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(3.93/5)Slice of life starter pack
Nice, simple vocab with plenty of exaggerated character reactions and visual cues to aid in comprehension. Each episode is divided into smaller sections centered around a one-word theme, so if you don't have time to watch a whole episode at once you can take it one chapter at a time. The main character tends to repeat important words over and over because he's constantly having back-and-forths with himself. Despite its low barrier to entry language-wise, the writing is decent enough to keep adult learners engaged. Highly recommend.
pretty simple
a good starter anime. language is simple and clear. lots of repetition! entertainmentvalue is ok, stuff happens at least. above average for slice of life anime on this level.
My learning goal this year is to get an hour a day of solid listening practice in with native material and this was definitely a great series to start with for my first attempt at listening to native content that isn't part of a deliberate educational tool (up until now my sporadic listening was Satori Reader audio and sporadically listening to Japanese with Noriko).
This series reminds me a lot of Tonari no Seki-Kun which has a similar premise of one student starting a strange game and the other trying to foil it, but where that series is based more around absurd feats and Rube Goldberg-style contraptions, the pranks and teasing here are more realistic and grounded, which means you won't really have esoteric new vocab pertaining to a different theme each episode. The vocab is all pretty common, daily life stuff and I'd say that watching this with Japanese subtitles I generally got 90-95% of what was being said, and I always got what the punchline or twist was without having to think too much. I'm not sure how much of my comprehension was from listening and how much was from reading the Japanese subtitles, but I think even reading along while listening will likely have some benefit even if I do have a tendency, regardless of language, to always glue my eyes to any text on screen.
Since the stories all follow a basic formula (Takagi starts a prank, Nishikata knows he's about to get played and overreacts to try and stop it, then he ultimately plays into Takagi's planned outcome), there's good repetition of certain vocab and phrases. The plotlines are very cute and in addition to the stories with Takagi and Nishikata, there are some occasional side-stories involving their other classmates who I think might be even funnier. It's charming all the way through and there weren't any duds for me, so I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the series.
Perfect series for beginning Japanese learners
On episode 1 I could barely understand anything, and by mid-season 2 I could understand an entire episode with minimal lookups. It's really a great series. The continued gimmick of Takagi teasing Nishikata in novel ways somehow never gets old. Usually I am bothered by lack of story progression, but the heartfelt nature of this show keeps me excited to see each next episode. The anime closely follows the manga, so reading them side by side is great for reinforcing a similar set of vocab.
Great if you like slice of life and japanese comedy i guess
This anime frequently comes up in Japanese learning circles as a great stepping stone for watching native content. I can definitely say that’s true; however, I found it SO BORING that I had to drop it. That said, the slice-of-life and comedy genres aren’t really my cup of tea (although I can occasionally enjoy them). If you do enjoy those genres, though, I think this is really great material.