First off - All the other reviews of "Kanji De Manga Special Edition: Yojijukugo" are old and this is no longer formatted improperly for the Kindle Fires. The previous reviews which state it is small, blurry and/or the picture/text is on a tiny part of the screen only (as sometimes happens in badly formatted books or pictures within them) are out of date. This looks great on my Kindle Fire 8.9" HD and HDX. Not sure on regular Fire - I do not have one - but you could always download a sample to check it out before buying!
Secondly - I have only just started my foray into learning Japanese. I have a number of movies that I love that sort of paved the way for me wanting to learn the language and I picked up a bunch of fun starter books and tools to get me going. I am not worried about learning fast. Engaging and fun is more my style, since this is for casual personal enrichment, and this series seems to be lovely for that.
I have only just skimmed these books (I got four of the first in the series "De Manga"), but as I continue to use them I will update with specifics about any in depth pros and cons. For now, please feel free to read my thoughts on these tools, so far:
PROS:
-Inexpensive. There are free tools. There are expensive tools (Rosetta!). This isn't free, but 6.99 for each of the Kindle versions of the "De Manga" books is a good deal, especially if you enjoy and use them!
-Fun! These books are heavily illustrated with cute manga images. The text is informative, but peppered with cute story/scenarios.
-Cultural references are woven into the stories and the idioms. It is interesting to learn these things about Japanese culture as much as it is fun to learn some common Japanese idioms!
-Bite-size learning. The books are not too long and the passages are not too verbose. You will not be fluent after reading one book, or two, but if you can keep up with it - because it's fun! - then each book will have you this much closer to your fluency needs.
-Books are also not too short. I know length of book does not always scale with quality of book, but... how many times have you bought a Kindle eBook and flown through it in a few minutes only to discover that the "bargain" book on "whatever topic" was only 46 pages long? I got zinged in my early Kindle days, but now I always check for length of content before I buy. At ~144 pages this is a decent sized book and the content is roughly one idiom per page. (Note: There wasn't a table of contents and I am not going to count, so don't quote me as saying there are exactly 144 yojijukugo!)
-If you are on the fence check out a sample! This series has a nice sample size, which shows the beginning basics pages as well as a number of the idiom pages. So, you get a good showing of what this has to offer. Super nice compared to the books where all you get to sample is the Forward or the "Tools you will need to watercolor" (...with not one image shown of watercoloring style or the teaching techniques!). I can't say how many books I have passed on because of the subpar sample, but that won't happen to you with "Kanji De Manga Special Edition: Yojijukugo".
CONS:
-Although it may seem obvious that this small volume is not going to be your end all/be all of Japanese language tools-- I wouldn't say this book in particular is a very standalone beginners book. You can figure things out, but I think having some basic knowledge/resources (i.e. some of the groundwork from Vol 0, 1 or 2 in the "De Manga" series or some other foundational knowledge of hiragana and katakana) may be helpful.
-Same as above, without other outside sources, I have NO IDEA if these phrases are commonly used or if some of them will be as well received as me bursting out with "Yer darn tootin'!" in Southern California. Since it may be an eternity before I go to Japan, this is not a concern at this moment.
If you think you want to learn a bit of Japanese in a fun way, this book - and the series - may be just the thing to get you started. You will be more likely to enjoy this learning if you like manga, comics, art, etc., but you may like it without that prerequisite as long as manga doesn't turn you off altogether.
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Call of Kthalia
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