Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337!

I've studied Japanese for 3.5 years but, I'm still a classic anime nerd. ;) Something that I find helps a little bit (and is fun!) is to buy Japanese manga and read them. It helps with reading all the hiragana/katakana at higher speeds, and there are pretty pictures. :) It also helps reading comprehension...if you know some Japanese. You can't use it to teach yourself though. ;P

Definitely. Though, I definitely think that people who are still on the beginner side of things shouldn't try to use anime/manga to learn their Japanese. You have to be advanced enough to filter out all the bad and only take in the good. Thanks for the comment.

love anime but it's not so great for learning the language.I mean, anime is great if you want to practice listening comprehension.
Sometimes you can learn/practice it from watching real japanese TV shows. It's way more practical than learning from some hyped-up cartoon :]
You can hear how everyday people pronounce words, and see their gestures and reactions to certain situations...so I guess you can learn a little about the culture too ^^

I've actually been picking up pronunciations and such from watching Japanese TV shows. Some of the stuff I've been watching is old, but still helpful. (Hey x3, Downtown DX, Music Station, other J-Dramas... (even some episodes with Hard Gay... lol jk) Funny stuff though... so old.

You're SO definitely right. I also have some friends (some of them being fan-girls/-boys) who were saying stuff like
"Oh! I like anime, now I love the language and want to be able to speak it too, since it's a cool language."
"Could you teach Japanese to me(without textbooks and hard learning)?"
Downright NO...
不言実行 (fugenjikkou)=== No words, but deeds

YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT~~

When I first walked into my Japanese 1 class in 8th grade, it was like normal kid, normal kid, greasyantisocialanimefreak kid, normal kid, greasyantisocialanimefreak kid, greasyantisocialanimefreak kid, greasyantisocialanimefreak kid, etc...I was REALLY shocked by how many greasyantisocialanimefreak kid were enrolled in the class....but that might be because I have never had a solid interest in anime (I do indulge, though, in J-dorama and music shows all the time...and maybe the occasional movie, but never anime.)

Half of them dropped out by the time Japanese 2 started, or they continued to be like "I don't use our textbook to study, I just watch Naruto all day...don't you just love my horrid accent?" It might be mean to say it, but I'm really glad that they finally quit. Only people who are actually serious about studying Japanese should take it.

The only person that I can respect that sort of learned Japanese from anime is this guy who was a senior in the Japanese 5 class when I was still a freshman in Japanese 2....he didn't have an 'amercan' accent, but spoke with kind of a deep, rough, ipwnnoobs, anime accent....I would laugh a little when he would speak, but he was actually REALLY REALLY REALLY good at Japanese. I guess that there are some that can move past anime and actually hit the books....

Yo i need ur help koichi!
my friend is takin a insane amount of anime for the past 2 weeks
she says she wants to learn japanese but she thinks anime will help her
i have bought books and will be soon tutor by my japanese teacher
but she has been in her room watching anime for ever! she said her butt is froming with the computer chair,anyway the sad thing is,is that we live in hawaii wheres a lot off japanese ppl I have japanese friends !but she is in her in little world of datte bayo ....
what should i dooo...

I don't blame her for watching anime all day in her room. It's freaking hot out here.

So true, it totally annoys me how some people think that all they have to do is watch anime to know Japanese. I'm also a fan of anime, hell I love that crack. The only way it's ever let me "learn some Japanese" is just catching some words here and there and just listening to differences in formality, otherwise it really doesn't help my studies that much.
But on the bright side, sometimes I'm a step ahead of my class when it comes to vocab words hahaha.

I hardly watch anime at this moment, but you're right about the whole "you can't learn Japanese from anime" thing.

I mean, that just makes a person come off as a lonely, desparate otaku...

I agree with the point made, but I recommend watching anime for a little while before starting to actually learn the language to help you get a little jump start. It helped me out when I started taking Japanese classes in high school.
I also watched Korean dramas before learning Korean and hearing the language before learning about the details helped me out a lot.

haha i agree that anime does not help alot. I have been watching anime for 2 years(for fun and enjoyment) but all i now how to say is baka. I badly want to have a tutor or something but i have no one to sponsor me and i have no money and all i can rely on is my computer. Sighs...any ideas?

this video would have been funnier if it mentioned hentai

i have been studying lots of japanese language but whats the best site to learn it from.

