Kanji De Manga Volume 3: The Comic Book That Teaches You How To Read And Write Japanese! (Manga University Presents) (v. 3)

These little books are a fun way to learn basic kanji. Each entry consists of a single page with one to four manga (or "comic strip") panels. The dialog is completely in kana (hirgana and katakana, which are phonetic Japanese characters) except for the featured kanji character, which usually appears a couple of times. There are English translations below, but no "romanji" (English characters). And, the translations are not word for word. So, unless you read kana fluently and already understand a little Japanese, these books won't be of much use to you. They do have a "Kana de Manga" book, which might be a better place to start, although I have not read it myself.

I have three other volumes of this series and they are a helpful way to learn to read Japanese. This book focuses on kanji, which are characters in the Japanese language borrowed from the Chinese. It features eighty of the most common kanji characters and is beneficial for travelling to Japan or for reading a Japanese newspaper. While characters can look like a confused insanity of lines, this book helps make sense of them by explaining how the various kanji were formed.

This is not an easy book to follow. Actually its easy to follow - its hard to execute. You have to really want to learn Kanji and the chinese symbols.I have the whole series - it is accurate - I drew all the different symbols, but I am certainly not fluently able to read an write Japanese by any stretch - you have to want it!

Kindle version is broken.

I took my first Japanese class recently and this book really helped me get a clear understanding of what to expect out of Kanji.

Kanji de Manga is good as far as it goes. You get the individual kanji with it's stroke-diagram and most important readings, and then you get a half-page manga scene with an English translation following each line of dialogue in the call outs. When I'm working with Kanji de Manga I have to have my Kanji Learners' dictionary, my two grammars, my basic kanji book and always wish that there were an index and dictionary of both the kana and kanji used in the book. It would make life so much simpler, and I could carrly the Kanji de Manga book around in my purse and study whenever the opportunity presents itself. But I'm not going to carry two dictionaries and a grammar book on the off chance that I'll have to wait at the post office or car wash.I'd also like this as a Kindle book (but defintely with index/dictionary).But I'm glad that I found these. A lot better than nothing. Oh, and I'm sure that it's good to learn slang and familar ways of speaking, but I don't learn basic concepts from them. And those need to be indexed too. The translation helps, but not enough.

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 花　(はな　"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.

Volume 3 deals with the last half of the Kanji needed in the Japanese Language Placement Test (JLPT) level 3. Each kanji is explained in on and kun yomi format, then stroke order is introduced. Most importantly, it presents each kanji in a short manga (comic) that introduces translations of idioms and frequently-seen-in-manga sound effects. Perfect for both the JLPT taker and those with some Japanese classes under their belt who want to pick up more words in Japanese that aren't in conventional books on the language.That said there are only about 80 kanji introduced per book, so there are cheaper books out there, but this certainly makes the learning a fun experience.

Great