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Japanese in Mangaland
Japanese in Mangaland: Learning The Basics
An alternate cover edition can be found here.
This book is designed to help one master the basics of the Japanese language using the popular "manga" (Japanese comics) as a didactic tool. Its clear explanations and vivid examples help one naturally to get the "feel" for the basic patterns of Japanese grammar and at the same time to remember vocabulary associated with concrete situations. Besides that, learning with manga is more fun than simply reading page after page of dry prose. The 30 lessons that make up the book include drills, and a small glossary of 160 basic "kanji" is appended as an added bonus.
This book is designed to help one master the basics of the Japanese language using the popular "manga" (Japanese comics) as a didactic tool. Its clear explanations and vivid examples help one naturally to get the "feel" for the basic patterns of Japanese grammar and at the same time to remember vocabulary associated with concrete situations. Besides that, learning with manga is more fun than simply reading page after page of dry prose. The 30 lessons that make up the book include drills, and a small glossary of 160 basic "kanji" is appended as an added bonus.
269 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
40 people are currently reading
270 people want to read
About the author
Marc Bernabé
545 books32 followersTraductor e intérprete del japonés, con especial hincapié en la traducción de manga y anime, campo en el que cuenta con un bagaje de cientos de volúmenes y episodios traducidos, además de ser especialista en didáctica de la lengua y cultura japonesas para hispanohablantes. Entre sus obras se cuentan la serie de cuatro libros Japonés en viñetas (Norma, 2001-2006), la serie de tres libros Kanji en viñetas (Norma, 2006-2009), Apuntes de Japón (Glénat, 2002), la serie Kanji para recordar (Herder, 2001-2004, junto con J. W. Heisig y V. Calafell) y la guía de viajes Rumbo a Japón (Laertes, 2005, junto con V. Calafell y J. Espí). Recientemente ha trabajado en los libros Hanzi para recordar (Herder, 2009, junto con J.W. Heisig, T. Richardson y V. Calafell, obra para aprender los caracteres chinos en dos versiones: chino simplificado y tradicional. Es fundador y director de la empresa de traducciones e interpretaciones Daruma Serveis Lingüístics, SL, desde donde gestiona sus propias traducciones, así como las de un extenso equipo de colaboradores.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 3, 2016
I received this book used from a friend, who thought he could give himself a crash course in Japanese and be a semi-fluent tourist in less than a couple months. Pretty naive, but he wouldn't be the first to underestimate the learning curve of this language. And a beginner who might pick Japanese in Mangaland thinking it will be easy, is probably making the mistaken (but reasonable) assumption that the book would at least start with manga written for a childrens' reading level.
It doesn't, though. A beginner would hit a wall immediately, when the book suggests they master the hiragana and katakana writing systems before beginning even learning "konnichiwa". If the reader were to proceed anyway, they would get hit with large amounts of vocabulary in each lesson, without yet having the grammar or expressions with which to use it. So, maybe rote memorization is expected here. Now, isn't the manga supposed to provide the fun and interesting context for learning all of this? Maybe it would have, except for the next problem: the kanji. The manga (a mix of obscure material apparently licensed from a single publisher that agreed to be featured) begins immediately with kanji characters that would require at least high-school literacy. The poor reader has only just learned "numbers" (one through ten, hundreds, etc.), and literally their first manga example is a panel with the speech bubble 「帝国第六機甲軍が…八百万の艦隊が…」I shit you not, that is the actual first example. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Yes, technically, that sentence includes a real-world example of the words for "6th," and for "8 million." But no sane teacher should choose this as the best teaching material.
Realizing that this is useless as a starting point, each such example includes first a romaji transcription, and then a "literal" or rough translation into English that the author uses as an intermediary between the original text and a full English translation. Unfortunately, this intermediate language includes an arbitrary collection of abbreviations for grammatical jargon that doesn't translate literally, so his rough translations are peppered with nonsense syntactic markers like "EP" and "DOP". By the end of the book I still hadn't memorized his notation. I wish he had just left those parts in Japanese. If you don't understand the function of the Direct Object particle を, replacing it with DOP is not helpful, and just adds another layer of comprehension to drill through.
It's unfortunate that the material couldn't have been paced better, that the examples couldn't have been selected to match the reading level, or that the excerpts couldn't have been more than a single panel. These might as well have been examples from toaster instruction manuals, or ads found on the walls of the Tokyo subway system.
