I know of some sites that have free unlicensed manga (I'm not looking to buy anything), but I don't know which to choose. Does anybody here have any for recommendation? Which do you think would be easy for a beginning reader, or that are just really interesting? Any genre, I really don't mind.... (except maybe a really mech-y one :/)

Exactly how much of a 'beginner' are you? If you've just done Heisig and nothing else I'd think that nearly all manga would be way too hard.

sheetz Wrote:Exactly how much of a 'beginner' are you? If you've just done Heisig and nothing else I'd think that nearly all manga would be way too hard.

No manga is too hard with a good dictionary by your side, right?

Crayonmaster, find a manga that you like the style of. Don't worry about difficulty level. Dive right in. It might be slow and painful at first, but you'll start seeing a lot of words over and over again and it will get easier.

As for your original question, I'm not really sure. I've used this site in the past http://sakurahana.com/forum/manga-raws/.

Good luck!

sheetz Wrote:Exactly how much of a 'beginner' are you? If you've just done Heisig and nothing else I'd think that nearly all manga would be way too hard.

I've been sentencing for about a month, and I'm almost through Tae Kim's essential grammar.

sethg Wrote:No manga is too hard with a good dictionary by your side, right?

Haha, yeah right. NOT! A lot of naive beginners think so, though.

I actually think you'd be better off reading an easy novel because it's more likely to use "proper" japanese. Manga tends to use a ton of nonstandard language which would be almost impossible for a beginner to understand. If you really want to dive into manga I suggest working your way through the Japanese in Mangaland series of texts, too. Then choose a manga based on your own interests.

^ Manga does have images though. If someone's riding on a mech firing a machine gun, you've got a good idea of what they're gonna say before you've even read it. Plus it helps to associate words & images, e.g. you might see the word for "bullets", "ammo", "reload", "die!" etc. and the associated picture will help to reinforce the word.

sheetz Wrote:

sethg Wrote:No manga is too hard with a good dictionary by your side, right?

Haha, yeah right. NOT! A lot of naive beginners think so, though.

I actually think you'd be better off reading an easy novel because it's more likely to use "proper" japanese. Manga tends to use a ton of nonstandard language which would be almost impossible for a beginner to understand.

I tend to agree with this. I started an easy novel I'd already read in English once and it is way easier to follow than manga dialogue. (for me) Dialogue in Japanese is confusing enough when I'm talking to people that reading it is even worse. But novels have lots of scene setting and describe the voice and so on. It's definitely doable.

harhol Wrote:^ Manga does have images though. If someone's riding on a mech firing a machine gun, you've got a good idea of what they're gonna say before you've even read it. Plus it helps to associate words & images, e.g. you might see the word for "bullets", "ammo", "reload", "die!" etc. and the associated picture will help to reinforce the word.

Exactly. Dictionary + Inferences from images = you can get by. As for non-standard language, ask a Japanese friend. It's not that hard... I've never found manga to be like an incredibly challenging thing with a little effort.

Novels are good, too, though. Just depends on what you like and what you don't like.

sethg Wrote:Just depends on what you like and what you don't like.

Truer words were never typed.

Nothing is too hard, when it is interesting to you. The first few pages of Murakamis Umibe no Kafka were hell on earth (first Japanese novel I decided to read), but as the story unfolded I could not let go anymore. It was esentially the same for many games and many mangas before. Just read some pages and you will soon know if it is interesting to you.

These are the three main sites I use:
http://mangahelpers.com/ #good one, but they didn't have some of the manga I was looking for.
http://www.jcafe24.com/ #need to sign up and post once to download, but they have loads of raws
http://gotlurk.net/ #need to use IRC to download but they have some really rare stuff like keroro gunsou

As for which manga to choose, I would suggest anything as long as it has furigana, it should be easy enough. If it doesn't have furigana they are usually a lot harder to read and its a pain to look up words using them.

*edit* Some suggestions
Dectective Conan

One Piece: Awesome, but hardish to read since almost everyone talks strange

Fairy Tail: Looks similar to One Piece but slightly easier to understand as people don't talk as funny

Dragon Ball: Original Dragon Ball, the whole thing was reprinted recently and there are some really high quality scans. Bit confusing sometimes as kanji aren't used all the time.

To-Love-Ru: Easy to read, but very high on the fanservice. Wouldn't recommend reading this one at work / school...

ケロロ軍曹(Keroro Gunsou): Haven't got round to reading this one yet, but if it's anything like the anime, I would imagine it isn't too hard to read. Really weird and random.

If you're having trouble finding something to read, I find just browsing through the Winny Club section at Jcafe usually helps me find something.

welldone101 Wrote:

sheetz Wrote:

sethg Wrote:No manga is too hard with a good dictionary by your side, right?

Haha, yeah right. NOT! A lot of naive beginners think so, though.

I actually think you'd be better off reading an easy novel because it's more likely to use "proper" japanese. Manga tends to use a ton of nonstandard language which would be almost impossible for a beginner to understand.

I tend to agree with this. I started an easy novel I'd already read in English once and it is way easier to follow than manga dialogue. (for me) Dialogue in Japanese is confusing enough when I'm talking to people that reading it is even worse. But novels have lots of scene setting and describe the voice and so on. It's definitely doable.