Ok I obviously understand that watching shit shows like Naruto or Bleach is not going to teach you Japanese or help much with it, but what about more mature shows or dramas? I'm sure those shows are quite a bit better.

i thought i would learn with japanese. i have plenty of friends and all that other stuff, but it seems to never stick in the head. i forgot sometimes in an hour. but i hit the books one night kept reading and reading...... and reading!!!!! i speak perfect japanese and sometimes all my teacher names and she doesnt seem to notice :] hahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa but u are exactly right anime is not a good source for learning the japansese language.

call* lol :p

i have to say i was an anime freak... and sad to say i have to stay that way.. it always around me... my family all watch it... I love reading Manga still but anime making me sick... and it might be the fact that when i entered my first Japanese class about 75% wanted to be there and like 95% were there because of anime... after awhile peopel started to fail and wondered why.... because unless you are really passionate in learning you won't learn.. for me.. i have to say.. I'm learnign japanese because... 1 i love the culture 2. I want to help out with subtitile maybe..(not anime) and 3. I really want to live there... V_V gettign off topic.. sorry..
anyway... i watch J-dramas... and when i listen to anime... it totally different...
BTW... Now i'm in my 2nd year in learnign and the most i can do is read hahah.. and intoduce myself.. i hope this site will help me...
PS. i might go to japan at the end of this year.. i hope i can pick up REAL japanese then!!

where you learn japanese? are there some kind of school?

I don´t like animes...rsrs because it I use dorama : )

oh!!!my secrete is J-pop...rsrsrs

I think it is really hard for beginners. But maybe someone with intermediate Japanese can pick up some new expressions.

Haha -- so true. I know a few people who watch anime to 'learn the language,' but they don't really know how to say anything, other than a few random words or phrases. I admit, I watch and love it, but I don't use it to learn the language -- I take classes and study. But I have been able to learn some words from it, though usually I end up learning more about the Japanese culture, by looking up things I notice being done in some anime.

I'm acually learning it through a Japanese teacher and it sounds nothing like Anime! You can make some words out once you've learnt Japanese the real way but this dude is right! Arigato Gozaimasu

true dat :P それら人は可笑しいですね。

yeah.. retarded. but youknow therecould be some ridiculously smart person who probably did especially if they're korean. Well any korean person who lives in Japan for like a month comes back fluent but anyways for me I learned lots of grammar from tae kim (never mentioend him in your posts not that it's neccessary buti'm sure you've heard of his site and blog and whatnot) so I actually know the workings of the language to possibly learn something from watching anime

I take japanese classes, they teach me the proper way to speak, but the best way is to have a japnese friend so they can teach you everyday conversation. There is a BIG DIFFERENCE anime and the casual conversation between the japanese people.

Totally true. However, I think anime should be credited with interesting people in the language in the first place. I just recently started (trying) to learn japanese through online sources (there are no japanese courses at my college) and found that I learned so much more about sentence structure, etc, etc than I did in years of watching anime. For those of you not fortunate to have a japanese friend/class/textbook, it's an acceptable substitute for beginners. And it really wasn't that hard at all because I was already a little familiar with the language through anime. A great jap self-tutorial site is http://www.studyjapanese.org. Of course, you don't have to learn japanese like your going to read literature. I myself am just learning romanji so I can use it in conversation.

Another thing that I found really useful for leaning japanese is song lyrics! You can become pretty familar with vocab through it and it's an excellent resource for examining sentence structure. Good luck in your nihongo endeavors!!

Thank you! Over the short time I've been here, I've met a ton of fresh off the plane gaijin who claim they're learning Japanese from their favorite anime. They look bewildered when people give them dirty looks for whipping out an "ore" to a stranger or their boss. The best case was a guy who affected a really deep voice whenever he tried to speak. "But that's how all the native speakers in my shows sound!" Ugh.

