Japanese the Manga Way is a book that teaches Japanese using manga. It takes parts of actual, published Japanese manga and breaks down the sentences for English speakers, giving a line-by-line explanation and giving context to the manga.
Pros
- Uses actual manga.
- Teaches informal speech.
- Covers lots of different topics
Cons
- Translations can be very analytical.
- Lessons can be quite short.
- May move too fast for beginners.
Final Word?
Let’s face it, a lot of people are inspired to learn Japanese by manga and anime. Some love reading manga, others want to translate manga, some want to write and draw manga. This book will be perfect for all those people. It explains things really thoroughly — everything from grammar, to sentence structure, to particles, and English translations. Japanese the Manga Way is also pretty long and includes lots of different lessons, so you’ll definitely be able to use the book for a long time.
Not only does Japanese the Manga Way teach the informal speech usually used in manga, but also the formal speech that’s usually taught in Japanese textbooks so that you’re getting the best of both worlds.
What Japanese the Manga Way won’t do is teach you the very very basics, such as pronunciation and hiragana and katakana. But for intermediate learners, Japanese the Manga Way should be great.