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The Winter 2007 Anime Raw Viewing Index

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For this Winter 2007 season, I watched all of the anime that I wrote impressions on in raw format. That is, I watched anime without the subtitles. For some, I was completely fine, and for others I had no idea what was going on. I like to think that my Japanese is pretty good. I did earn a minor in it, at least! Mainly I have issues with vocabulary; grammar doesn’t confuse me for the most part.

I thought I’d go through each of the Winter 2007 anime that I’ve watched so far to do a “raw viewing index” on them. I’ll describe how easy or difficult it is to understand each anime without subtitles. I figure other people who might be at the same level might want to know which anime is easy to watch without the aid of subs:

Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight!

Manabi Straight was easy for me to understand until they pulled out all of the student council talk. How the heck am I supposed to know about that? Maybe they’ll use more common vocabulary in later episodes, but I think I’d rather wait for subs so I don’t miss anything.

Hidamari Sketch

Hidamari Sketch was really easy for me to understand the whole way through. If I end up picking one anime to watch this season raw, it’ll probably be Hidamari Sketch. Yep, school anime is easy to understand.

Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora

Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora is probably one of the easier anime to understand raw. Since it’s a school kids anime, and a lot of vocab I learned in Japanese class dealt with school stuff, I was able to get most of what was going on. Of course, when the mecha and catgirls and whatnot start showing up, things get a little dicey, but I can probably hang.

Nodame Cantabile

Nodame Cantabile is kind of funny. I know all of the musical terms because I’m a band nerd, and they’re in Italian. The rest of the vocabulary is kind of hit or miss. I might be able to pull this one off raw, but I’d rather watch subs to get the full meaning.

Saint October

For the most part, Saint October is actually pretty easy to follow. The vocabulary used is fairly common, which is a plus. I’d say that I could probably understand about 80 percent of the dialogue, especially if I stop and look up words that I need refreshing. It’s too bad I’m not really interested in this anime…

Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpuchou

I already mentioned this in my review, but this anime makes no sense whatsoever. I dunno if it’s because of the way the story is presented, or my bad Japanese. I’d rather just watch this subbed. If the plot ends up being pointless anyway I guess I’d consider watching the anime for the pretty pictures…

Venus Versus Virus

Venus Versus Virus uses a lot of made up vocabulary which makes it hard to understand. Like the whole virus and vaccine and I dunno, I think they make other stuff up. Anyway, I’m not really comfortable watching this raw, so subs it is.

I would like to pick at least one anime to watch raw this season just so I can practice and get better at it. It’ll probably be Hidamari Sketch. I actually said I’d watch Binbou Shimai Monogatari raw a while back, but I ended up giving up after a few episodes… Hopefully I can keep it up longer with Hidamari Sketch…

6 replies on “The Winter 2007 Anime Raw Viewing Index”

how come no one is watching Getsumentoheiki Mina? Did it got licensed or something?

If you truly want to test your japanese listening skills, try all those online ラジオrajio(radio, lol) shows. It seems that all anime series have some kind of online radio shows nowadays…

i’m gonna watch it subbed tomorrow if i can but i haven’t tried out the shows of this season
(except for that double carroted girl anime-ep1)

i’m pretty much busy trying to watch other shows, but the raw subject is quite… troublesome =p

a few shows i’m already able to watch and understand around 80% of the whole thing. but well… that’s tokimeki memorial for ya =p

other shows like kiba or bleach are ok to go.
something like busou renkin and code geass are kinda easy but at the same time give some trouble. nothing that reading posts like the ones u can find with garten or hinano can’t solve it though.

i guess watching anime for at least 7~8 years is worth something ^^y

btw, sry the double post but i forgot to mention:

let’s say that 40% of my english also improved reading subtitles and sometimes reading/posting blogs

Some people are watching “Mina”, which isn’t licensed. It’s that some people don’t like Gonzo. I’m not watching it because I don’t want to pile myself up with lots of series to watch.

I want to quit watching “Saint October” and raw, but it has Koyasu Takehito-san. I’m one of those old hermits who can’t catch up with the new generation. Yeah.

Thanks for the breakdown! I really appreciate the summary. I always try to watch an anime raw if the vocabulary is suitable to my level, and this gives me a good idea of what to expect. I’d love to see more posts like this in the future.

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