Review: Crystal Hunters #5, by Nathaniel French
by
Stuart Holland
This series really is a treasure. Being able to read an actual story with my still-limited Japanese is a big motivator. And this series does an admirable job of telling an actual story with an extremely constrained vocabulary. I often think of Randall Monroe’s Thing Explainer when I think of this series, and how broad a vocabulary is necessary for even seemingly simple stories. And this issue in particular has an interesting narrative where one of the characters is secretly working against the others. Communicating that separation of reader and character knowledge, again with such a constrained vocabulary, is quite the feat.
This series has also tracked with my own learning journey. I’ve recently spent a few weeks in Japan on a language course, and reading this next entry in Crystal Hunters after that practice shows me that I have really improved. I look up less, I read faster, and I understand more of the implications in the grammar. It all comes together for a great reading experience.
If you’re learning Japanese (or any of the languages Crystal Hunters is published in) then I wholeheartedly recommend it.
今度はもっと漢字を分かりました。このまんがはクリスタルハンターズ一から四までよりはやく読みました。嬉しいです！
