とつくにの少女 1

This is a world where humans have walled themselves off from the cursed beings who roam the outside. One of these beings found a little girl on the outside and is caring for her. The art is lovely and atmospheric, and the story slow-moving.

I’m uncertain how to think about the difficulty level. On the surface it seems simple, and yet I’m not sure it really is. I read it without knowing anything except what was in the blurb and Youtube trailer for the anime. But one year ago, when I was reading children’s novels like 魔女の宅急便 and 銭天堂, I think my comprehension wasn’t precise or nuanced enough to read this without missing potentially important parts unless I had help.

The dialogue is minimalist. There are many pages where there’s little to read, and what’s said is short. The drawing style is atmospheric and static, rather than action-oriented. I feel like these combine to create a situation where it becomes more important to correctly understand what’s said, and where there’s less help from the illustrations or follow-up dialogue to clarify the meaning if you don’t quite understand. For comparison, a slice of life school rom-com would probably have more action/context so it’s easier to self-correct.

Sensei speaks using some N2/N1 grammar, but the phrases aren’t always complete or spelled in the standard way. Shiva’s speech is written in hiragana, without kanji to break up the words or clarify homophones.

But there just isn’t that much text. So even if one needs to take a more “intensive reading” approach, deliberately looking up grammar points or comparing things to the English translation, it won’t be a lifetime project.