Episode 000: Pilot 

Welcome to the Manga Sensei comic! We’ve worked with native Japanese speakers, illustrators, and our team of Japanese experts to provide you with engaging language learning material for long term growth. We are very excited to begin sharing our new and improved comic with you. But before we officially begin our weekly releases of our new comic, we’d like to share the our old comic before our relaunch. Take this episode as a preface to the story and an introduction as to how we will be teaching you Japanese through our weekly comic. 

We’d like to explain a few important points of the comic with you before we jump in. You will notice that none of the comic is in English, however, we have provided translations for words in a panel below each frame. The next thing that you will notice is that the first frame of every episode includes block of text, which will be key to understanding the different aspects of Japanese we will be analyzing in each lesson. This will constitute a large part of the lesson each week. As we progress through the story, each week will have an explanation about one or two grammar point and core concepts. Each week will build on top of the past weeks and will develop slowly through the basics of Japanese into more intermediate and some advanced Japanese. The aim is to help you grow through the comic. Now, if you are thinking “I already can speak Japanese I just want to practice, no worries, just don’t look at the cheat sheet below each frame. You can just enjoy the exciting story and native conversation. But just in case, they are there to help you. 

Also, you will need to know Hiragana and Katakana to read this comic. If you don’t know Hiragana, Katakana, or any of the other basic principles of Japanese grammar, please check out our 30 day challenge.  You can download our free Hiragana and Katakana Chart, look over grammar you don’t understand, and learn Japanese grammar day-by-day if you are brand new to Japanese.

Now, on to your first lesson!

Grammar: Japanese is a SOV language. That means that the sentence order is Subject – Object – Verb. Which you will notice very distinctly in the original first episode of Manga Sensei. The subject/topic of each sentence is distinctly said in the beginning of each frame. 

You should also notice that there are no spaces in Japanese. All the symbols crunched together. There is no need for spaces because of something called particles. Particles are markers that indicate what each part of the sentence is doing. While we will explain the particles each individual as we go along, notice that there are a couple of hiragana symbols that have the * symbol beside them. This is to indicate that it is a particle. Particles are the key to understanding Japanese and are easy to get used too. In the beginning you will want to seek the particles out so you can break down everything that is happening. 

*For more information regarding particles in Japanese, check out our 30 Day Challenge starting at Day 3 and read onward.