Ehhhh.... Anime isn't a great place to learn Japanese, I am Japanese, I have taught it to many people. I have tried this way on more then one person, the comprehension isn't all that great. Sure they are seeing the characters but are they really understanding it? Many ways have been thought to work but, I don't really recomened this; simply because it is the longest way to learn Japanese. If you start out learning this from a kid this can work but I don't recomened it to people, because it takes TIME away fast.

First of all congratulation for your website, I've just found it.
I agree that It is imposible learning japanese only watching anime. I've been watching it a looooooooot of years and I only learn the simple phrase "watashi wa blabla desu" and some vocabuary but that all you can learn from it... or maybe I could learn japanese with anime but I would had to waiste all my life (or more) u.u So I started studing japanese in a school, and in 6 months I've learnt mooooooore than all the years I've been watching anime. And also, I learn that a lot of things I though I know, were wrong.

Well, that's it XD Sorry for all the mistakes I've done. English is not my language -.-U

Fantastic vid! I speak decent conversational Japanese after living in Japan for 4 years, drowning myself in dramas anime, giggling over late night variety shows, and reading manga...Just a minor thing: I also busted my tail with textbooks, flashcards, etc. ad nauseum for at least 6 hours a day, and practiced my awful Japanese on anyone with a pulse. It drives me nuts when my friend, of the slimy-fish-body variety you mentioned in the vid, thinks he's "almost" as good at Japanese as me because he watches anime nonstop. I've tried to explain to him that he sounds like a ghetto mickey mouse, but he doesn't quite get it. I'm an elementary school teacher, and our school begged me to give a seminar the last week of school because so many kids love anime. Quote: "Just show them anime, they'll pick alot up." -- Principal. The goal is for them to have fun and enjoy the class, so I'm going to teach them some phrases from naruto (their latest obsession) -- mixed in with the REAL way to say it, and some other useful phrases. I'm toying with the idea of showing part of your vid though, because basically every 3rd through 5th grade boy in our school has come into my room sometime this year saying "I learned Japanese from anime!" and saying something like "fuzakennayo" or "nanjakoreya." Its also difficult explaining to a nine year old that he should not address me, his teacher, with "teme" even though Naruto uses it a whole lot. Thanks for the fun!

You mean It isn't handy to be able to say" Fire style:Blazing Fireball Technique!" in conversation?!
All that hard work gone to waste.
I watch anime so I can learn how to say the character's names properly.
As opposed to saying,"HokiJe", "Karkarshii" And Ameedamaaaaaaru"
It's common sense that you can't learn Japanese from anime without sounding like a psychotic magician.

I'm gonna become the pirate king ftw!
I agree you can't use anime as your main source of learning. But definetely you can learn some words or some expression, of course you must take a look whether this anime-learning word and expressions are properly acceptable or not. I started taking Japanese lessons two weeks ago, before then I got some words from Bleach and Naruto, but I wouldn't use them in a real conversation, I used them mostly as 'fun fact' with a friend of mine who also watches anime, never on a serious basis.

Tofugu should make an article about Namasensai from youtube!
From Brazil, Igor.

ps: psychotic magician... =P

YOU ARE SO RIGHT!!!
i am only 12 years old but i speak perfect japanese (now). all the kids at my school were all "i am going to learn japanese!" and what i said "how are you going to do this"
they said "i am going to watch Japanese anime". and then i gave them a look like what the FReak is wrong with you? and i said "go to the store and buy some books and take lessons.

while i like some anime i never thought it possible to learn japanese from it at all.

I would argue that American cartoons have always been pretty good with all English except pronounciation, so I think that point is moot (at least when inversed to our perspective); I wouldn't really mind talking to a foreigner who spoke like Patrick Star, since getting your point across is better than nothing.

I think my two main points would be:

1. I believe you can learn a great deal of Japanese from anime, however any amount of real, cerebral effort X you spend learning Japanese through anime will teach you less Japanese than any effort X spent in traditional study, and thusly is it a waste of time.

2. Personally, I don't even care to know Japanese *except* in the context of anime. In this case, spending any time learning things that *don't* refer to pirate kings seems like a wasted effort (LOL).

So yeah, the idea that there is institutional education for a topic, and you can just learn it by watching television, is pretty silly in any context, but one can also argue that any experience in the universe has some minute learning value somewhere.