I am not a complete beginner, and so I was at least able to get through the book without having to stop and do exercises. If I had been a beginner, I would have been better served by several other textbooks, but at least it's good to see that this one has more recently been given its own workbook. Without a workbook or something to practice on, the lessons in Japanese in Mangaland would be quickly forgotten. Counters and days of the week are simple topics to begin with, but they're useless to have first, aren't they? Most of the grammar required to understand a simple sentence of manga dialogue would require basically finishing half the book. This is an inherent problem with trying to learn a language in real-world source material before you have a grounding in it. We shouldn't dismiss the banal phrases like "this is a pen"; they do serve a purpose.
For an intermediate language learner, a book like this could be a fantastic learning tool. With understanding of enough grammar, maybe manga panels could be selected to illustrate individual finer points or issues of nuance in translation. Once you're at the intermediate level, perhaps you can encounter a sentence and focus only on a single confusing aspect of it rather than being confused by the entire sentence.
So, while in concept this book might have worked, in the end it ultimately is just a mediocre textbook with some drawings in it. It has some usefulness in learning some informal forms of speech alongside classroom ones – including swear words! Japanese in the clasroom is different enough from Japanese in entertainment media that a book like this has merit in theory.
And as a final complaint, despite this being a Second Edition, there are small mistakes throughout the book. Nothing major, but a sloppy typo or two; in one place, an entire copy/pasted paragraph located in the wrong chapter. In its defense, this is an English translation edition of the Spanish original. The errors might be in localization.
It doesn't, though. A beginner would hit a wall immediately, when the book suggests they master the hiragana and katakana writing systems before beginning even learning "konnichiwa". If the reader were to proceed anyway, they would get hit with large amounts of vocabulary in each lesson, without yet having the grammar or expressions with which to use it. So, maybe rote memorization is expected here. Now, isn't the manga supposed to provide the fun and interesting context for learning all of this? Maybe it would have, except for the next problem: the kanji. The manga (a mix of obscure material apparently licensed from a single publisher that agreed to be featured) begins immediately with kanji characters that would require at least high-school literacy. The poor reader has only just learned "numbers" (one through ten, hundreds, etc.), and literally their first manga example is a panel with the speech bubble 「帝国第六機甲軍が…八百万の艦隊が…」I shit you not, that is the actual first example. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Yes, technically, that sentence includes a real-world example of the words for "6th," and for "8 million." But no sane teacher should choose this as the best teaching material.
Realizing that this is useless as a starting point, each such example includes first a romaji transcription, and then a "literal" or rough translation into English that the author uses as an intermediary between the original text and a full English translation. Unfortunately, this intermediate language includes an arbitrary collection of abbreviations for grammatical jargon that doesn't translate literally, so his rough translations are peppered with nonsense syntactic markers like "EP" and "DOP". By the end of the book I still hadn't memorized his notation. I wish he had just left those parts in Japanese. If you don't understand the function of the Direct Object particle を, replacing it with DOP is not helpful, and just adds another layer of comprehension to drill through.
It's unfortunate that the material couldn't have been paced better, that the examples couldn't have been selected to match the reading level, or that the excerpts couldn't have been more than a single panel. These might as well have been examples from toaster instruction manuals, or ads found on the walls of the Tokyo subway system.
I am not a complete beginner, and so I was at least able to get through the book without having to stop and do exercises. If I had been a beginner, I would have been better served by several other textbooks, but at least it's good to see that this one has more recently been given its own workbook. Without a workbook or something to practice on, the lessons in Japanese in Mangaland would be quickly forgotten. Counters and days of the week are simple topics to begin with, but they're useless to have first, aren't they? Most of the grammar required to understand a simple sentence of manga dialogue would require basically finishing half the book. This is an inherent problem with trying to learn a language in real-world source material before you have a grounding in it. We shouldn't dismiss the banal phrases like "this is a pen"; they do serve a purpose.
For an intermediate language learner, a book like this could be a fantastic learning tool. With understanding of enough grammar, maybe manga panels could be selected to illustrate individual finer points or issues of nuance in translation. Once you're at the intermediate level, perhaps you can encounter a sentence and focus only on a single confusing aspect of it rather than being confused by the entire sentence.
So, while in concept this book might have worked, in the end it ultimately is just a mediocre textbook with some drawings in it. It has some usefulness in learning some informal forms of speech alongside classroom ones – including swear words! Japanese in the clasroom is different enough from Japanese in entertainment media that a book like this has merit in theory.
And as a final complaint, despite this being a Second Edition, there are small mistakes throughout the book. Nothing major, but a sloppy typo or two; in one place, an entire copy/pasted paragraph located in the wrong chapter. In its defense, this is an English translation edition of the Spanish original. The errors might be in localization.
September 11, 2012
This was the first textbook I bought after I decided to start studying Japanese seriously. I think it was a major help in my developing of language skills; this book encourages the reader to pursue the language in a fun and entertaining way, instead of structuring towards the more rigid standard methods. The sample manga used in each lesson is also varied enough to remain entertaining with each new reading.
