Customer Reviews:
  Good books, but weird organization of the volumes January 20, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 ??(???"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.
 80 more Kanji to memorize, still fun as ever! March 23, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
As with the previous Kanji de manga books, the third volume comes with clever drawings that will help you learn another essential 80 Kanji. The yellow cover is a bit much for me, but other than that, this book is great.
Great for beginners November 16, 2005
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
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.
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