Reviews
(3.50/5)Grammar is my Achilles heel when it comes to studying, so I was excited when I came across this textbook. That excitement has quickly perished. The manga portions are fine. They are written/read left to right, making them a bit awkward to read if you read manga normally. (Also, the art looks a bit like somebody traced deviantart bases, but hey! It gets the job done!) The grammar explanations that come after the manga, however, are…rough. A lot of the nuance necessary for understanding upper-intermediate grammar is missing and often overly simplified. As an example, here is the textbooks entire explanation of the もの(だろう)か grammar: 「てほしいという気持ちを表したい時に使う」Here is a portion of Bunpro’s (a free to access website) explanation 「Ａができたらいいのに」、「(A)はする方法がないだろうか」といった意味で使われる表現です。 While it isn’t the worst resource (it has fairly good reviews on Amazon), I don’t think it’s worth the money.
Not extensive, but good in its own way
This is the best resource for those who got stuck at the end of N3, like me. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to progress to N2 because every time I tried, the more traditional textbooks all seemed impossible to understand at my level. What I needed was exactly what this book offers :
--> A simple, easy to digest introduction to N2.
This means two things :
A) This will not be enough to finish the whole N2 level, it will just give you basic knowledge about all the grammar points, then you need to follow up with a second more in-depth book of your liking.
B) This is a great book to do some quick last review sessions before the test, but only for the grammar section. There is no big reading section and no proper JLPT audio practice.