What's the average kanji/vocab requirement? How can one start learning and will it affect the reading/watching experience much compared to consuming dubbed/translated work?
Hmm, I have some reservation on such a topic, since I don't think you can, by any means, draw a "requirement" to understand publications in a foreign language. This topic gears more towards "how to learn a language" which manga could only serve as one minor component to help. Especially considering that there are a lot of cultural terms involved in manga (either as scripts or as images) that are probably not easily understood by English readers at first glance. – Justin Wu10 years ago
Certainly, this is an interesting and outside-the-box idea! I, like Justin, don't think there's a desire to learn something outside one's comfort zone to enjoy specific forms of entertainment. However, the article could discuss the ethics and 'rules' of dubbing/subtitles in depth. – Thomas Munday10 years ago
Ah, I don't really mean anything about the desire to learn something (a language, in this case) per se, but just that I don't see how one can judge "this amount of Japanese knowledge is enough to read manga/watch anime in Japanese". As someone whose English is a second language, I can watch TV shows in English without problem, but there will always be moments when I don't understand why everyone is laughing, for example, or why people are shaking their heads in dismay. The same, I think, applies to reading manga and watching anime: you can't draw a line for requirement to understanding products in a foreign language, as this topic seems to suggest. If the topic is intended for the sub/dub thing, then I discourage it unless there are some entirely new points that have never been covered. The reason is that any articles discussing sub/dub often go to nowhere and lead to pointless fights between the two sides. Unfortunate, since those are often not the authors' intention. – Justin Wu10 years ago
My 14 year old son loves anime and manga, and is wanting to learn Japanese to check out programs and manga produced in Japan. He is fascinated by Japanese culture enough that he would check out anything available online or in print, but as where we live doesn't have many people who speak Japanese I wonder if this would make it that much tougher for him to pick it up. I think it would help anyone pick up nuances in stories and images that you would normally miss in an English translated manga and anime, and he is interested in learning enough to put in the work. – Laika29 years ago
