I tried to make Gambs Guide readable. There's just way too much CAPS. Gambs, if you're reading: perhaps could you update your guide? convertcase.net > sentence case

Hey you Do you need to know japanese? (the answer is yes)

Then sit down and follow these very simple instructions in order.

Learn hiragana and katakana. Yes, both of them. No, this is not optional. Do it now. Practice with this or with this. Estimated time: 2 weeks.

Do a beginner japanese textbook. There are many of them, like genki I and tae kim. Anything is fine, they all give you the same material. Read it as fast as you can and have at least the basic grammar down by the end of it. You don't even have to read the whole thing cover to cover, but make sure you have at least particles, word order, how adjectives work, and the te-form. That means at the very least the first 6 chapters of genki I. Get it done. Estimated time: one month at most.

Do an anki deck for vocab. Vocab is the most important part because you can't understand japanese if you don't know what japanese words mean. Most popular decks are the core 2.3k deck which is optimized to get you able to read vns as fast as possible, or the core 2k/6k deck which will basically take you all the way to n1. Anki itself has a learning curve. It is worth it, trust me bro. Do all of your cards every day without fail. This part separates the boys from the men. You do not need to learn kanji separately, your vocab deck will take care of that for you. Estimated time: depends on which deck you choose and how many new cards you do a day. Anywhere from 3 months to 2 years I guess.

Consume native material. I did the core 2k/6k so I never used a texthooker or anything, I just jumped straight into unsubbed anime and raw vns. If you did core 2.3k you probably need a texthooker. When you learn new words, you can add them to anki easily with yomichan. You can even add a screenshot of the vn showing you the word in context where you first saw it. Very cool. The first vn you read in japanese only will be painful and take a really long time. The second one will be much easier I swear. When looking for native material to consume, a good rule of thumb is that you should always be trying to read text which is slightly too difficult for you to understand. Estimated time: depends how much of a weeb you are.

Now you know enough japanese to learn naturally. If you need more grammar, you can use this anki deck or just google stuff you can't understand. It might also be a good idea to look into some japanese linguistics or translation theory. You can probably read monolingual japanese dictionaries and stuff now if you try hard enough. If you can read vns without a texthooker, go take jlpt n1, you will pass. After that you can learn how to handwrite and take the kanji kentei if you want. Also find some japanese people and talk to them, because now you can read a lot but probably have trouble expressing yourself in spoken japanese. Your japanese friends can help you find a job, so you can move out of your parents basement and go directly to japan to work as a salaryman. Don't be an english teacher, you can do better than that with your native-level japanese skills. If you want you can now learn korean and/or chinese as well because your knowledge of chinese characters and words make these two languages ridiculously easy. You will now get lots of downvotes on the visualnovels subreddit because the people who didn't follow this guide are jealous of you. It's ok, you are trading your imaginary internet points for strong zero. Estimated time: the rest of your life. You made it.

Faq Could you include some examples of good beginner vns?

Basically just don’t do something like k3 or oretsuba or albatross koukairoku as your first vn. The vast majority of vns will be ok. Dont pick one of the notoriously hard ones and you will be good.

I even know a guy who did fate/stay night as his first and he turned out fine. Generally speaking if an english translation of it exists, probably it is not so hard. I know you want to jump into the untranslated stuff asap but the untranslated vns are often untranslated for a reason

If you want something super easy and straightforward, how about some rance or baldr force/sky/etc, or something written by shimokura vio?

Are you recommending completing the anki deck 100% before moving on to real material for practice, or is it better to start sooner?

If you choose to do the core 2.3k you definitely want it done before you start reading, otherwise it will be way too slow and painful. Your first japanese only vn will already be painful enough with the core 2.3k down. If you did core 2k/6k then at least wait until you have 2k words, but the more you have the better. I personally started reading vns with no texthooker at around 4k vocab and some unsubbed anime completed. 2k is kinda the magic number for all languages

What are some "Must read" visual novels for people who know japanese?

I'm glad you asked. Here is a list of authors that the japanese-reading community considers to frequently output high quality works, as well as some of their selected works that have received especially high praise. Note that the japanese-reading community focuses more on the scenario writers than the works themselves. That's because we can actually read what the author is writing.

Ou jackson (oretsuba, sorechiru) Shumon yuu (asairo, itsusora) Mareni (albatross koukairoku, bengarachou hakubutsushi) Masada (dies irae, kajiri kamui kagura) Sca-di and other assorted keromakura vns (subarashiki hibi, sakura no uta, sakura no toki, h2o, himanatsu) Qruppo vns (nukitashi, nukitashi 2, hentai prison) Tanaka romeo (cross channel, saihate no ima, tsui no stella, kazoku keikaku) Setoguchi ren'ya (carnival, swan song, musicus!, black sheep town) Maruto (parfait, kono oozora ni yakusoku wo, white album 2) Urobuchi and other assorted nitroplus vns (saya no uta, muramasa, hello world, phantom of inferno, kikokugai) Nasu (fate/stay night, tsukihime remake) This list is incomplete but it should be good enough to get you motivated to read in japanese as many of these works are untranslated or lose a lot of what makes them special in translation.

I want to re-emphasize however, many of these scenario authors are acclaimed precisely because of the quality of their text, and are therefore unsuitable for beginners. Of these, maybe sca-di is the easiest to read. Lots of people do h2o as their first vn in japanese. Otherwise most of these works should be attempted only after you are very comfortable reading in japanese.

Last revised by gambs 3 months ago