How to listen

So how exactly do you expect to learn Japanese through anime?

You have to LISTEN to what they are saying. ACTIVELY listen. You can't just sit there and read the text like you are reading a book. In the beginning everything they say will say will sound like gibberish but once you start picking up phrases there will be less gibberish and more comprehension You need to hear the words they are saying and understand what it means by the text, your main goal is to pick up phrases. When you do this you will begin to hear the same sentences, words, or phrases over and over again. You will be able to say them in your head but not know what they mean. This is the point where you need to look up what they mean and put it into ANKI!

Now you know a bunch of these phrases by heart you will still notice them in anime but you will know what they mean and eventually it will just BE the meaning and you will not notice them anymore. You will then pick up more and more phrases until there aren't many words left to pick out. It kind of works like this:

Phase 1: Complete gibberish, nothing makes sense.
Phase 2: You start picking out a few words that you know.
Phase 3: You start picking out a few phrases and sentences that you know.
Phase 4: You start picking out the few words that you DON'T know.
Phase 5: Mastery of Japanese (spoken)

The main thing that you need to remember is that you need to ACTIVELY listen. You can't passively watch anime and expect results. You also need to look these words/phrases up and put them into Anki. This way you don't forget the meanings!!

Start here

Alright so you want to learn Japanese through anime eh? Well start out by visiting the "Tools" page here on this blog and getting on the things I recommend.

Start your days off by doing your Anki reviews. Next watch 1 episode of "Let's learn Japanese" and put down any information you find useful into Anki, this way you can make sure that you don't forget what you have learned! Then listen to a lesson of Pimsleur and put that into Anki as well. Next its your choice of anime! Now when you are watching anime in the beginning subtitles are just fine but make sure you are mainly LISTENING to what the characters are saying. Eventually you will begin to hear the same sentence or phrase over and over again. Look that phrase up! Make sure to put it into Anki as well. From now on when you hear this phrase you will know what it means! These phrases build on each other quickly~~

This is the basic method I've used to learn Japanese. Do this every day, it doesn't take long at all!