One anime series completed!!

I finished “Bloom Into You” this week. It’s considered “very easy” but it took me lots of time to comprehend some of the sentences without subtitles. I listened to the first few eps over and over with my MP3 player until some of the expressions made more sense.

This show was not interesting to me. The excitement of trying immersion got me through the first half, but the story was just not for me. That’s OK; if you don’t like something just move on! I did manage to finish it.

Next stop: “How Big are the Dumbbells You Lift?” which I am completely hooked on after the first episode. It’s very tongue-in-cheek and self-aware about the ridiculous body tropes in anime. Lots of slapstick about bodybuilders and weightloss in a really crazy story so far. I think I love it.

Flashcards

I am making a few flashcards per day for new words and expressions, and I also am working through a pre-made deck with all the subtitle sentences from Bloom Into You.

Audio flashcards are helping me hear things that run together in my head – the Bloom Into You cards have each sentence of audio as a separate card, with the subtitle on the back. This has been super helpful to listen over and over (on the hard ones) to split out all those pronouns and particles.

But I will probably drop that pretty soon as I’ve already moved on from the series. It’s helping but it’s boring. Gotta keep the interest level up!

Time & Effort

I am not tracking this with an app or anything. I think I’m spending 1.5-2 hours per day either watching shows on my laptop (active immersion / studying) or listening to the MP3s while doing dishes, biking, on the U-bahn (passive listening).

Verdict

One week in: so far, so good. I am already having an easier time getting thru an episode of anime. It’s difficult to “embrace the ambiguity” and just let some sentences flow past me when I have the subtitles off. I need to accept that I’ll figure out some of it later when I go back and check – or sometimes just let it go.