暁のヨナ 1

The sheltered princess Yona has to flee the palace because of a betrayal. With her trusted bodyguard, she searches for assistance, and learns of an ancient legend that might be the key.

It’s a pseudo-historical fantasy and there’s plenty of vocabulary. Some words/expressions only show up in JP/JP dictionaries. There are grammar patterns from N2, N1, and outside the JLPT range. The cast of characters is wide, including royalty, warriors, lowlifes, friends, and peasants. It has stylized character speech, and dialects. Phrases are often spelled creatively. Kusanagi often neglects to put spikes on the speech bubbles to show which character is talking, so you need to be strong at identifying the speaker based on the content and speech style. If you continue with the manga in further volumes, there are battles, politics, and assorted adventures.

None of this is a problem for readers who are comfortable with materials in the N2+ range, and as I learned more of the N1 patterns this manga stopped being difficult for me. But when I first started with volume 1, even though I could read children’s books and novels in the 25~30 range, there were many parts of this manga that I didn’t understand until I checked it against the matching anime episode or English manga.

I read this with little idea of what was going to happen — I’d watched the anime once years ago and remembered almost nothing, and had not read the translated manga. My experience was closer to that of someone reading this totally fresh than a fan who knows the story well. I had a rough time until volume 5. I’m currently on volume 11 (past what the anime covered) and it feels comfortable now, and I’m enjoying having a compelling and new-to-me story to make Japanese practice fun.