YOU'RE TOTALLY RIGHT!!
i have a buch of friends who think that they can learn perfect Japanese just by watching anime..and that's just sooo SILLY!!..personally,i am learning Japanese using books, CDs and a bit of lessons on net..so that( it's not the only reason) i can understand what are the characters speaking about..lol..but never used anime as some kind of Jap dictionnary which i refer to or something..XD

why discourage people? i mean yes, it's a difficult language to learn but not impossible by any means. If someone (specially young people who learn things way faster than adults/late teenagers) thinks "hey i love anime and manga, i should learn japanese so i don't have to wait for people to sub the episodes/volumes for me" i hope they at least try it. I'm aware that an incridibly high percentage will fail dramatically, but between the time they start caring and the time they realize japanese is simply just not for them, they'll have grown wiser. My advise, if you like something don't feel bad about doing everything in your hand to learn about it or improve your experience about it, it will never come and haunt you and you will have a little bit of knowledge which is never bad

Remember that english is our universal language
there are a lot of japanese-learning books out there
if you want to learn japanese then GO AHEAD!

"time to choose; you got to make right one..."
-Melvin

After reading this article I have only one thing to say...


NANI????!!!!!

I wish this could be required viewing before any beginning Japanese class. If I have to hear one more girl refer to herself as "ore" because she just loves Bleach THAT MUCH well... I-I... I just don't know. ;_;

But, yeah, anime tends to emphasize certain speech patterns to an absurd extent. Not something I'd want to be caught doing in front of someone that actually spoke Japanese.

Watashi Wa Nihongoga Wakarimasu. Demo made josu jarimasen. Anata wa eigoga wakarimasu ka?

I learnt all that from Anime, i even learnt to count through anime, i even learnt doke, dare, itsu, doushite, nani, baka, tsuyoi, kuyoi, the basic fundamentals of speech. Ohayoh gozaimas, konbanwa (learnt that from fate stay night), arigatou gozaimas, neku (from darker than black) plus many more.

For People who watch anime, dont let these guys destroy your hope. Listening is the key to learning.

Dattebayo!

Sayonara :)

you say you learned (l-e-a-r-n-e-d, not LEARNT) how to say those in Japanese through watching Anime....and yet, you can't even spell it /: How do we know if you're even able to pronounce it.

Yes, you are able to learn some phrases, but the whole point of the video is not to allow anime to be the sole source for your Japanese instruction if you're someone who actually wants to learn it...

And you pretty much just proved that....

(And no, i'm not trying to start an argument here, this just really bugged me)

No hard feelings! :)

bloody anime geeks. dattebayo this and that. who the fuck says dattebayo in normal japanese conversation? nobody i've never heard it. maybe some otaku but nobody else. its mada jyozu jya arimasen by the way. besides the subs are never literal so you will end up saying things wrong because they are translated wrong. 死ね、オタク！

I used to watch a decent amount of anime back in the day, and for some reason, I had a good memory to memorize lines in Japanese... so learning some phrases weren't hard. But you don't learn the foundation/basics, which is the problem.
I never took a Japanese class (a skipped to level 2 in Korean though), but I can understand Koichi's Japanese youtube videos. [not pure 100%, but like 90%, usually]
What I did to learn was having a best friend who was Japanese, good online grammar guides (Tae Kim), have a good Japanese dictionary, and of course, listening to Koichi. ;)
And all of my Nintendo DS games are Japanese. [I recommend the Pokemon ones for beginner Japanese learners, because there's no Kanji, and it's at childrens reading level]. Also, a lot of the Japanese games come voiced, and w/ tons of Kanji in the reading. So that's one of my ways of getting some Kanji down (listening to the voice-actors & reading along).
So J-video games, and a good dictionary are my thing, though.

Ok i guess my intention is more the other way around - the English subtitles for animes done for our country is terrible. It's like they put the speech through Babel Fish into Mandarin at first then take that and translate into direct English. What comes out is so incomprehensible that it actually spoilt my perception of that anime. So I hope that by learning proper Japanese, I'll be less dependant of the subtitles and enjoy anime as it should be.

