rubyr

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I love Japanese Print Media.
Learning Japanese since 2019


In Japanese learning spaces I frequent, a common topic is the "ideal beginner manga". Since as long as I've been learning the language (about four years) the de facto recommendation has been よつばと! (Yotsuba&). It's a fantastic manga and it's easy to recommend wholeheartedly as someone who owns and has read the entire catalogue. I enjoyed every moment.

But the problem with よつばと! is that it has never had a digital release. Obtaining a copy of the first volume is not difficult, but it's not a totally inexpensive ask for someone just starting to read. Of course people have made よつばと! available for free digitally through scans, but as someone who generally prefers to encourage supporting artists it's not a route I like to suggest.

So started the journey for the Goldilocks Manga. The だれでもどこでもいつでも漫画まんが


Here are the basic criteria. You can click each to get more information.

★ Should be accessible digitally.

This one is fairly straight forward and if it wasn't a problem, よつばと! would still be very easy to recommend. Japanese learners come from all around the world and shipping costs can be prohibitive especially before a learner has become strongly invested. Basically this is to make it as physically accessible as possible without advocating for piracy.

☆ Should be more than one volume (単行本たんこうぼん) available. More is better, but it doesn't have to be an ongoing series.

It's unlikely that a beginner's second manga will be much easier than their first. For that reason I prefer to recommend things that have at least a reasonable catalogue so that new readers will have an effortless path to their second, third, maybe even their fifteenth manga, by the time they run out of material and need to move on. A recent example of a great manga that unfortunately hasn't seen a followup release is ルリドラゴン. I enjoyed it pretty well, and it's a recommendation Morg Systems has made a number of times in common spaces. As much as I'd love to recommend it, the lack of content is a challenge.

At the fringes I do think there's an overkill level, although I don't know the math there. Part of me just thinks there might be a lack of breadth in concepts if someone decides that their first 300 manga will all be One Piece volumes...

☃ Should use the *average*¹ amount of kanji, **but** it should have furigana for most words.

This element's relevance became more evident to me after reading 魔女まじょ宅急便たっきゅうびん. I think a beginner trap is thinking that more kanji = more difficulty, but the truth is that there is just a *good amount* that's kind of standard across the board. Too much can be overwhelming, certainly, but too few has its own challenges.

Furigana is another element that I sometimes overlook these days. I was reading 阿波連あはれんさんははかれない the other day and thought to myself "wow this is so chill, maybe it'd be a good recommendation" and only then did I think to look for furigana, which the manga doesn't use. (ノД`) it's still cute and you should give it a try.

¹ Based on what feels good to me. I don't know if there is a mathematical equation (curious if it's been studied now) but it's usually pretty easy to tell if an author is intentionally making unorthodox kanji decisions.

♨ Preferably should not be more than 30 years old.

In 山口謠司やまぐちようじ's あ゙教科書きょうかしょおしえない日本語にほんご, 山口 talks about 30 year cycles of language. He wrote that his communication with his father was totally comprehensible, yet he had trouble understanding his grandfather. His father was able to act as a bridging generation and understand both. Of course it's not a rule that language will change, it's just an observation that seems to play out. On top of that, as technology and the settings of stories shifts it just pays to read about stories set as close to a contemporary world as possible.

I'm writing this the day of reading ドラえもん volume 1. I think it was a blast, honestly, and I kind of love how dated it feels, but there are so many standards that hadn't been set in manga storytelling at that time, the (then contemporary) setting is like a 昭和しょうわ period piece, and, while the language is fairly standard, there were a few parts that made it feel a bit hard to recommend.

☀ The themes/setting should have universal appeal². This one sounds simple but it cuts out quite a lot as will be explored within.

This last point is a bit complicated and it's the reason I think I have trouble finding recommendations for people who don't immediately establish clear interests. Ideally the Goldilocks Manga should use mostly contemporary language that isn't intentionally too formal or colloquial. It should feature relatable situations with (at most) light sci-fi/fantasy elements. There should be no, or limited sex since ideally the recommendation should be valid for all ages and interests. Likewise there shouldn't be any strong gore or intentionally strong themes. For that reason メイドインアビス is definitely out. Niche themes, of which I enjoy quite a few, are also not great fits simply because of the desire to have something I could honestly suggest to anyone from any point in life.

² However, properties that are already popular in the west are ineligible for the reason that the recommendation should be a way to introduce something new. My first suggestion will always be to look at interests to start, and if those help a new learner self-direct then this process ends there and that's totally fine.

So...

Well, I obviously haven't found my Goldilocks Manga yet. I try to read a great variety of things, so hopefully one day I'll find what I'm looking for. Unfortunately one of the struggles as I keep reading is that my distance from a beginner grows increasingly wide, so my ability to accurately assess things for difficulty gradually becomes less accurate.

At the end of the day if you already know what you'd like to read, that will always be my recommendation. Even if it's not manga, even if it's not easy, interest and intrinsic motivation are great to start off, and there's no reason you can't move into unknown things later on.

In the meantime I've heard really good things about ふらいんぐうぃっち. I read it a few years ago now and remembered it being quite enjoyable, plus it has a few "learnable moments" which are a nice bonus to get people comfortable with concepts like "One more sentence".


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