I find long, long pages of Japanese text to be a little intimidating... I want to start with something a little more colorful to help me get comfortable before I break into literature. Plus, mangas are fun and interesting to me. I can enjoy the ride even if I don't understand everything.

@bombpersons: Thanks for the websites, I haven't seen those yet. I'll look into the manga you recommended.

I've tried reading a few light novels...*MUCH* harder than manga... I usually make it about a page in until I get tired of looking up every other word...

I find novels so much harder to read than manga... Even light novels which are supposed to be super easy to read. I think the reason is that there's so much descriptive text, and therefore the author is more free to use a wide variety of vocabulary and metaphors, as opposed to manga which is mostly just speech and therefore much simpler. It's a relief to get to dialogue sections in a novel because I can read the dialogue so much easier than all the descriptive stuff. Of course I want to get better at reading novels, but for a beginner I really think manga is the way to go.

I think light novels are slightly harder to follow than manga, but it depends a lot on the manga and the light novel. In a manga if you don't understand something fully, you can usually rely on the pictures to get the geist of it, in a light novel, you're on your own.

REAL novels though, now we're talking. I can read most light novels just fine without a dictionary, but I can't even begin reading real novels, at least not the ones i've tried so far. The difference is just astounding.

In my opinion it depends on practice and - most importantly - interest. Reading Manga can help, but if your goal is being able to read novels, you will most probably not reach it without reading novels. Personally, I have a harder time reading some light novels (e.g. the Haruhi series) compared to most "real" novels, simply because they did not turn out to be very interesting to me. The novels I find difficult to read are also those that are not particulary interesting.

Yes, the difficulty level varies a lot, even among works of the same genre. There may be light novels harder than normal novels, for instance.
I remember that when I read 筒井康隆（つつい やすたか）'s book 笑うな , most of the short stories were quite easy, but some of them not so much. There's one story I had to skip totally because I couldn't stand reading even one page...



Going off-topic, I think I will need to create an heisig story in order to remember which kanji belongs to Tobberoth and which to Evil_Dragon

Maybe "novels" wasn't quite the word I was looking for, but I mean easy books in Japanese. For instance, 銀河鉄道の夜 ("Night on the Milky Way Train") by 宮沢賢治, which is listed in the free audiobooks thread, is quite easy to read. Reading it online allows you to use Rikaichan and if you get stuck you can always look at the translation. Or books translated into Japanese, such as Le Petit Prince or Harry Potter, where you can keep an English copy of the book nearby to refer to.

Do all light novels have anime illustrations? Some times I just see small paperbacks, no pictures, no anime art. Are they just small normal novels, or might they count as light novels too?

nac_est Wrote:Yes, the difficulty level varies a lot, even among works of the same genre. There may be light novels harder than normal novels, for instance.
I remember that when I read 筒井康隆（つつい やすたか）'s book 笑うな , most of the short stories were quite easy, but some of them not so much. There's one story I had to skip totally because I couldn't stand reading even one page...



Going off-topic, I think I will need to create an heisig story in order to remember which kanji belongs to Tobberoth and which to Evil_Dragon

His just means "A lot of dragons" I think, mine means "verbose" and is a joke about my post count

yukamina Wrote:Do all light novels have anime illustrations? Some times I just see small paperbacks, no pictures, no anime art. Are they just small normal novels, or might they count as light novels too?

Absolutely not... For example, ホームレス中学生 has no anime near it.

A light novel is just a small novel meant to be easier to read.

Tobberoth Wrote:His just means "A lot of dragons" I think, mine means "verbose" and is a joke about my post count

なるほどなぁ

I'm pretty sure it's still unlicensed -- Reading Yamada Tarou Monogatari is what took me from the beginner to intermediate stage of manga reading. It is the story about "the boy with no faults.. except for that he's poor!" <-- "そんな彼の唯一の欠点は。。。貧乏な事である！" At first it was tough to read, but once past the first volume, I felt a huge level up in my reading ability and speed.
This story revolves around Tarou who's always trying to make as much money as possible with many part time jobs. He's a poor high school student with 6 siblings, a somewhat sickly mom who doesn't work (and always splurges on clothes and tacky, expensive "artwork") and a father who travels the world painting pictures (that usually can't sell). And everyone at his rich kid highschool (Tarou's exempt from tuition because he's the top of his class) thinks he's a true "お坊ちゃん" and there are even some rumors that he's a prince with European lineage.

The comedy in this manga is the best I've ever read. Here's a link to the scans at manga helpers:
http://mangahelpers.com/downloads/read-o...manga=2061

I learned a lot of Japanese from this 14 volume manga, especially money/business related words. One of the best things I've done for my Japanese. If anyone wants scans beyond volume 5 I'll be happy to upload.

A great place for raw manga is:
http://raw-manga.blogspot.com/

Many are sure to be unlicensed since they were just recently released in Japan.
Lots of rare series that you can't find anywhere else.

”＝＝The comedy in this manga is the best I've ever read. Here's a link to the scans at manga helpers:
http://mangahelpers.com/downloads/read- … manga=2061

I learned a lot of Japanese from this 14 volume manga, especially money/business related words. One of the best things I've done for my Japanese. If anyone wants scans beyond volume 5 I'll be happy to upload.＝＝””

Ｔｈａｎｋ　ｙｏｕ　ｓｏ　ｍｕｃｈ！！！

Comedy? ふりがな？！ My...my god. You're a god send.