Kanji in MangaLand: Volume 1 (Japanese in MangaLand Series)

You can't use this book by itself to learn kanji because there aren't enough practice problems to get enough repeated exposure to absorb the kanji. But this book would be a good supplement to something else.The other thing you would need is something that would give you repeated exposure to the kanji. Some people use flashcards or Anki programs or jrpg. I am using jrpg, which is a homebrewed rpg game. It isn't very sophisticated but it is a good learning tool.I also used it with the nintendo game Kanji Kakitorikun (the first one not the second) and that worked out very well for me. Using Kakitorikun together with this series, I find I have really good retention of the on-yomi and kun-yomi readings and I am now familiar with many common compounds.The first Kakitorikun is ordered by grade level. The second version of kakitorikun is not. You can tell them apart because the front cover of the first game has a smaller bird than the second one. Kanji in Mangaland is also ordered by grade level. This makes it easy to use Kakitorikun 1 together with Kanji in Mangaland because you can do each grade level of this book at the same time that you do the matching grade level in the nintendo game. So far I have done first and second grades and I am almost done with third grade. It is slow going but worth it because by methodically going through each level, I am finding that these kanji seem second nature to me when I see them. I easily write them, too. But that is because of Kakitorikun not because of Kanji in Mangaland.Volume one of Kanji in Mangaland covers the Japanese learned in the first and second grades in Japan. There are 240 in this book.Volume two covers the third and fourth grade kanji. Something around 400.Volume three has not been released, yet. It seems that it is planned to be released in the first half of 2011. Volume three will cover fifth and sixth grade kanji--about 400.The diacritics (that differentiate 'ho' from 'po' from 'bo') are really tiny so it can be hard to tell whether some characters are, for example, 'bo' vs. 'po' or 'ba' vs. 'pa.' I am nearsighted. So I take of my glasses and squint and then I can see which it is. But some people are going to need one of those reading magnifying glasses to see the difference. But you can buy one of those at Walgreens for under 5 bucks so no big deal. I don't think it could really be helped actually because if the characters would have been made larger then all of the on and kun-yomi readings wouldn't have fit as nicely on each page. So just buy a magnifying glass and the problem is solved.Each chapter has a one page cartoon at the end of it. The cartoons are really stupid. I don't enjoy the cartoons. Not only are the cartoons stupid but they don't make enough use of the characters introduced in the chapter(s). But there is no reason that you need to use the cartoons. I just ignore them.

I like the illustrations of the kanji in that they are easy to follow stroke order and count and there are examples of alternate ways the kanji can look and the usual example words. I'm not big on someone else's idea of a visual mnemonic but I'm sure it will suit some people. However, this is supposed to help learn kanji through examples pulled from manga. I'm not convinced these are real manga but the examples are there. The handwritten font style makes reading the kanji difficult and stroke count almost impossible. This shouldn't be a problem since there are furigana to help. I also have Japanese in Mangaland and it has one difference that makes it much better IMO than Kanji in Mangaland. In Japanese in Mangaland the examples are transcribed into hiragana, then translated literally so you see what the word actually is, then translated into common English. In Kanji in Mangaland, the manga examples are translated at the end of the chapter but there is no literal translation so the reader must tease out the stroke order or look up the hiragana in a dictionary to see what the kanji actually means in that context. I have two decent paper dictionaries and still have more trouble than I should translating the example sentence for myself. This makes the manga portion of the book practically useless.

The book shipped quickly and was in very good shape.

From the first day that I read this book, I can not help but to continually reading it. At last I found the book to really help me in learning Kanji without getting me bored. I will really buy the 2nd series once I have finished and mastered volume 1. And I hope to see the release of the 3rd volume soon. I love it and I will give 5 stars to it. However, please improve your proofreading. Thanks.

Item is very helpful in learning Kanji. I never gained an interest in the Japanese in Mangaland series, but this series is well organized and good at reinforcing the lessons as you go. I'd definitely recommend it to other self taught learners.

The MangaLand series is amazing! I highly suggest this and other MangaLand books to anyone studying Japanese!

This book is a supplement for people who want to study kanji in addition to their Japanese text books. Kanji in Mangaland Volume I covers around 240 kanji, the Kyoiku kanji taught in the first two years of elementary school in Japan, and also the kanji for Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) level 3 & 4. Unlike other kanji studying materials such as Kanji flashcard, this book provides more than kunyomi, onyomi, and a list of jukugo (compound words). It illustrates the kanji stroke ordering sequence, uses a picture representing the kanji to help reader's memorization, and demonstrates the usage of different kanji via manga examples. The best part of the book is the history overview of where and how the kanji got imported to Japan and the influence on the Japanese language phonetic symbols: Katakana & Hiragana. However, few manga dialogs have some kanji that never been covered in the book, this may cause confusion to the readers. Overall, like Vitamin-C to your body, this book is a pretty good supplement to your Kanji studying.(Reviewed by Otto Yuen, 01-Jan-2008)

THE BOOK LOOKED GOOD, BUT I BOUGHT IT AS A PRESENT SO HAVEN'T USED IT MYSELF.

For those like me who have been studying Japanese for a while this is a good book to go along side your kanji studies. You will need a reasonable vocabulary and understanding of Japanese grammar to make full use of this book, saying that you shouldn't be attempting kanji until you are quite a ways into your study. This isn't a book for beginners but as I said for those further along its a good addition.The lessons are clear and concise each beginning with a set of kanji to learn. The writing grids could be a little bigger to make it easier until you can get the stroke order down but I just use graph paper instead. After the set of kanji are reading and writing exercises again each in clear and concise. Each question designed to take you another step along your journey.What I really like are the pages with manga panels on which give a good taster for how what you've learned looks like in practice. As I mentioned before a good vocabulary is essential.The only thing I find strange with this book is the pictures that are supposed to make the kanji easier to remember, they may work for some people but I feel the book would be better without them. I find them confusing and the links to the kanji tenuous as best.All in all a good solid book.

It's a good book. Marc Bernabe is a very master of teaching Japanese. Whoever wants to study Japanese could be start from this series of books because they're very easy to understand and full of information. Very useful!

Ok, this book is pretty good, and I was enjoying learning from it, but when I got to page 169 I realized that the next 24 pages were missing. It's been over 30 days since I bought it from it.　so I can't send it back.I'm just bummed out that they made such a mistake in the production of this fine book and there is no way I can get a new one for free to replace it.