This book is a very useful tool for beginner learners looking to develop the necessary skills to read manga RAW.
This book is a very useful tool for beginner learners looking to develop the necessary skills to read manga RAW.
May 7, 2018
I got this book back when I was self studying Japanese in high school. It was encouraging to find an approachable textbook at the time that focused on a subject, apart from Japanese, that I was interested in--manga. I think in that appeal, the audience this series is geared for is probably middle to high school students.
However, in terms of what it was able to teach me, it wasn't much. After having gone through college and taking Japanese classes there, I went through the Genki series, and if you somehow haven't heard, the Genki books are by far some of the best, if not the best, learning material for Japanese.
I still held on to this book (and its sequel), and flipped through it occasionally. Compared to Genki, I think the biggest failures are the order of things taught and what is taught. A lot of the grammar seems to be put aside for vocab, and there are a LOT of kanji, which is not great for beginners. I do like how the author stresses the importance of learning the kana as soon as possible, though it was rather annoying to see romaji still used throughout the book. I feel like that's just holding the student's hand, not really forcing them to learn the alphabets. (Granted, he drops romaji in the sequel, which was a nice improvement.)
I did enjoy the unique chapters, like swear words, onomatopoeia, etc. I've never seen those in other Japanese learning textbooks. Though unsurprisingly he had chapters focusing on those topics, seeing as how the entirety of the book is based around reading manga. (Well known for swear words and sound effects. ;))
For learning normal/formal Japanese though, as in, wanting to really learn the language, this book would not be a starter book. The author focuses a lot on informalities, which is not how people speak in Japanese. And since there is very little grammar, it works more like a review for more intermediate/experienced students versus beginners.
I loved seeing actual manga examples, but when going through them when I did, most of them were just too difficult for me or any beginner.
I never bought the separate workbook, but I'm sure it would've been a nice addition to have alongside this book. The few exercises the book itself has are okay, but they're certainly not enough to drill anything in.
If you're looking for a nice review of Japanese, this book can be kind of fun. If you're a complete beginner, I would save this book for later. Spend your money on the Genki series. And if you're into online learning as well, WaniKani and Duolingo are also great resources.
However, in terms of what it was able to teach me, it wasn't much. After having gone through college and taking Japanese classes there, I went through the Genki series, and if you somehow haven't heard, the Genki books are by far some of the best, if not the best, learning material for Japanese.
I still held on to this book (and its sequel), and flipped through it occasionally. Compared to Genki, I think the biggest failures are the order of things taught and what is taught. A lot of the grammar seems to be put aside for vocab, and there are a LOT of kanji, which is not great for beginners. I do like how the author stresses the importance of learning the kana as soon as possible, though it was rather annoying to see romaji still used throughout the book. I feel like that's just holding the student's hand, not really forcing them to learn the alphabets. (Granted, he drops romaji in the sequel, which was a nice improvement.)
I did enjoy the unique chapters, like swear words, onomatopoeia, etc. I've never seen those in other Japanese learning textbooks. Though unsurprisingly he had chapters focusing on those topics, seeing as how the entirety of the book is based around reading manga. (Well known for swear words and sound effects. ;))
For learning normal/formal Japanese though, as in, wanting to really learn the language, this book would not be a starter book. The author focuses a lot on informalities, which is not how people speak in Japanese. And since there is very little grammar, it works more like a review for more intermediate/experienced students versus beginners.
I loved seeing actual manga examples, but when going through them when I did, most of them were just too difficult for me or any beginner.
I never bought the separate workbook, but I'm sure it would've been a nice addition to have alongside this book. The few exercises the book itself has are okay, but they're certainly not enough to drill anything in.
If you're looking for a nice review of Japanese, this book can be kind of fun. If you're a complete beginner, I would save this book for later. Spend your money on the Genki series. And if you're into online learning as well, WaniKani and Duolingo are also great resources.
November 28, 2020
What this book lacks in in-depth explanations, it more than makes up for in being easy to understand and follow. I came into it already familiar with almost everything that it teaches, but I still found it incredibly useful in that it sets things forward in an easy to understand and straightforward manner.
It's a great resource for quick refreshers and basic vocabulary learning.
I can also see it as a solid introduction to the language and how complicated it is to study for someone who is interested but isn't certain enough yet to commit to signing up for a class or making a greater investment of time or money.
It's a great resource for quick refreshers and basic vocabulary learning.
I can also see it as a solid introduction to the language and how complicated it is to study for someone who is interested but isn't certain enough yet to commit to signing up for a class or making a greater investment of time or money.
