Let’s start talking movies. The primary concern I have right now is getting a good basic selection of movies / tv shows / anime at approximate levels. If you have suggestions and an estimate for JLPT level or Natively lvl, please let me know! Proposed format is below. Note that I ask if you watched with Japanese subs or not. If you watched w english only, please just say you didn’t watch
If you would simply like to order your submissions from easiest to hardest and not give a difficulty estimate, that’s fine too! Just state your ordering at the top of your post.
If you would like to chat about the Movie implementation, lets chat in this thread.
Example Movie Suggestion Format
[title] - [~JLPT lvl/Natively lvl] - [no subs/w subs/not watched] - [TMDB link, optional]
Examples
Attack on Titan - lvl 34 - w subs
Attack on Titan - JLPT N2 - not watched
Attack on Titan - JLPT N2 - no subs - link
Edit: Added note about ordering by difficulty rather than formal estimates
Will dubs count, too? I watched White Collar (TV series) and Encanto (Disney movie) in Japanese, for example. (Disney+ is a treasure trove for good Japanese dubs.)
[I put all the links in, but the forum won’t allow more than 2 links from a new user ^^;]
Oh no! Well i’ve bumped you up to a level one user now. Hopefully that fixes it
Dubs do get a little complicated (are there ever multiple different dubs?? Does it matter?) and I’m not sure TMDB would specify a particular dub… but I feel like I’ll have to support them because they’re so popular. Put everything down and I’ll try to figure it out.
Yes that makes sense… I also find listening (no subs) much harder and I’m sure almost everyone does. And yes I fully expect all these levels to be very approximate, but we need to start somewhere. At the very least, getting the order of difficulty of your recommendations is very useful.
I watch movies in japanese pretty much every day but I’m still not that great at understanding spoken japanese and I don’t want to fill your database with some useless data.
No worries! There will of course be the request form later on too. I’m sure though that you probably have opinions on what’s harder and whats not… but you can certainly wait till later
時計 Adieu l’Hiver - no subs, N1 ファースト・デイ [JP dub, first season] - JP subs, lower N2? ユーリ!!! on ICE - JP subs/no subs, N2 陰陽師 & 陰陽師II - no subs, N2, maybe higher end due to historical language
I feel somewhat unsure about these levels, but I hope it helps.
this is making me realize I haven’t really watched anything in Japanese… I really need to start doing that! this new feature of Natively will definitely motivate me!
This is all I’ve watched. I don’t have anything else to compare it to other than books so I hope the grading is accurate
Here’s what I remember. I haven’t watched that many things, anyway.
Anime
ノラガミ, N2 for the most part, but solid N1 if you want to understand the incantations (they bring nothing to the plot, though), no subs (because DVDs in Japan do not have them ) SHIROBAKO, easy N2 if you don’t care about the technical parts, hard N2 otherwise, JP subs ユーリ!!! on ICE, N2, no subs ハイキュー!!, N3/ easy N2, no subs (dvd) until I got Netflix, then JP subs ボールルームへようこそ, N3/easy N2, no subs 魔入りました！入間くん, generally N3/easy N2 but some characters have strange speech patterns, no subs
Drama
ガリレオ, that one is wild in terms of difficulty; N3 is enough to follow the plot but N1 if you want to follow the scientific explanations from the titular ガリレオ. I watched it around N2 and enjoyed feeling as clueless as the detective , JP subs LIAR GAME, N2, JP subs
Edit:
Yay! Well, at least, another person agrees on that difficulty.
You are right I usually can say if a movie/series is harder than another one but if you watch lots of different things you will have a hard time to remember how difficult something was.
I found something easy which I can rate the difficulty of. It’s a horror movie and they don’t talk that much. コープスパーティー Book of Shadows no subs intermediate around N3
This is based off of a personal spreadsheet I have, where I’ve rated the difficulty of all the anime/manga I’ve seen/read. I tried my best to map my personal difficulty rating to Natively’s difficulty rating system, but it might not be 100% accurate.
からかい上手の高木さん - ~L18 - Without Subs - link
可愛いだけじゃない式守さん - ~L18 - Without Subs - link
阿波連さんははかれない - ~L18 - Without Subs - link
小林さんちのメイドラゴン - ~L20 - With Subs - link
イジらないで、長瀞さん - ~L20 - With Subs - link
安達としまむら - ~L20 - Without Subs - link
ホリミヤ - ~L20 - With Subs - link
その着せ替え人形は恋をする - ~L20 - With Subs - link
佐々木と宮野 - ~L20 - Without Subs - link
古見さんは、コミュ症です。 - ~L23 - With Subs - link
やがて君になる - ~L23 - With Subs - link
ギヴン - ~L23 - With Subs - link
Below this point, I haven’t read anything at this level yet, so I’m just basing it roughly on what the level of the manga/light novel adaptations of these are.
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 - ~L27 - With Subs - link
無職転生 ～異世界行ったら本気だす - ~L27 - With Subs - link
バッカーノ！ - ~L27 - With Subs - link
処刑少女の生きる道（バージンロード） - ~L27 - With Subs - link
SPY×FAMILY - ~L29 - With Subs - link
パリピ孔明 - ~L29 - With Subs - link
かぐや様は告らせたい～天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦～ - ~L29 - With Subs - link
How do you all even give these levels / JLPT scores manually like this? I can put shows into groups of similar difficulty or tell you if one show is harder than another, but I have no idea what difficulty they would be overall.
My thought process was “if it was a book, it would be similar to 〇〇” then went with the rough category of said book. I think the complaints mentioned in the other thread that someone with a “traditional” n3 would struggle with the novels at that novel also apply here
Ultimately I will be more concerned with the comparative value of your submissions, absolutely. If you simply want to order in terms of difficulty that’s fine too.
It is just helpful when initially starting to seed a database where abouts people place the difficulty. Like would an N1 person find teasing master takagi-san challenging? Would an N4 person be able to attempt it? I think like @Naphthalene says, people are simply comparing the grammar and vocabulary to that of novels right now, which isn’t a bad way for estimating at this point.
But yes, it’s wishy washy and once we’ve got everything input we can chat more. It’ll be very approximate until we get some gradings and start to work things out.
Perhaps this ties into the JLPT discussion in the other thread!
Alrighty, I’ll post a list sometime over the next week. It’ll be good to get a relative ordering down before I forget it all anyway (probably already forgot some of it though ).
)
, JP subs
