native standpoint, it is obvious what will follow from context, sentences will get left unfinished quite regularly, leaving us poor learners scrounging for what was meant.
This is definitely one of the harder aspects of Japanese to get used to.
If English did this…
Ok, first of all, thank you a lot for the help! 
I tried to analyze the sentence on the website for ten minutes but couldn’t link everything together as you did.
The good new is that after reading your explanation it finally makes a lot of sense! With such a clear description is difficult not to understand 
actually what I was tripping into, wasn’t the fact that the verbs were modifying a nouns. It would’ve been like this if it wasn’t for the savior, Cure Dolly, that explained thoroughly in her videos. The thing tripping me was the lack of the verb that linked the object こと (with all their modifiers) to the 先に part.
So, let me try to write about it and see if I understood.
We have the first half of the sentence that is modifying the noun こと which is the object of another sentence (the one I wasn’t seeing). The second part of it is 先に , that means ‘before’ or ‘earlier than’.
So we have a ‘thing’ that Nishikata ‘やろうとした’ - attempted at doing - and then we have 先に, earlier than (him). The implicit part is what links everything together, which is the so called zero-が (Takagi-san) and the verb she performs, that is : doing that same thing he was trying to do, earlier than him (by the way, what purpose is solving here the に particle?)
Please, tell me this is correct 
Sounds like you’ve got it, yep! The に is an adverb, in this case. If you want the -ly added to make the correlation more clear, you could word it as “previously”. Though…actually, I’m silly and your phrasing of earlier already has the ly, just modified. 
after all these volumes … looks like 西方くん pontification is getting to you finally 
It actually helped, I wrote it that way unconsciously without thinking about it and now it’s cleared 
Another sentence is done. I don’t know how but at this slow rhythm I’m also being able to enjoy the story and the pictures actually design is so good, I think that 高木さん is adorable!
You guys are all at the 17th volume? Or have started recently?
6th volume…
The 6th volume, as @shuly says. We have been keeping with the pretty casual 1 chapter a week pace since all of us have lots of other things we are doing! At one point, I considered polling to see if people wanted a faster pace so that maybe we wouldn’t be spending as much time on the series, but I’m personally enjoying the leisurely pace and having something each week to look forward to that will be chill and sweet. 
it’s honestly pretty good…it’s an hour a week… works out very well overall… and im sure @mariodesu will also get to about an hour per chapter at some point and then it’s leisurely fun reading… that won’t get in the way of other book clubs and brings a little bit of joy every week
That was my feelings on the matter too, but I did wonder if I should at least offer the pace increase to see if that was what the group wanted… Then decided I’m secretly a dictator and made the executive decision without voting. 
I kid, of course. It just seemed like most people were happy with the pace anyway, and I figured if somebody wanted change, they would say something. 
if you did want to go faster we could but then I wouldn’t recommend double speed because (while we don’t have many follow along) some people might think it’s too fast …and if you try to do something irregular, it’s too easy to forget to post the weekly thread with various dates…
dictatorship is fine… you haven’t been able to stop me from reading ahead from time to time just yet anyway
Yes, indeed it sounds like a great solution👌
I asked if someone was at the end of the series because I don’t really know mangas (as I told you it’s my first read ever in any laguage) and how long does it take for an advanced to go thru one. I hope I can catch you guys with the rhythm soon 
The one chapter per week seems just right
Here is my attempt at analyzing the sequent line from yesterday’s box, I think I did pretty good this time even tho it was significantly easier that the last one, but I’m beginning to recognize grammar forms of the previous pages
そもそも高木さんがオレに助けを求めるなんておかしいなんだ。
そもそも → afterall
高木さんが → Takagi-san (subject)
オレに → to me (target)
助けを → help (object)
求める → ask for (verb)
なんて → not sure, I’d like to know the structure and etymology of this. Apparently is an expression that strengthen the feeling of what comes before, in this case it strengthens a negative surprise feeling
おかしい → unusual, suspicious (adjective) by the way, how does this adjective connect to the rest of the phrase?
なんだ → なのだ nominalizing (the whole sentence or just the adjective as to say ‘it’s a strange thing’?) I guess
So the whole sentence gets translated this way:
“Afterall… Takagi-san asking me help is a suspicious thing”
Looking forward to corrections
・ Volume 6 Discussion Thread - Japanese Language / Reading - WaniKani Community