Kanji De Manga Volume 4: The Comic Book That Teaches You How To Read And Write Japanese! (v. 4) [Paperback]

Glenn Kardy (Author), Chihiro Hattori (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 14, 2006 | Series: Kanji de Manga (Book 4)

The popular Kanji de Manga series continues with an all-new selection of 80 kanji geared toward English-speaking manga fans who want to learn how to read, write and speak Japanese. Original manga characters help students identify the most common kanji characters used in everyday Japanese. Includes definitions, pronunciations and sample compounds, all in a fun, friendly and familiar format.

Editorial Reviews

Review

These cute, little books use manga-style graphics to help English speakers learn the Japanese writing systems. Kana de Manga: A Fun, Easy Way To Learn the ABCs of Japanese! teaches the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, the closest that Japanese has to an alphabet. For each kana are provided the sound, a word using the sound with accompanying illustration and cultural note, the stroke order for drawing the kana, and empty grids for practice. Front and back matter provide kana contractions plus more information about the kana systems. Almost 40 pages are devoted to practice grids, unnecessary for library readers. The volume is inexpensive, cute, and useful, although other kana tutorials that use mnemonics that is, likening the kana to an image can be effective, too.

The four Kanji de Manga volumes teach 320 of the more complex Chinese-based kanji characters, of which some 2100 are used in standard Japanese. These books teach kanji only through the kana. This may be a good discipline, but most English-speaking readers would have greatly appreciated Romanizations, too, even if relegated to a back section in place of practice pages. There's no Romanized index or glossary, either. Not a priority purchase.

Japanese Sound FX! is likely to be the most useful of these books, with Romanizations, cultural explanations, and illustrations for many of those untranslated sound effects sprinkled tantalizingly throughout manga. This last is recommended for libraries where manga is popular. --Library Journal

About the Author

GLENN KARDY is founder of Japanime, an award-winning creative agency and publisher of Manga University's acclaimed lineup of educational materials. He lives in the Tokyo suburb of Kawaguchi City with his wife, their daughter and a collection of Oakland A's bobblehead dolls.

CHIHIRO HATTORI has been the featured artist in all nine volumes of the Kana de Manga/ Kanji de Manga series, and she also illustrated Manga University's Manga Cookbook. Chihiro, her husband and their son live in Yokohama, where they enjoy fine food, fast cars and high fashion.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Japanime Co. Ltd. (June 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4921205094
• ISBN-13: 978-4921205096
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #607,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good books, but weird organization of the volumes, January 19, 2007

By 

Kirt Senser "Self Educator" (Crofton, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kanji De Manga Volume 4: The Comic Book That Teaches You How To Read And Write Japanese! (v. 4) (Paperback)

While I do like these books, and I have found them to be useful in my and my families learning of kanji, they are organized in a completely non-sensical way. At the back of each book, they proclaim that they are useful in studying for the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficieny Test) exams. They are useful.. just not comprehensive.

For example, Volume 1, which has 80 kanji in it to learn, (despite what the paragraph at the back of the book says) is NOT the full list of kanji you would need to learn to pass the first level exam (JLPT4). The JLPT4 test requires 103 kanji at the current time, as well as like 700 vocab words, and basic grammar and listening skills. If you were to just study this book, and nothing else, you would surely fail.

At first I thought maybe the authors had just made an error and meant to say that the books were organized loosely based on the elementary school grade level. However, this is also not true. An example of this is ("hana") which is a grade level 1 kanji taught to first graders, but is in fact in Volume 2.

The only other glaring problem I've found with these books is the lack of any sort of English definition lookup or table of contents. While you can look the kanji up if you know the spelling in kana, being able to look it up in English would've been really nice. However, the books are cheap and fun and pretty easy to use.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Don't buy for Kindle, May 24, 2010

By 

Chris (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kanji De Manga Volume 4: The Comic Book That Teaches You How To Read And Write Japanese! (Kindle Edition)

Like another reviewer mentioned, it's very difficult to read on the Kindle. Putting it in landscape mode makes it worse. I don't see myself going through this book. I feel like I've wasted $8. Pay the extra $2 and get the paperback. I give it 4 stars for content, but 1 star for readability on the Kindle.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kanji de Manga series is great!, April 14, 2010

By 

Neehone Jean (Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kanji De Manga Volume 4: The Comic Book That Teaches You How To Read And Write Japanese! (v. 4) (Paperback)

I own all of the books in the series. I wouldn't consider them the best in terms of teaching, but they're fun to look at and fit right in my laptop bag without adding much weight, so I find myself using them a lot and therefore learning a lot too. These books are a great example of a user-friendly experience.