You forgot to say: "I will never forgive you" and "Gomu Gomu"

Actually, one cannot learn much Japanese just by watching anime. I'm now self-studying Japanese, and i rely more on Kanji learning from online sites, textbooks, writing(in Japanese of course,and not using Romaji). Anime is the last in my list of study means. If you want to learn more, you'll have to learn the Kanji and writing down sentences in Japanese. I've done that, and now it's easier for me to catch the words said by the characters in Anime.

Thats like saying a baby can't learn English just by talking in front of it for a few years. The brain is capable of this. It just takes a lot more time to learn this way. 5 minutes a day wont work. 30 minutes a day for 10 years will get you somewhere though, given you haven't realized that you have no good reason to learn Japanese by then. Of course you will never learn to read and write by Anime. At least if you watch Anime for 10 years and realize you didn't need to know Japanese, you still had fun. If you spent years memorizing 20,000 characters and then realize you don't need it, it is a bit of a bummer.

damn i hate those anime loving nerds in japanese classes in my university. they're usually shit and they try to communicate everything with kawaii or sugoi and that's about all they managed to pick up.
they flood japanese music videos with anime versions instead of the film clip and they're just annoying and i think they should have a holocaust against them. that's right you fat japanese candy eating virgins. oh and the ability for people to learn naturally through emersion like a child diminishes. anime is a poor representation of japanese language as a whole also and a anti-social way to learn japanese. get some real friends nerds.

Ha, I love anime, and I'm definitely that greasyantisocialanimefreak kid, but I wouldn't ever use it to learn Japanese. lmao. people do that? o_o
I mean, yeah, I'll pick a word now and then and learn this means that, but I wouldn't try and grasp the entire language from a series. x_o

Okay, so watching anime by itself with subtitles all day will get you no where. No one's debating that. And *certainly* no one is debating the "5 minutes a day" part. But watching ridiculously huge amounts of anime without subtitles for months on end?

Yes, I can say it does work. I even ripped the sound off of my favorite anime and carried it with me on my ipod and listened to it in my free time. IT DOES WORK. I am able to parse out words in almost any Japanese that I hear. Before I started studying on the side, I had already gained an intuitive understanding of many different structures, phrases, and words.

I'm not saying watching Anime should be your only method of learning. But it's a powerful, powerful tool, no matter what the fool in this video says. Because of all that listening and watching, It's easier for me to learn and remember different phrases and structures because I've heard them loads of times before.

Though I would recommend being smart about which anime you pick; Naruto (eww) and Bleach (yay) will both probably get you no where. Look for useful dialogue. I must admit, I find J-Dramas very useful. As Khatzumoto of AllJapaneseAllTheTime fame says, "10 % of it is special, perhaps unuseful, specialized vocabulary. But the 90% is plain vanilla, every day Japanese."

Or you could take Japanese lessons...

it always bugged me a bit when I heard random KUHWAII DESOO from some person in anime club. :T It makes me feel a bit embarrassed to sit around with my friends in anime club at school. Honestly, I'm not interested in anime at all but I think it makes a pretty good supplement for just listening to patterns and such.

However I'm a sucker for otome games ( shoot me if you want :P ) and I find that reading along with the voice actor really helps me distinguish words better, no matter howwwww weird they may talk, haha. C: I think that watching japanese cartoons, playing japanese games, and watching j-dramas is a nice break and supplement from studying hard from the textbooks.

I am a little iffy about anime though because I always sortakinda associate it with some of the strange anime club kids at my school that run around screaming random japanese phrases.

I do like anime... but there's nothing like going to an Anime Convention to realize I don't like them THAT much (likes Miyazaki, the Final Fantasy games, vintage gaming, several anime series including Deathnote but NOT naruto/bleach/copious amounts of hentai.) When I talk to Japanese folks (Live-8 really is one of the best things ever) I get nervous saying I like anime because I don't want to be immediately marked as an otaku ('cause I ain't!) but at the same time, it CAN be a decent conversation starting point. On the other hand, several Kurosawa films are public domain now and can be found at archive.org and/or youtube/netflicks etc, so there's no excuse not to watch REAL japanese cinema. Mmm...Kurosawa is so good.... and make sure to check out "Tokyo Story" too, if you're into classic japanese cinema!
On the other hand, judging by much of the japanese tv/news I've seen, is the bizarre-ness of japanese tv REALLY so different than anime...? Sometimes anime seems even LESS bizarre..

