Is Yotsuba to! Really the Best Manga for Japanese Learning? | よつばと！Manga Review

I feel like it's the best for N5 beginners like me, but like any manga, it's usefulness drops as your knowledge of Japanese rises.

Is there manga for N5, newest beginner? It doesn't even have to be manga. Maybe a book of short stories or readers.

More videos like this grading media being good for immersion please!

My first manga is Yokai watch, and currently I’m doing Genki 1 (almost finished and moving on to Genki 2). And it’s pretty easy and digestible. I only had to use dictionary on a few words. But imma probably give this one a shot.

Crrr

Yotsuba& is the best manga manga

please do more of these for other series! I am learning Japanese and would love more recommendations for good easier to read manga

One of my goals is being able to read Steel Ball Run in Japanese, because it's my favourite manga.
I'll definitely start with some slice-of-life mangas though, so that when I get to SBR, I can enjoy it without struggling to understand stuff.

I started this immediately after being able to read Hiragana and Katakana due to the frequent recommendations. Well, that was definitely too early ;). But after getting more acquainted with general Japanese grammar through your Genki series (visualizing parts of sentences was really key) so that I was able to extract single words and throw them into translators, I was able to get back into it. Even as someone who cannot deal with children IRL, I found this to be perfect. It's a great mixture of humor and a heartwarming atmosphere, so the Manga managed to keep me engaged by simply making me feel comfortable. It's really hard to describe, but I just felt at peace while working through the Manga. So I spent my evenings with the Manga on my desk with a translator and an English translated version open on my PC if all else fails. Definitely a great daily practice and I loved my time with it, although I also got a bit bored of it around the final editions. As a super early beginner, I just kept in mind that Yotsuba's parts are not as important, so I sometimes didn't bother spending too much time deciphering them to not learn something wrong.

One really good manga that is the same level as youtsubato isトモちゃんは女の子！and it's really good by the use of vocabulary and the simple grammar, the manga is like one chapter per page and it's really good paced and short (only 7 volumes)

I bought 15 volumes second-hand from Yahoo! Auctions for 50 bucks. Granted there was an additional shipping fee of 20 and import tax, but by the end I had all 15 available volumes for around 75 bucks.

can you review more of those dozens of manga you read in a month?

Yotsubato is very good for basic level learners, next would be Peppa Pig Japanese dubbed and books.

One that I'd love to read in Japanese is Flying Witch... as that's a really nice gentle series to get into. I've watched the anime and have the first 7 volumes of the English manga!

Love this channel! I’m curious if you know of anime that is good for learning useful grammar? I grew up in Japan but only speak very childish japanese, and I’m totally confused about what is a good/right way to say things as an adult. Would love to learn to read one day, but that has to wait…

i want Andy to read me a (English-subtitled) bedtime story, but really put in extra effort with the voices! make the bad guy sound really scary! make the hero sound really strong! make the scared villagers sound really afraid!

I have purchased the whole set from Japan, so I'm going to read them anyway! But they were expensive to get here to Australia.

I recommend Aku no Hana for beginners instead.

I enjoyed this kind of series. Helped me motivate studying nihongo on the side. Pls continue this series

ah yes, I have that N1 text book

Could You talk about Chibi Maruko chan manga next? This was very helpful :)

I got all 15 volumes on ebay for about 100 dollars Canadian so around 6.6 dollars each

日本語流暢ですな
He can speak Japanese frequently

"I understood all the words in that. How about you?"
nope
"THE END"

This is very interesting to me. Please keep making these. I'm at the point where I need to start ingesting media so I'm hopeful to find the right stuff to start with.

I like Yotsuba. I guess I’m getting old and enjoy more peaceful manga. Also it reminds me of when my kids were younger and i had to teach them how to use words and stuff

Legit just bought the books yesterday. They arrive today

I read the entire series as it's often recommended to learners. I found the story and content very entertaining and there were many moments that made me laugh out loud. That said, from a learner's perspective, there were several times where I struggled with slang or Yotsuba's childish mistakes or jokes that I didn't have the background needed to understand. Also I think there were times where Yotsuba would speak, but words that are commonly written with kanji were written with kana. This made guessing the intended meaning a bit difficult at times. I think if you have a native Japanese friend that you can ask for assistance, this series is definitely worth a read if you enjoy humor or slice-of-life stuff.

Personally I'm not a fan of kids IRL but reading Yotsubato I absolutely loved it. Of course though it's definitely better to just read a few volumes at a time, I can see it getting boring if you read 10+ in a row haha.

Have you tried からかい上手の高木さん? That's personally one of my biggest go-to recommendation for beginners. The spinoff, からかい上手の元高木さん, is even easier but probably not that interesting if you haven't read the main series haha.

