Woooooo!!
To be fair, it doesn’t take that much to comprehend the gist of a story in these children’s books. Maybe only like 60-70% comprehension to be following the plot.
Book 2 chapter 1
I actually got lost during the conversation between the police officer and the thief, because at first I didn’t realize it was two separate guys talking. Then I was still confused, until my brain decided to remember that けいさつ means police and I just learned it on wanikani! Suddenly the whole conversation retroactively made sense.
Ahhhhh, this makes sense.
Yes! It’s cool, especially seeing two different Zenitendou customers interact. I was really surprised to see that happen, but it makes perfect sense to expand the world in that way. I agree with all you’re saying about how any wish can conceivably be fulfilled by Beniko. That opens it up so much more. Also, in terms of brakes on the wish, it seems like they’re a little stronger when the customers are kids. Adults seem to have worse misfortune when they run afoul of the Zenitendou. (Like, the thieves from the haunted ice chapter got followed by ghosts for their entire lives 
)
I feel like what you’re saying about the point not really being moral lessons ties into our confusion with the very first chapter, how the girl actually gets rewarded because she eats the human candy too soon and is a star swimmer the rest of her life. It kind of shows that this series isn’t necessarily about cause and effect punishment but a more open ended kind of exploration. The Zenitendou feels very classic in that way, like something from a folk tale, where it’s not necessarily telling you what’s right to do, it’s just saying that you better read the instructions/heed the warning. Anything else that happens is your fault.
I’m sure you could listen to these audio only since you’ve already read so many. I can see a few ways to train listening… You could relisten to stories you’ve already read, or you could listen ahead without reading, then read the volume afterwards to check comprehension. You could also listen and read at the same time with new stories.
Yes, I’ll definitely need to read this one after trying audio only once. Here’s what I got:
Book 2 chapter 2
Our hero’s mom is sick ): so her wish is to heal her! She gets the Doctor whatever (I forgot what the sweet was called) which comes with glasses and bottles or something. Anyways she puts on the glasses and with them on she can see a different color smoke around the head of sick people. There’s also a voice that tells her which medicine to make based on which color smoke. She goes out and heals a bunch of people of their ailments while consulting the voice thing, yay!! (here I’m thinking, wow, I’m basically the best at Japanese ever??) Then one day she happens upon some guy who has something to do with baseball. Something something… something something… Genki drink… something something… the genki drink is not the genki drink but it’s orange juice instead… something something baseball teams…
So yeah, totally lost me there. 
Sounds like a good idea! I’ll for sure comment every time I finish a story.
Not guilty!! It wasn’t me that started all those books!!
But yeah, my plan is to finish this volume of Goosebumps then read the second volume of Zenitendou. Not sure if I will try listening to the rest of the book 2 stories first or not. It’s a good challenge, but it gets frustrating when the comprehension dips too low.
