For January’s book I decided to challenge myself with novelized version Demon Slayer. The full title is called 鬼滅の刃 ノベライズ ～炭治郎と禰豆子、運命のはじまり編～ or roughly translated to English “Demon Slayer Novelized Tanjirou and Nezuko, Beginning of their Fate”. You can find this book on Book★Walker.
This book goes over the first part of the Demon Slayer anime. It ends on the Tsuzumi Mansion Arc.
ENTERTAINMENT
Throughout the book Tanjirou has fights with several demons with different powers, so it kept things very interesting. If you like the anime or the manga, then this book will be great for you. Speaking of the manga, instead of the usual illustrations that come in light novels, these books take pages from the manga. Really adds more style to the book while bringing up key moments that tie in with the plot.
LANGUAGE LEARNING
Honestly, at my current level, this book was hard to get through. According to Learn Natively, the level of this book is sitting at Level 30 at the moment. It could change in the future when more people read and grade it. Even so, I can see why it ranked as a N2 level book.
The grammar wasn’t to bad, but there was a ton of vocabulary that I didn’t know. The series is in the Taisho Era so perhaps that has something to do with it. Nonetheless, in this book alone I had to look up 138 words. This book does come with furigana on each kanji so it made looking things up very easy. Here are few words that I found interesting:
- 威圧感（いあつかん）- Intimidating air, sense of intimidation.
- 生殺与奪 （せいさつよだつ）- To have a life-or-death power over something.
In other words, to hold an absolute power over something or someone.
Like a boss having the power to hire (life) or fire (death) an employee. - 笑止千万（しょうしせんばん）- utterly ridiculous or absurd. This Yojijukugo was used as a description of Tomioka Giyuu’s attitude when he was telling Tanjirou to give up on Nezuko.
- 真っ二つ（まっぷたつ）- in two equal parts.
This was used when Tanjirou split the boulder in half during his training to join the Demon Slayer Corps. - 夢遊病（むゆうびょう） – sleepwalking.
Used to describe the woman who were kidnapped during the Kidnapper’s Bog Arc. This could also be a good way to describe Zenitsu when he shows off his true power. If only he could always be like that.
I’m sure that these vocabulary words don’t come up often in conversation or for tests but they were interesting. The dialogue was easy to follow but when it got to action, I found myself getting lost here and there. Luckily, if you have seen the anime you’ll have some foundation to build on.
To summarize, this book might not be the best to learn Japanese. It is a good way to test how far you have come and you get to see some interesting words. I would recommend this book to test yourself or just for enjoyment.
A SMALL JAPANESE REVIEW
鬼滅の刃というアニメ を見てから、ノベライズを読んでいます。楽しかったけど、少し難 しかったです。比べてみれば、この本は「少年探偵団」の難しさとほとんど同じです。アクションシーンはちょっとわかりにくいです。でも鬼と戦っている炭治郎みたいに頑張ろうって、本を読み終えました。
NEXT BOOK WILL BE…
怪盗レッド－５ レッド、誘拐される☆の巻
Decided to take it easier and catch up on one of my favorite series, Kaito Red. Plus, that will give me time to read more of the Detective Conan manga. Maybe I should start doing reviews for that 😉 . Speaking of manga, now I can catch up with my manga in English that I’ve been putting off this month.
Japanese Practice・日本語の練習 