I've been studying Japanese for about 4 years now and I've been wondering if there's any simple manga to read in Japanese. I know they're hard to come by but I do know of a few. So far, I've read...

Chi's Sweet Home
FukuFuku Funyan

And I've heard that Bincho-tan is fairly easy to read.

Any other suggestions?

Personally I find most school life manga easy to read. But the most important thing is that you like the actual manga and what it's about... otherwise you won't want to bother trying to read it in Japanese. Just go for something you think sounds interesting. If you're armed with a decent dictionary and you know some grammar you'll probably be fine. Even if you're not strong on kanji there are services like on jisho.org that let you look them up by selecting various radicals that make them up.

I heard someone say Yotsubato! was easy to read (because the main character's text doesn't use any kanji) but I think I'd probably find that harder to read. Kanji are a pain in the butt but they're pretty useful.

Last edited by mogiks at 11:52 am, Apr 4 2011

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I agree that school life manga are easiest. Also, choose ones that don't have a specialized vocabulary or you'll be looking up a bunch of words.

I've been able to read some of Nakahara Aya's works in Japanese and do fairly well, particularly Hanada and Love! Love! Love!.

I've read all that's available in raws (up to volume 5) of L-DK. This one has a good ratio of text to graphics, so you're not overwhelmed by too many words on a single page. I had to stop reading Sekai de Ichiban Daikirai raws because it was too much work to get through a page and I was losing the meaning.

Mogiks mentions jisho.org and I highly recommend it as a dictionary source if you don't already use it.

Actually a lot of shoujo mangas are pretty easy to read.

Anyway, you should try Doraemon if you're not into shoujo.

Thanks! I'm buying Yotsuba in english so I probably won't get them in Japanese unless the current publisher drops it. I do own some Doraemon volumes and I agree that they're pretty easy to read.

Some other series I forgot to mention that I've been able to read...

Most of Fukushima Haruka's series
Magical Taruruuto-kun
Stand Up!
Chibi Devil!
Dobutsu no Mori: Hohinda Mura

And that's all I can think of. If anyone has anymore suggestions, please tell me! ^_^