Aijin Wrote:のだめカンタービレ！
'Tis the only manga I'll actually read and not feel guilty about it (though since it's about classical music it has a lot of field-specific vocabulary like 連弾)

Is that one of those that has people with long eyelashes, and every scene has lots of flowers in the background for some reason? Yes, I would also recommend those, since the more flowers there are, the less room there is for words, and the fewer words, the easier it is.

Ah, NANA is awesome.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Ah, NANA is awesome.

Yeah, but will it ever be finished? I'm starting to worry...

Hmm..

Kind of a old series, but I recommend Shin Tenchi Muyo 「新天地無用」.

Just choose any manga that's not super complex (Death Note would not be a good idea for someone who feels they are a super beginner). A lot of them have furigana, so not remembering/knowing readings won't be a problem. I started with Naruto because my friend knew I liked it and brought me vol 1 back from Japan. The best idea is: start with something you know and like, because then you're amused reading it, even if you don't know what it means, and you understand the basic story from memory. Don't choose a manga you've read too recently in English though, because that may end up just feeling pointless. But definitely don't choose a manga about a little girl finding out about things when you like swords and guns.

From my experience, just about any manga I read have the same difficulty level....doesn't matter what they're about. And I've read tons of them.

Realism Wrote:From my experience, just about any manga I read have the same difficulty level....doesn't matter what they're about. And I've read tons of them.

If this post reads disjointedly, it's because I was too lazy to rewrite the entire thing after realizing my entire post could be dismissed over the fact that it assumed you meant all manga are equally easy (which they aren't), instead of just having a smaller range of difficulty.

I'll agree that they don't have as wide of a difficulty spread as novels (mainly due to the fact that manga is mostly dialogue), but the range in the text's difficulty reflects the range of demographics: everyone from young children to twenty-somethings. The plot, vocabulary, and grammar generally get more complex and 'difficult' as the intended demographic's age increases.

So, something like 東京喰種 is more difficult (much more so, I'd say) than コイネコ (which I could read fairly early on), because of the vocabulary used.

Sure, manga, in general, have a smaller range of difficulty, but there are certainly ones that would be difficult for a beginner to understand, despite the images. In this case, the difference is having Core 2k and maybe half of 6k done and be able to read most everything without a dictionary, and looking up nearly every word in a dictionary and possibly a few grammar points.

On topic:
I'd say you should check out any manga that interest you and just see if you can read it (I'm sure you can find, uh, 'samples' if they're not available where you're shopping). Most of the series that are really popular outside of Japan aren't usually very difficult, so if you have any favorites that you haven't read in a while, you might start with those (personally, I find this a little boring, unless it's been a long time, but...)

And the target gender doesn't really say how easy or simple it'll be (though girls manga does usually deal with more 'mundane' situations (can you really call impossible romances 'mundane'?)), it's just a different set of tropes, so don't be bothered to choose one over the other for that reason.

If you really believe all manga are equally difficult (or easy), just compare any manga to デスノート. Death Note has so much complex text, it's almost like a book. When I started out a chapter of Death Note would take me over an hour to read, and they are only like 15 pages each.

Yeah, manga vary greatly in difficulty: amount of text, plot complexity, uncommon vocabulary, puns and cultural references, it all depends on the manga.

If you don't notice it, it's just that you are advanced enough in your studies that none cause you any problems, good for you. But for a beginner looking for a first manga to read in Japanese, the choice is very important.

My recommendation for a beginner is to pick something they already know. Whether you have read that manga translated already or seen the anime subtitled, it will be much more enjoyable since you won't get lost as soon as you hit a part you don't understand. Also you should be able to make a good guess as for the expected difficulty.

Anything by Urasawa Naoki is good, but most of his stuff is too hard for beginners. I loved 20th Century Boys, Monster and Pluto and I and currently working my way through the rest of his back catalogue.

I think maybe Yawara! though could be good for beginners, one of his earlier works. I only came across it recently, so it is a bit easy for me, but I wished I had found it a few years ago. It is a about a teenage girl who is a reluctant judo genius, with a bad-ass grandad who is pushing her towards Olympic glory.

Each character has a distinctive way of speaking, and the lead character (Yawara) is very easy to understand I think. Her grandad is quite hard to understand, but you'll get used to it eventually. With kanjitomo or similar I think a beginner could work their way through it.

There are 29 volumes, as well as a 124 episode anime adaption so there is plenty of material to keep a beginner busy for a long time. Once you have read a few volumes of the raw manga you should be able to start watching the raw anime with reasonable comprehension, even if you are still a beginner.

I'd resist the temptation to race ahead and watch the whole anime with English subs. While it might be enjoyable (and even educational) at the time, it will greatly reduce your motivation to work through the story in raw form, which is quite an undertaking. That is my experience, anyway. I made that mistake with Death Note and never could be bothered to finish reading it.

apirx Wrote:If you really believe all manga are equally difficult (or easy), just compare any manga to デスノート. Death Note has so much complex text, it's almost like a book. When I started out a chapter of Death Note would take me over an hour to read, and they are only like 15 pages each.

I think that's mainly due to the amount of text on each page like you said, which makes it seem much harder.

Look at a manga like Akagi, where there's also complex strategies involved, but the author is able to explain it using a lot less words. But I don't see how the vocabulary he uses are any easier than the ones in Death Note.