April 13, 2010
This is not a 'textbook'. I don't think the book would hold up well for someone who's a total beginner, but as a refresher book for some basic material, it's not bad. All the chapters were basically review for me, except for little bits here and there (like some of the body parts chapter). There's material that you don't usually see, for example, swearwords and insults, onomatopoeia, yakuza vocab, etc. Actually, a beginner kind of has to be careful because this book deals with a lot of informal/casual Japanese (popular in anime and manga but only to be used with close friends (or maybe even not at all) in the real world). Things I really liked: the charts (counters, numbers, verb conjugations, etc) and the manga example panels with detailed explanations; it is after all, Japanese in *Manga*land. Anyways, overall a fun read.
May 26, 2011
This is a fun book, although I would think near useless for a true beginner. Good for a quick review and some manga-specific vocab, though.
October 25, 2016
A nice approach to teach Japanese. There are some minor errors in the book however, pretty dangerous for fresh Japanses students.
June 17, 2025
Coincido con la mayoría de opiniones que he leído. No es un libro con el que se pueda aprender Japonés. Para aprender no se puede evitar el ir a clases. Pero sí que es muy bueno para ir introduciéndose antes de empezar un curso adecuado. Yo lo hice en su momento tirando de todo tipo de recursos online, y ojalá hubiera sabido de la existencia de este libro, porque al carecer de una trayectoria concreta, acabé teniendo conocimientos de distintos niveles que no me servían de mucho a la hora de hablarlo. El libro está muy bien estructurado en cuanto a los contenidos.
La verdad es esperaba otra cosa del libro, pero me ha servido para repasar lo más básico (se me hizo algo pesado volver a ver cosas tan básicas) y al enfocarlo al manga siempre se aprenden cosas nuevas, sobre todo lenguaje coloquial, que es mi gran desconocido al haber terminado sólo hasta el A2.
La verdad es esperaba otra cosa del libro, pero me ha servido para repasar lo más básico (se me hizo algo pesado volver a ver cosas tan básicas) y al enfocarlo al manga siempre se aprenden cosas nuevas, sobre todo lenguaje coloquial, que es mi gran desconocido al haber terminado sólo hasta el A2.
January 17, 2013
Cette méthode est très agréable et très motivante, avec ses exercices et explications en images! Seul point négatif : les leçons contiennent trop de nouveau vocabulaire et de kanji, il est donc difficile de tout assimiler au fur et à mesure.
A part ça, les leçons de grammaire sont claires, les textes, sous forme de manga, sont sympa, et les exercices intéressants et complets. De plus, il existe un cahier d'exercices qu'il est possible d’acquérir en plus, et qui permet donc de s’entraîner plus encore, toujours en manga!
A part ça, les leçons de grammaire sont claires, les textes, sous forme de manga, sont sympa, et les exercices intéressants et complets. De plus, il existe un cahier d'exercices qu'il est possible d’acquérir en plus, et qui permet donc de s’entraîner plus encore, toujours en manga!
July 27, 2016
itttooo >.< Well, I am not so sure about what did I think ? Since this is not my first book in Jap. Nor my first time encountering with daily jap. Spoken language, I didn’t learn that much of new expressions. Still, I find it very useful in way that the writer is explaining and decoding the structures on both the morphological and semantic level so often which enhance and extended my understanding to the mechanism of this language . Therefore, I think this book is useful for linguistic interests, rather than; manga and anime Fan!
November 8, 2013
El libro contiene 30 lecciones con varios anexos, ejercicios y ejemplos de manga. Esta mas indicado hacia la lectura que a hablar y comunicarnos, pero para un inicio básico, como el que buscaba esta muy bien. Además recomiendo estudiar aparte algún curso de japones online de gramática para ampliar. El libro esta bien estructurado y de fácil comprensión. Gracias por el curso.
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November 6, 2016
I tried! Really. But Japanese isn't really my cup of tea.
I like how this book is made. I like the little panels illustrating the different expressions and I like all the little trivia about the Japanese language.
The only flaw is the paper: too glossy to be written on with a hard pencil...
I swear, it wasn't the fault of the book, it was mine alone.
I like how this book is made. I like the little panels illustrating the different expressions and I like all the little trivia about the Japanese language.
The only flaw is the paper: too glossy to be written on with a hard pencil...
I swear, it wasn't the fault of the book, it was mine alone.
June 3, 2011
good stuff
September 2, 2011
I really want to learn japanese, so hopefully this will work!
May 29, 2015
Anche in questo caso, é un libro più utile per il ripasso che per iniziare.
March 5, 2016
This book is amazing!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews