How to learn Japanese from anime (2023)

Learning Japanese through anime... Is it really possible?

If you search online for “learn Japanese with anime”, you will find many articles and videos. In some of them, people argue whether it is possible or not. In others, someone might be trying to sell an outdated, overpriced course.

However, in this article, we will see a practical and free step-by-step guide to learn Japanese from anime.

fusselfrei

No theories.

Practical application of language learning principles.

If possible. But let's not confuse "possible" with "easy" too quickly. Instead of trying to convince you if you are capable of learning Japanese through anime, I will just explain the detailed process for this and you can decide for yourself whether you want to learn some anime or not.

Learning through anime: a step-by-step process

In this Learn Japanese Through Anime guide, we'll go through a detailed process to get all that crazy Japanese to the back of your brain. Specifically, we check:

1. Learn every word in every episode (including the tutorial).
2. Change subtitles systematically.
3. To hearto your chosen anime.
4. Drill each anime episode into your brain.

1. Learn every word in every episode.

It's a shame because it's a lot of work, but if you want to understand [your favorite anime], then you have to understand every word of that anime.

This might sound superfluous, but I think it's something I found difficult to accept when I was a beginner in Japanese. I liked liking anime more than studying anime. So I had this big dream of magically understanding all these great shows just by changing the subtitles and "dive in" in Japanese.

Well, that didn't go very well.

Watching anime (in the traditional sense) does not teach Japanese.This has nothing to do with subtitle settings or display time or "focus" or any of the things I was worried about if it sucked in Japanese.

For example, here are some English words:

• Rudimentary
• debauchery
• your kind
• baldenfreude
• reproach
• tenacity
• mutual annihilation

Now tell me what each of those words means.

Difficult? This is weird because I'm pretty sure we're reading this article with English subtitles: on.

But none of us learn that way. We are not geniuses. Or at least I'm certainly no genius.

The thing is, you can't expect to understand Japanese just because you hear or see Japanese words. Foreigners who spend decades in Japan without being fluent are proof of this (although this is not evidence that Japanese is difficult or unattainable).).

If you look up the difficult English words above, you'll see definitions and example sentences. By doing it yourself, you will be able to remember these words. If you also went through these words, you will definitely remember them. Well, we want to do the same.

Fortunately, there are programs to split anime dialogues, audios, screenshots and video clips and put them on flashcards for us to study... and learn.

I'll explain how to use this technology later in this article, but for now I want to address this: In order to "learn Japanese from anime", we need to understand every word in every sentence in every episode of [said the anime].

to be able to read it.

There are a few ways to test our understanding of written Japanese in an anime. My favorite thing to do is automatically generate Anki cards from it, which I'll talk about later in this post. The old school option would be to read the manga. And I think a happy medium would be to read the subtitle files (I'll show you where to download them later in this post).

If you try to read it and it's too hard, then your Japanese isn't good enough for the specific anime you're trying to learn. That sucks, but you'll probably have to downgrade to an easier anime until you're a little better at Japanese.

2. Systematically change subtitles.

Once you've taken the time to read every sentence in an episode, you can watch it with or without subtitles.

I personally watch anime with only Japanese subtitles or no subtitles. It is very difficult for me to concentrate on spoken words when they have English subtitles.

3.listento your chosen anime.

Select some of your favorite episodes and extract audio from anime video files.

Then you can download this anime on your mobile device and listen to it 18,000 times a week.

Play while walking. Play while commuting to work or school. Play lying in bed trying to fall asleep. Let Japanese goodness sink deep into your brain.

By the way...

4. Drill each anime episode into your brain.

I almost call this section "shading" because that's basically what I'm talking about here."

Shadowing" refers to imitating the sounds of native speakers to memorize vocabulary, improve pronunciation and become a more amazing person in every way.

This is as simple as selecting some audio snippets from the chosen anime episode, then listening to them several times and trying to copy the tone, rhythm and intonation of the voice, as we do with Shadow Loops innative shark.

Just because you can understand something in Japanese doesn't mean you are physically or mentally capable of saying it yourself. The shadow is a way to close (at least partially) this gap.

anime study tools

This section explains how we can create Anki cards that pull content from our favorite anime. For those who don't know, Anki is a Spaced Repetition System (SRS). In other words, they are smart cards. you can downloadAnkifrei.

What if I told you that you canautomaticallyCreate Anki cards with audio, screenshots, video clips, Japanese subtitles and English subtitles of your favorite anime shows?

Because yes you can!

Entre: subs2srs

If you go to...this page, you can read all about a really awesome program called subs2srs. I don't know exactly who developed this program, but it's amazing.

With subs2srs you can create import files forAnkior other spaced repetition systems (SRS) based on your favorite foreign language movies and TV shows to support the language learning process. This utility analyzes subtitle files, extracts dialogue and timing information, and then uses this information to generate audio clips, snapshots, and video clips for each line of dialogue. – Description taken fromsubs2srs documentation page

As far as I'm concerned, this show destroys the "you can't learn Japanese from anime" argument.Ofit couldLearn Japanese with anime because with this program you can systematically study every sentence that appears in an anime.

‍Here is an example flash card I made with this program, taken from the popular animeFullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood:

But enough talk. Let's see an example of how to do this. I give step by step instructions. So at the end of this section I'll include some links to pre-made anime decks online.

com subs2srs

Here, I will walk you through creating an anime anki deck using subs2srs. This guide may seem long and intimidating, but once you get used to the process, it shouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes to do everything.

You can! Japanese domination through anime awaits!

first go tothis pageTo download the subs2srs program:

By clicking on the download link above, you can download a .zip file containing the program:

You can then extract all files from this .zip file to a location of your choice on your system.

You may also want to download one or more animesThey DO NOT have hardcoded subtitlesHere is my subs2srs program extracted next to a folder with the 1st season of the popular anime Attack on Titan /Shiningeki kein Kyojin/ "Attack on Titan:"

First open the subs2srs folder:

I double click on the subs2srs application to open the program which looks like this:

It might seem like an intimidating array of options, but creating your first deck of cards is pretty straightforward. Let's start at the top and work our way down. The first thing I need is the subtitle file in my target language (Japanese):

I just don't have the subtitle file! My life is ruined!

No, it's not true. Because we can find the file online. There are probably multiple sites to find them, but so far this is the best I've found.kitsunekko.net. Calling this site easy would be an understatement. Here is the home page:

Clicking the "Japanese Subtitles" link will take you to an alphabetical list of available Japanese subtitles:

We are looking for Shingeki no Kyojin / Attack on Titan. If I scroll down, I find it listed under "Shingeki no Kyojin:".

Clicking takes me to a list of available subtitles:

Fortunately, they seem to have them for every episode. I could download each one individually. However, I will use the insteadAdd FlashGotthat I installed in my Firefox browser to download them all at once:

Just before clicking on the FlashGot Lightning Bolt shown above, I create an empty folder to put my subtitles in:

I then go ahead and click on the lightning bolt, which brings up a download dialog:

It looks like Flashgot is a genius as it automatically selected all the subtitle files. I click OK and they all download to the destination folder (which I just created). A blue arrow appears at the top of my browser every time Flashgot finishes downloading a file (every second or two):

Once they're all downloaded, I can go back to my subs2srs program and select the Japanese subtitle file:

Let's start with episode 01:

Clicking "Open" sets the directory for my subtitle file:

The next element is now the directory where the generated files are stored. In other words, I need to specify where to send this new deck once it spawns. Let's create a new folder called Anime Anki Decks:

I'll go ahead and set this as the location of my generated file:

Next on the list is the corresponding subtitle file in my native language (English). This is technically optional, but I think most people will want it. let's checkkitsunekko.netto see if they have. This time I go to the subtitles in English:

You have it! Punctuation:

However, this time the files are zipped, so I don't need to use Flashgot:

I have no idea which one to pick, so I'll just take a guess and pick the third one. I download the .zip file and unzip all the contents into a new folder called "English Subtitles:"

I switch back to subs2srs so I can point it to my English subtitles file:

Since we're starting with Episode 1, I'll select the subtitle file for Episode 1:

Now all that's left is to tell subs2srs where the corresponding video file is located:

I really can't give you much advice on how or where to get your Japanese video files. I suppose ideally you would buy original DVDs of the anime series you want to watch and copy them to your computer. Whatever you do, get the files legally.

Once you get some anime video files that don't have subtitles, you can forward them to subs2srs. For this example, I'm using Shingeki no Kyojin Episode 01:

So now I've set all my file options:

Next I want to check my subtitle options:

In fact, I'm not going to change them at all, but you may need to if your subtitles' times don't match your video's times.

Next we need to configure our audio options. I won't change these either:

Next, we have the options for snapshots:

The default is 240 x 160 pixels, but personally I like my photos to be a little bigger, so I'm going to change that. First, I'll click on this little arrow to bring up the snapshot dimension picker:

This lets me make sure I'm maintaining the correct proportions for the width and height of the snapshots:

I chose 30%, which is 576 x 324 pixels for this clip:

There's also an option to generate video clips, but I'll skip that. Personally, I don't embed video clips because the large amount of data tends to break my Anki program during sync:

The last thing I need to do is name my deck. I call it Shingeki no Kyojin:

Then I click on the "View..." link. This gives me a preview of all the maps that will be generated:

Overall, it looks like Episode 01 will have 243 flashcards!

The first thing you need to do now is go through a few different maps by clicking on the audio preview button in the lower left corner. If the audio doesn't match one or both subtitles, you will likely need to adjust your subtitle settings. For more information, seesubs2srs documentation page.

Once I've confirmed that my audio and subtitles match, I can remove the clips I don't want to appear in my deck. For example, the show's first scene contains some military jargon that you may or may not be interested in spouting at breakneck speed:

On the other hand, you might want to remove clips that you think are too easy or useless. For example, this is just one person's name:

To remove it, I select it and click "Disable:"

It's probably best to go through them all when you have time and only activate the cards that you think will be useful in your study. Or you can be totally lazy and hit "Go!" at the bottom of the screen, as I usually do. I think I can delete the cards I don't want while studying anyway:

After clicking "Go!" I can watch and waitsubs2srsreveals its magic:

When the program finishes, you will see this message:

Be sure to look at the format of the Anki import file we are about to import!

When I open Anki, I see my 3 decks I made in phases 2 and 3 of the Hacking Japanese Supercourse, the Japanese tutorial that turned out to benative shark:

Now I'm going to go crazy and make onefourDeck for anime cards. However, do not click on “Create Deck”. Instead, we want to click "Import File". In the original folder we created when we installed thesubs2srsprogram, there is a folder called Anki Deck Templates. Here we find our new deck template:

Since I'm using Anki2 (the current version of Anki), I'll open the Anki2 template context shown above. This will add a fourth deck to my Anki program:

I will change the name to "04 Anime". I write "04" because Anki always displays decks in alphabetical order and I want this deck to have the lowest priority:

And now I have four decks in my Anki program.

Well, now I'm finally ready to import my anime cards! On Anki's main page, I click "Import file" again, this time looking for the Shingeki no Kyojin deck I created in the Anki Anki Decks folder using subs2srs:

This opens the import dialog. First, make sure the template is set to "subs2srs:".

Next, we need to decide on a deck. I'm actually going to create a new deck for Shingeki no Kyojin, so I checked the box next to "Deck" (it says "Default" in the screenshot above):

When you click Default, the Choose Deck dialog appears. Then, when you click Add, you will see the option to enter my new alias. After typing it, I click "OK".

Before importing the file, I need to make sure the field mapping matches the format of the Anki import file I'm creating. If you remember it is:

After tweaking the "Field Mapping" options a bit, I get everything to match (also notice that the "Allow HTML in fields" box is checked):

(#5 and #6 in my generated file were called "Subs1" and "Subs2", but in my field mapping options they are called "Expression" and "Meaning". This is because "Subs1 = Japanese Subtitle = Expression" and " Subs2 = English subtitle = meaning"). Looks like we're all set, so let's hit import! When I do that, Anki quickly imports all my graphics:

However, we're not done yet. When I look at one of my maps, there is still no audio or snapshot:

This is because we haven't added the media for this deck to our Anki media collection yet.

My Anki media collection is (by default) located at Documents → Anki → User Profile (=Newbie) → Collection.Media. And my media collection for this Anki deck is at Anime Anki Decks → Shingeki_no_Kyojin.media. Here are the two folders side by side:

I need to take all the files in the folder below and move them to the folder above which is my Anki media collection.

Now the front of my cards looks like this:

And the back of my cards looks like this:

You can leave the cards as they are if you like, but I'm going to change mine up a bit. First I click on "Edit" in the lower right corner, then when the edit box appears I click on "Cards:"

Oh HTML! Stay tuned:

I'm going to change the front model a little:

In particular, I'll move the snapshot and print to the top and remove the sequence marker:

I also don't like the little play button, so in the style section I change the font size for "media" from 8px to 40px:

I could end my edit here, and this is how my beautiful new cards would look:

But I think what I really want is to study these letters to improve my listening skills. In that case, I can move the "expression" tag to the card reply page:

These give me cards that look like this:

In this way, I will practice capturing spoken Japanese, using the snapshot as the storage medium, and then check my understanding on the answer page. Now that I'm at a higher level, I also like to get English off the charts. I don't need it anymore anyway, so the back of my cards look like this:

If I don't understand something, I just click edit and read the English translation in the card panel:

But that rarely happens anyway. So there you have it! Animate on smart cards! I don't know about you, but I think this is great.

Finally, if you're OCD like me, you can drag your new [Shingeki no Kyojin] deck into your anime deck and keep everything neat and tidy:

By simply dragging one deck over another, you can turn it into a lower deck. That way, when adding new decks for different shows, you can keep the shows (and even seasons) separate, but categorize them all under the anime deck:

If you are having problems configuring your platform, please refer to the instructions onpage subs2srs, Öthis forum topic. There have been times when I've had technical issues setting up a deck, but I can usually get things working after a few tries.

Free Preinstalled Anki Anki Decks

I know what many of you are thinking all the time: I don't want to go through all the trouble making Anki decks, even if they're from my favorite anime! Can't people send decks to me?

Well, I really can't do that because it would probably violate a lot of copyrights and whatnot.

Watch flashcard episodes with subtitles

Generating Anki flashcards from anime is certainly a very fun and effective learning method, but at my current level of Japanese, I find it much more satisfying to just watch Japanese TV shows with full Japanese subtitles. Normally, my reading speed isn't an issue keeping up with Japanese subtitles, and in a strange way, it seems to improve my listening comprehension. In other words, I rarely make anime cards.

I prefer to watch it once with Japanese subtitles, then once without subtitles. In both cases,I go back and pause the videoEvery timeI don't understand something. You can even jot down the time of the video or a specific word so you can go back and make an index card for it later.

The key here is that this is not 100% passive learning. I won't let any Japanese go over my head. As I learn every word in every episode, I can always go back and watch this video again for fun, and it will be (1) relaxing and fun and (2) strengthen my Japanese skills.

If you're still at a lower level of Japanese, you'll probably want to include English subtitles in your studies as well, but I think you should try to avoid those as much as your level will allow. The goal is to be able to watch without subtitles, right? If yes, then we must understand these videos first without English subtitles and then without Japanese subtitles. It's going to take a little work, but it's totally doable.

Drill episodes into your brain

Even after managing to go through an entire episode without subtitles and understand everything (which is already a lot of work),I recommend watching the same episode without subtitles as many times as possible.This is one of the reasons why I consider Japanese films to be an excellent source of study material. There's no temptation to skip to the next episode.

I had several periods where I watched a movie over and over again. For example, there were a few months last year when I sawO Hobbitin Japanese every night before going to bed. I got home from work, put on the movie and relaxed.I've seen the movie probably 100 times.And some of the phrases really start to penetrate the deepest recesses of your brain. You hear a word in the movie taken out of context and you can actually hear the actor's voice saying it in the movie because you've pretty much memorized the entire movie. Next thing you know, I'm trying to speak like Gandalf and improve my magical Japanese, much to my wife's dismay.

In theory, what I did with movies should be possible with anime and TV shows. It just requires a lot of repetitions. Just don't make it seem like a chore. I mean, you learn Japanese by watching TV. It's amazing!

Also, I've talked about "shadows" before. Another option is to take the split audio tracks that subs2srs has created for you and put them on an audio device. Pick a few tracks (eg snippets of dialogue) that you want to master, repeat them, and listen to them for days and days.

This is also a cute way to improve your pronunciation and intonation. Impressively!

This is not an abbreviation

Let's not confuse something really fun with something really fast. I don't think anyone can claim that this is an incredibly amazing learning method. However, it's not exactly the most structured approach to learning a language.

If you're still a beginner, I think you might have a really hard time getting through the episodes of the anime. However, for someone who has laid a solid foundation (i.e., someone who has completed phases 2 and 3 of this study guide), studying anime like this should be a truly rewarding experience. I personally like it a lot too. I'm reviewing the maps I just madeShiningeki kein KyojinI was sometimes surprised by how quickly they spoke, especially in the fight scenes in the first episode.

The main reason I'm pointing out that this isn't a shortcut is that you're likely going through hundreds (maybe thousands) of cards that contain the content you're using.vonto understand. In other words, you would be studying maps that you don't need to learn. At the same time, studying anime like this is certainly not a shortcut, but it's probably a learning method you'll enjoy, and I think it's immeasurably more important.

If you love a show, why not take it one painful step at a time? Take the time to learn every word, to understand every sentence. So whenever you watch it in the future, you can sit back and let the Japanese float in your ears, all processed, understood and enjoyed by your amazing brain.

The bad news about learning through anime

I don't want to turn anyone off since we're talking about turning a fun anime into a disgusting, disgusting study, but I have to warn everyone:Learning Japanese through anime is incredibly difficult for low-level learners.

I love using my anime flashcards to improve my Japanese, but I already know 95% of the words on those flashcards.

If you have a low level of vocabulary, it becomes a tiring job. However, it can be tiring work that you can stick with for a long time... which, after all, is the real secret of language learning.

If you try this method but find it too difficult for you, I recommend expanding your vocabulary as much as possible.

The fastest way to improve your Japanese comprehension is to increase your Japanese vocabulary.

And without a doubt, the easiest way to increase your Japanese vocabulary (and grammatical knowledge too) is to use itnative shark.

As you constantly learn new vocabulary, you'll be able to understand more about what's conveyed through your awesome auto-generated flashcards. Meaning, you'll be able to get more out of your studies... and that means you'll be able to study more hours a day and more days a week, which means you'll reach a point where learning Japanese is essentially effortless.

You can! Fight-O!

Enjoy anime without subtitles

From the beginning, it was always about finding a new, interesting and fun way to learn Japanese, right?

So make sure you have fun while you learn.

ANDThe hardest part of learning a language isDo not give up.

Enjoying learning is a really great way to not burn out... which means it's a great way to not give up... which means it's a great way to learn Japanese.

Good luck in your studies!

Niko

PS Starting the course is freenative shark. No credit card required for registration.