There is nothing wrong with learning Japanese from anime even if you're just a beginner, and especially if your reason for learning Japanese is to understand new anime that you haven't watched yet. Let's face it, English used in American cartoons is the same English used in the store when buying food and the same English used while talking to friends. American kids learn English while watching cartoons over and over again. They are exposed to their parents and the rest of the society, but they do spend a large portion of their time just watching cartoons. If you learned English just by watching cartoons, you would surely sound funny, but at least you would be understood, and able to understand, which is the main purpose of the language anyway. Same goes for any other language. Once Japanese found in anime is mastered, it is a lot easier to move to listening to news or talking to people. Grammar is the same. 90% of vocabulary is the same too.

Advice: if anime is what you are into and it makes you get exposed to more Japanese, watch it! Nothing wrong with it. Once you are ready and interested, you will move on to watching movies/reading books/articles about politics, ethical issues, or medicine. If you are happy with Japanese you learned from anime and think that's enough for you, stop there and enjoy your knowledge.

Yeah, In my japanese class there were a lot of this idiots that thought that watching anime was going to help them to understand the language. For good luck they didn't stay that much just for 3 months, later most of them quited. Now in level 4 of japanese (8 months) we're just 4 students at the begining we were 45 so 41 were there just like "I want to learn now in five minutes so I can understand my favorite anime" But our teacher always said the same as koichi so they got disapointed hahahahaha.

In my 8 months of studies I've used about 10 different books (kanji, grammar, vocabulary, exercises) and I use a lot of internet sites (iKnow (smart), shared talk, lang-8) and I haven't mastered japanese yet and I think that it's still a long way but I love so much learning japanese.

i think it's entirely possible to learn a lot of Japanese from watching anime, but it takes time. i developed my own system for it. try it out if you want: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/181288... i agree though that simply watching won't accomplish much other than teaching the occasional random vocabulary.

no you cant you idot you suck [no offence]

anime rules but koishi is right you cannot learn japenese from it

At first I thought 'yay, I'll learn Japanese by watching anime!' But not too long after, I realised that anime couldn't get me much further than 'konnichiwa', 'ohaiyou', 'baka' and 'moshi moshi'. So I started to take real lessons (well, real, at least they teach you something :P MyJapaneseCoach for NDS taught me kana in 2 days :D And I'm also learning to make simple sentences)

You can also find countless of online communities for japanese-learning people. If you want to learn japanese, get involved with others, you won't be able to learn it on your own.

That is the way to go!

It's back-to-front! You learn Japanese to enjoy Anime (As english dubs usually suck!)... you don't watch Anime to learn Japanese. Besides the english sub's are usually so poorly done that any words you could make out are used incorrectly. Half an hour with flash cards would teach you more japanese than a month of watching anime. So please please people, do it the right way round! Anime is one of the reward to learning Japanese!

Piece!

I truly believe Anime will help me learn the language. I watch anime for 2 reasons only. 1. It's enjoyable 2. It's not boring plus I can do more I've learned alot from anime and it hasn't even been a month since I've started. I went on vacation for like 2 weeks and was lazy for one week. Japanese has to be it's own reward. It doesn't have to be boring you can do stuff already in Japanese you like. Like the food? Then just eat their food at a local Japanese resturant. Like thier animations but can't understand them? Watch them without SUBTITTLES. Like their video games? Buy them import them. Like their culture? Throw a little Japanese in your room it helps at least for motivation. See where this is going. People do what feels what works no matter what. It's okay to like whatever you just have to be serious about it. That's like. If your going to learn from anime you have to be hardcore about it.

I've started watching one of my old favorite TV shows in Japanese w/o subtitles, and I understand about 65% of it (mostly due to lack of listening skills and lack of vocabulary, but I'm working on both!). It's fun and it will definately help my listening, but it's not my only tool.

