月の影 影の海 (上) 十二国記 1

One day, Youko, an ordinary high school girl, goes to school on a day that should be like any other. A strange man with supernatural powers appears, calling her his master, and demanding that she go with him. Suddenly the school is attacked by monsters! In the middle of a battle she’s set on the back of a magical panther, and flown across the ocean and through the moon’s reflection into a strange world. Alone and frightened, but not powerless, she has to toughen up if she wants to survive.

This is a single book in two volumes. The story starts with a fast pace and lots of action, but in the middle (toward the end of this volume) it gets depressing and drags for a bit. Don’t stop there because it’s not the end. The second half of the story in the next volume picks up the pace and gets moving again.

I read the 新潮文庫 edition (the same one in the link above) and it has a medium level of furigana. I think the target audience is middle school and up, since kanji under that level have no furigana. Words with kanji above that level have furigana the first time they appear, but it is removed for subsequent appearances within a section. Many of these “reset” and have furigana again at the beginning of each section, so with the short chapters, you’ll get plenty of practice at testing your recognition, while still having reminders.

Considering that this series is set in a fantasy world resembling ancient China, I was surprised at how gently the author introduced the archaic and/or fantasy vocabulary. This is an oldschool isekai and the story transitions from modern Japan to the world of the 12 kingdoms gradually. The plot itself gives the reader time to learn the quirks of the author’s writing style before the fantasy vocabulary and names come. There are obscure or made-up words, but they appear gradually as Youko goes deeper into the world and has more interactions with locals. In this first book Youko doesn’t know those words or anything about the world either, so unfamiliar words might come first in katakana before she learns the kanji, or a concept will be described with ordinary modern vocabulary until one of the in-world characters tells her what it’s properly called. I was surprised and impressed by this detail. Conveniently, it makes the story more approachable for language students. If you start the series with this book, you don’t need to worry about having to learn a whole bunch of weird 12 Kingdoms-only fantasy jargon all at once.

But a heads-up: there’s a lot of N1 grammar and less-common kanji. Many common words which are usually written in hiragana have kanji. Many common words usually written with common Jouyou kanji get specific or older kanji instead. 座る becomes 坐る, which is easy enough, but ついていく as 蹤いて行く was a bigger adjustment. On one site I saw a kanji count of this book, which said it has only 1,408 unique kanji. Whether that count is accurate or not I can’t say, but it’s for certain that it doesn’t overlap well with frequency or grade-level lists, and there are lots of kanji outside the Jouyou range. However, many of these words repeat, and they’ll have furigana again in the next section. This style of furigana is great for learning and I think it helps make this book a good one for learning fantasy vocab and kanji.

Content warnings: violence, emotional abuse, suicidal ideation