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Cute, goofy, fun little read
Overall, I liked this book! I don’t know if I love it enough to read it again, but I’m glad I got the first six of the series - I’m looking forward to reading the rest!
Vibes: I’d compare it to maybe Captain Underpants? A little bit of “gross” or dumb humor, and kind of a goofy premise, but it comes together for intended audience (and me, lol). I actually laughed out loud once - but I won’t admit which joke. ;)
Vocabulary: Since it’s for kids, there’s nothing too extreme, and a fair bit of repetition - but I did look up quite a few words. Example: I didn’t know the word for bandit =山賊(さんぞく)
“Slang”: sometimes characters use “casual” speech, or sort of “slang” (ie, maybe not covered in Genki/similar?) - one example is「仲間(なかま)はいらねえぜ」=「仲間(なかま)はいらないぜ」
Kanji: All kanji have furigana, and few kanji are used at all - this second part actually tripped me up a little bit. There were a handful of places where it was hard to tell the word breaks, whether は was a particle or start to a word, is this a noun or a verb, etc. One example is 「よろいとたて」=「よろい・と・たて」Caveat: I read the paper version; if there’s a digital version, maybe it will know how to scan/ break up the words better?
Grammar: If you only know 〜ます forms, this might be a little tough, since there’s a lot of plain form(する、なった、etc). While sentences are pretty straight forward (again, it’s for kids), there were some potentially tougher grammar points. Example 「ゾロリにほめられたいのです」
Pictures: The pictures were cute, and had some nice little touches - and helped me understand which word they mean in case of homophones, or helped sort out grammar a little bit. Bonus is that this helped motivate me in reading: “Look how many pages I read!!” - when some of them had only two sentences on the page, haha! But whatever works for motivation, I’ll take it!
Handwriting: I thought I’d mention there is some handwriting in the book in supporting images, not in the actual narration. It’s really legible (final time, target audience is kids, lol), but it’s not ~exactly~ like a font.