Naruto Fan Tries Learning Japanese From the Anime in Viral Video

When it comes to Naruto, you can watch the show in a variety of ways. The series has been dubbed and subbed into all kinds of languages, but there are some fans who say no version can top that of the Japanese. This means some fans have tried to learn the language just to watch Naruto, and a now-viral video follows one such fan who goes on that journey.

The video in question hit Youtube the other day thanks to Xiaomanyc, a popular channel with over three million subscribers. It was there the user, who is known for affinity with foreign languages, decided to challenge himself. To better their Japanese, Xiaomanyc streamed himself watching Naruto for ten hours to see how well he could pick up the language from immersion below.

“Today I decided to try to learn to speak Japanese by watching the entire first season of Naruto in Japanese in a single day, 10 continuous hours, with no English subtitles. The idea is: how much Japanese can I learn by completely immersing myself in Japanese with absolutely no English at all? Learning like a baby would,” the user shared with fans.

“I know there’s a lot of debate over whether it’s possible to learn Japanese by watching anime, and in this video we’re going to find out. It’s a crazy experiment that I’m not really expecting to succeed very well but I think the results will be interesting.”

By the end of the video, it is clear that Xiaomanyc has an opinion on the test. The user says he would not recommend this method of learning to people who have no prior experience with Japanese. The language is too complex to grapple through ten-hours of immersion alone, but this experiment does have an audience. Xiaomanyc did recommend people who are studying Japanese at a beginner or intermediate level to give non-subbed anime a shot. The linguist said he took in a lot of vocabulary from the marathon as well as some good listening habits. But if you were hoping to speak Japanese fluently from Naruto, well – you may want to temper your expectations.

What do you think about this Naruto experiment? Have you picked up any Japanese from watching anime? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB.