I’ll take a look, thanks! I loved the Nana anime, but I’ve never actually read any of her manga. (Can’t bring myself to read Nana since it’ll likely never be completed. 
)
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If you like 下弦の月, she has a number of completed series between 5 and 10 volumes. Nana I think was her opus, and unfortunately, yeah I don’t think it’ll be finished.
Yeah, Paradise Kiss has been on my list for a while too, but fashion really is not my thing. 
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I really liked Paradise Kiss and, honestly, I don’t remember anything about the fashion (except that it is part of the premise). I got a much stronger impression from the fashion element in ご近所物語 | L24?? (which I enjoyed as well, but read in French)
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If it makes you more likely to read it, ParaKiss is about fashion like Nana is about someone in a band.
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Anyone got any manga/novels/non-fiction recs about 神道 and or 仏教?
I’d like to learn more but I’m not sure where to start. Preferably level 32 or under.
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Depending on how many supernatural emelents you’re willing to include in a manga, I either have tons or zero
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Yes, actually! It will be hard to find things under level 32 because there is a lot special vocabulary to describe certain concepts for both 神道 and 仏教、but you can’t really get around that if you want to read about both in Japanese. I’d recommend starting from lighter or self help oriented books that are grammatically simple and just trying to learn some of the vocab as you go.
(Sorry in advance that I don’t have Natively links for the suggestions below. I don’t log a lot of the very random non-fiction I read here.)
A few suggestions for 仏教 related books:
自分とか、ないから。 教養としての東洋哲学 - This may be the easiest place to start. It’s lightly marketed as a self-help type book (a lot of Buddhism related books in Japanese are honestly, unless you go for very dense stuff) but includes an intro to Buddhist concepts and thought so it’s a good way to get started. There are some names that are difficult to read, but I honestly skip over those a lot of the time when they come up in Buddhism related books 
unless it’s someone very famous like Kukai or Kobo Daishi.
池上彰と考える、仏教って何ですか? - a book where the reporter/author 池上彰 writes about Buddhism as an introduction for a general Japanese audience that doesn’t know much about the history or background. It talked about the history of Buddhism and how it came to Japan, and also some of the changes it underwent and different types of Buddhist sects that formed, as well as the basic principles of each. This is a pretty solid intro (except for a long chapter about the authors trip to Tibet which could probably be skipped haha), but it has a lot of varied vocabulary and may be higher than level 32.
寂しさや不安を癒す 人生のくすり箱 - Each chapter actually focuses on different concept/lesson and how you can interpret and apply it to your own life and practice. The author is a monk, so reading this felt like getting personal advice. This felt level 32ish besides the vocab related to Buddhist terms. The author has many more books (that I haven’t checked out yet) that are self help adjacent and probably easy reads too.
Finally, not a book suggestion but there are a lot of YouTube channels ran by temples or monks discussing Buddhism or giving advice based around Buddhist learnings, so those are very great to check out for an intro too. The biggest/most famous channel is probably 大愚和尚の一問一答 
he talks clearly and slow, so his videos can be good listening practice!
A suggestion for 神道:
神社検定 公式テキスト１ 神社のいろは - I haven’t read this yet but I found it randomly on Bookwalker last week and was intrigued. Apparently there is a 神社検定 you can take related to 神道 with 10 levels (I wonder how many people take that each year?), and the book for level 1 looks like it has a lot of very comprehensive information about shrines, the buildings and history and meanings behind things. The other levels appear to cover things like legends or the Kojiki so you can mix and match based on interest. Based on the preview they don’t look very hard grammatically but there is a lot of 神道 related vocabulary. I see there are also some manga learning materials, so you could try and check those out?
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Added the ones you listed. Hopefully I got them right:
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Oh, thank you! 🫶🏻
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No problem. 池上彰と考える、仏教って何ですか? Seemed interesting, so I figured I’d find the rest of them while I was at it
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I’d be willing to include supernatural elements 
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I think I’ll start with this one. Thanks for all the recs and I’ll check out the others eventually too. Deciding what books to read this month…
Yess good listening practice I need more of that
Thank you!
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A lot of my manga interests trend towards 神社 and 巫女, so off the top of my head:
Fair warning for the last two, 甘神さんちの縁結び is a sister harem that I stopped watching not because of that, but because I got bored with it around episode 8. 神様たちのお伊勢参り we read with a book club and not a lot of us were impressed.
I’m sure I have more I didn’t see on a first pass if any of these do (or don’t 
) stike your fancy.
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Thanks for the recs! 
I think I will check out 神様はじめました | L28 and 神さま学校の落ちこぼれ | L25
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Not that I’m looking, but 五等分の花嫁 | L24 is still the only one of those I’ve enjoyed
Maybe I’ll finish the audiobook for listening challenge this month…
Has some shrine visiting as well (actually that might be its whole thing), and there is some vocab to be picked up. Idk how much you’ll meaningfully learn about 神道, but may be worth a look
I’m 2 chapters in and really enjoying so far.
Oops - I think I just started another manga (it was on my list already for a while)
If you ever find yourself interested in マリア様がみてる | L29 there will be some 仏教 vocab that comes up (mostly about Buddhist statues, and related historical events), starting from vol 9 onwards - but it’s sparse, so I wouldn’t read the series looking for that. Still I found it interesting to look up when things came up
It occurs to me: one could simply read the JP Wikipedia pages for these topics, and probably get quite a bit from that
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I’ve definitely learned about Buddhism from anime/manga, but the only thing currently coming to mind is 犬夜叉 | L27, which, don’t read/watch it for that
I’ll have to think on where else I’ve picked up knowledge about it from…
Boooring
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The little I’ve read of 角川まんが学習シリーズ 日本の歴史 | L28 has some good info, in a historical-political context. A lot of violence involved early on (around 6th century onwards), due to clashing with the indigenous religious practices (which then came to be called Shintou - even though they were not specifically related), but then later responsible for a variety of political & social reforms (for better and worse)
Yeah I guess I did pick up some stuff from 犬夜叉 too now that you mention it
Who doesn’t love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole? Definitely wouldn’t recommend without a hover dictionary
- 仏教 - Wikipedia general Buddhism, 25k+ characters
- 日本の仏教 - Wikipedia - 15k+ characters
- 寺院 - Wikipedia - Buddhist temples 4k characters
- 神道 - Wikipedia - 26k characters
- 神仏習合 - Wikipedia - syncretism of Buddhism & Shintou 11k characters
- 神社 - Wikipedia - Shintou shrines 15k characters
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Put on my list thanks
I do have in mind to read it but not atm (it’s a long series as well). Thanks for the info though 
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Apparently this is getting an anime that’s starting this season: ざつ旅 -That's Journey- | L30??
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