I learn through anime only. I only look up Japanese stuff only. No ENGLISH. That's to help me learn both understanding and reading. Everytime there's a Japanese video sometimes there's kanjis I keep repeating those kanjis as I keep seeing them thereby understanding them more. I truly believe we can learn Japanese through anime it takes hours of listening to actually get it. It also helps weirdly Japanese stuff is sooo much more cooler then english. English is just boring I'm sorry I don't want to look up hannah montanna, America, and anyhting else. It's BORING. I want to play Japanese games, brag to everybody, and be fluent to live in Japan. What does your dream mean to you that's the question everybody should say? To speak in Japanese, brag to everybody you learn japanese. Start your dream right now do whatever works for you. Look up statistic and AT LEAST TRY. No one has really tried to learn Japanese through anime without subtittles. How cna you say that you guys haven't even try. I sit on my butt everyday at home looking up Japanese stuff for fun. It now has become 2nd nature to ME. M English has started to get boring. If I continue this for like 2 years I will learn the language. It's a beautiful language with a beautiful culture with great food. That is my future and I hope that everybody can accomplish it like I will do.

Wakatta~!

what koichi meant is japanese language is distinguished from anime's version. as we know, those is anime's contain lots of bad words & lack respect to elders. so, they don't want outsiders learn from anime. (Japanese are well mannered than haku-jin).

So, they didn't want us to learn Japanese LANGUAGE but also MANNERS. that is what we called CULTURE. so that we wouldn't use mean / impolite words when we talk in Japanese.

p/s: I'm sorry if I get you wrong~!

If someone does learn from anime like me I truly believe the culture will sink in. No it has to sink in if I'm learning from anime. It is a tool that nobody believes that they should ever use at all. It really is a great tool that I use everyday. Besides that I really don't believe that everybody should stop doubting it. It's getting on my nerves at the very least. The culture will sink in I just know it. Japanese is mainly the only thing I know and the only thing I believe I will pursue in due time. Everybody should just try it. Just freaking try it without any subtittles or anything in Japanese for that matter.

I watch anime and love it. I like reading manga, translated. Although it might be useful later on (it might, I don't know, I'm not there yet) -- you know, when you can actually read most necessary kanji, it might help to increase your reading speed / context comprehension -- otherwise, I have found manga completely useless as a learning aid so far. Although it's fun to notice how you pick up sentences you didn't before in anime, they're really just about as useless.

hey that's cool i love anime and manga. I have read all of my friends manga and now I am asking another friend if I can borrow some of her books. Also I am learning Japanese so ask me any thing and I will tell you.

YOU CAN LEARN JAPANESE BY WATCHING ANIME AND READING MANGA!
How easy it will be depends on what you watch and read and how you do it. If you do right, it will be a fun ride.

1. Choose shows with an easy plot and realistic setting like those World Masterpiece Theatre animes, e.g. "Porfy no nagai tabi".
This (50+ episode) show for example is about a boy who travels across Europe to look for his lost sister. Every episode he meets someone new and tells his sob story. Because reoccuring moments like this you'll be able to understand a lot after a while.
More suitable shows are: all WMT series (as mentioned),Nils no fushigi na tabi, Tanoshii mumin ikka, Taiyou no ko Esteban, Aishite naito, Miyuki, Atashin'chi,...

2. NO SUBTITLES EVER! At first it may not please you to watch an episode of 24 minutes and only understand "ohayou", "arigatou" and "itadakimasu". But after a while you'll start to pick up on more words, phrases and ultimately on complete (albeit) short sentences.

3. WATCH ONLY ONE EPISODE OF A SHOW PER DAY AND IF DOESN'T BORE YOU, WATCH IT TWICE.
This way your brain will have it easier to process the data and the repetition of certain words every day will write them deeper in your memory.
Instead of watching the episode twice, you can use a programme to extract the audio and listen to it on the go. It will be like a radio drama. But because you watched it before and therefore remember the plot, it will train your listening comprehension.

4. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME WITH THINGS THAT BORE YOU!
You will definitely get more from shows you like, shows that intrigue you.

I learned English, Italian and Spanish without effort by watching shows I liked and reading comics. Now I'm repeating the experiment with Japanese and Czech.