I love your channel as a japanese beginner, and will definitely go hunting for Yotsubato for cheap when i go to japan in january.
Your video of how you would learn japanese if you could start over has loads of amazing suggestions. I've been considering joining your subscription for a couple weeks now but have found it hard to justify as I am a uni student. Though I think I am going to bite the bullet soon, mostly for the shadowing and other listening content.
I would love some suggestions of other manga, books or even games (3ds, switch or ps4) i should buy when i go japan and can grab them for cheap.
Thanks for making a great channel

I found the entirety of this at my local bookstore for 10 cents a copy because they didn't know what to do with it. I almost felt like I was stealing it; I was so happy.

You can still enjoy the series even if you don't care for kids! I personally hate kids (sorry people with children lol) but I really love the Yotsuba books. She's too cute and the books are honestly hilarious, none of the books have failed to make me laugh; the random humor is so on point (Not sure how it reads in the Japanese books, but my favorite line is yotsuba singing a song "We are all living! And living is pain!")

I would absolutely LOVE if you did one of these for Chi's Sweet Home too. As someone who's goal is manga and anime, even if it's an easy kid manga I'd consider that a win. ^^

I already read the english translated one but now I think I will try to find the raw version. I like the story, its relaxing and funny

Yotsubato is great! CDJapan have the whole physical set for Yotsubato for quite cheap-ish, at least when I looked at it. Probably nothing beats going to Book Off haha :D
Nichijou is supposed to be the other easy to approach manga...
Unfortunately for me I really wanted to read one Josei series Atashi no Lion / My darling Lion and Psyren... I did not look at anything else and would "re-read" these overand over haha

Hey i have a question, can you do a video on can ghibli movies help you with learning japanese?

Thank you so much for this series! As someone who is almost done Genki 2 (using your awesome course btw) and long finished RTK, I'm at the point in my learning journey where I'm starting to read manga and visual novels. The timing is perfect!

Personally, I've been finding that my interest in the content is more important than the difficulty (so long as I can at least understand some of it). For example, I love romance stories, but most of those are above my level (given the age demographic that they're written for). However, my motivation is really high to read something that I really want to understand, even if I'm spending a ton of time in the dictionary.

Any concerns with this type of approach? I've been getting somewhat comfortable with not understanding everything, and if nothing else, it gives me a goal to work towards when re-reading in future.

Thanks again for all that you do! These reviews, the courses, everything! I've already bought the Quartet books and plan to continue when I wrap Genki 2 :)

I bought this a few years ago since, as you say, it's recommended for beginners. It was too hard for me as a beginner and also I just found the character really annoying and badly behaved. I'm a bit more advanced now so perhaps I should try it again.

Hey Andy, is there any manga that you would recommend more then Yotsubato for beginners?

Yotsubato is not only about the kids mishaps and funny adventures, i feel like its about exploring and looking at things from a different "deep"/kids perspective and also, about what its like to raise a child.
when the Yotsuba, her dad and dad's sister went to the mall to get a school bag for the first time, and the Dad realized, that Yotsuba has grown so much in so little time - i also got teared up like Yotsuba's dad T_T
or when they went to find stones/rocks - i looooved that chapter, when some rando on the street showed them the way - and the details on those stones were mhhmmm mmmh! such a peaceful story)
studying wise - i think its a good read + practice for N3 level.

I bought the first book a couple of years ago because it was so highly recommended for Japanese learners, but I don’t think I finished it. I just wasn’t interested in the story.
Interest is super important to language learning (well for me anyway). Especially since I live in Japan where there are so many options. If I don’t like something I can drop it easily and try something else.
I enjoyed the first 4 books of 死役所. They were free with Kindle unlimited.
Last night I read the Kindle sample of Beserk. I don’t usually like fantasy, but it was pretty good. Might have to buy it! 😆

Yo Andy!! I'm loving this series and cant wait for more! I finally finished school so I can take my learning a bit more serious. Your videos are SO SO SO helpful!! Keep up the great work :)

I actually found this manga to be cheaper at the Japanese Amazon version.

For US, Kinokuniya has them listed between $9-12 USD depending on the volume, which is still expensive but if you have a membership and take advantage of the occasional 20% off sales it can be a decent deal for a brand new copy.

I was thinking about picking Yotsuba to! up, but I think I'll put that on hold for now.

Is there any manga that is good for the N5 level?

I dunno if I'm just stupid, but there's a decent amount of challenging vocab in these books for me. I grant my vocabulary is kind of low for N3, but I still use the wankani reading club notes when I read these books as a lot of unfamiliar words pop up throughout. Hearing it should be easy for N4 is discouraging haha.

Great video, looking forward to more of these!
Visiting a book store in Japan is difficult for me as there aren’t previews for most of the manga being sold, meaning I can’t see how difficult the language is unless I buy.
I’ll keep a lookout for Yotsuba to when I next go!

More of this please