There's a comic series here in Japan that's very popular with children ... and me. It's called ケロロ軍曹(Keroro Gunsou: Frog Sargeant) and actually only became popular as an animated television series. Both are hilarious, cute, and generally awesome. A perfect combination, I thought one day long ago, for learning Japanese.
Unfortunately the language used is more difficult than I expected, because the frog character (hereby referred to as Gunsou or Keroro) speaks in kinda old military-speak. But I've been making slow progress when I have time to be sitting for long periods of time with two dictionaries and a notebook. A quick web search reveals that since there is already substantial fan work being done on translating the animated series, no one seems to have bothered with the printed comic. I prefer the book and I need to learn to read, so why not?
Notes:
- I left the scans in Japanese format, which means you need to read right-to-left and up-to-down. The first two pictures in the gallery are "instructions" pictures. If you're not familiar with the Japanese reading style, make sure you check out those two pictures. They should help a lot. Above each picture you get a detailed description of what to do.
- I also left all Japanese sound-effects intact. I translated them literally and placed the translation next to them. Hence you get some strange effects like my thus-far personal favorite, "Bafusuu," which mysteriously represents the sound of bedsheets being ripped from a bed.
- Quick and dirty pronounciation tip for above-mentioned sounds: Consider that the vowel sounds in Japanese syllables are typically long. Thus the A in "Ka" sounds like the A in "Car" rather than "Cat." If you have any real questions about it (can't imagine you would) you can comment or mail me.
Here you are, the first six pages which just gets to introduce you to the main characters. Enjoy!
