Review of Japanese in Manga Land by Travers Naran

SUMMARY: Nicely printed book, but only for fresh beginners interested in manga. "Living Japanese through Comics" is much better.

I figured I'd check this book out because this topic would cause Charles so much grief.

"Japanese in MangaLand" is a nice absolute beginner's book. It's made up of 30 lessons ranging from the writing systems--including introductions to hiragana, katakana and kanji--to the basics of verb & adjective conjugations. The lessons are pretty short, 2-5 pages, with 5-7 pages of manga examples to illustrate the concepts. The whole book covers what you might learn in your average 1-year night school course of Japanese.

The book's main goal is trying to prove to the reader that learning Japanese is not that difficult. It keeps the lessons pretty light so the reader can feel they're achieving progress while learning important lessons like going from dictionary form to conjugated forms. Even though the book uses kanji and kana, it does provide romaji as a "crutch" for all the examples. That could be argued to be the main failing of the book.

Overall, good for a beginner, but not for anyone more advanced.

☆ See all reviews by Travers Naran.