Kinda surprised that Pokemon is N4-3 and Deathnote is N1. For some reason I would think it's the opposite way (assuming N3-4 is harder than N1)

I don't know about the NEW pokemon series, but season 1 is ridiculously easy and I've marathoned it to teach myself other languages by total immersion before. It also repeats vocabulary and phrases an insane amount (literally every episode "Hi I'm xx! Nice to meet you!"). Death Note is full of formal talk and government/military/police words (aka Newspaper Speak), also monologues, so it's a lot harder.

Maybe I got confused by what n1-3 means 😅

ah, N1 is that your japanese is at the point where you can read fiction novels, newspapers, watch the news, go to a business meeting etc and you don't really have any problems. you know 2,000 or more kanji, but depending on how you've been learning you still don't know much about archaic or dialectal japanese yet. it's probably around the level of a japanese highschooler.

N2 is you can read most manga or watch most anime/tv without HAVING to look stuff up (there'll be words and grammar you don't know, but it's not a huge problem to not know them), you can understand everyday conversations and stuff but you still struggle at making yourself understood. you know enough so that you could survive in a basic job like cashier work, or entirely-in-japanese classes. you probably know 1,300 to 1,500 kanji. it's probably around the level of a japanese 7th grader (=one who doesn't read a ton). like, a 3rd or 5th grader still doesn't know what "World Heritage Site" means, but a highschooler or jr high student does. Your vocabulary level's kinda like that.

N3 is you've got all the basic grammar and vocabulary down, and you're just at the point where you can start reading easy manga without feeling like it's too much effort, but there's still a LOT you don't know (mostly "written-language-only" grammar/words, and a lot of vocabulary). you probably know 800 to 1,000 kanji (by this i mean, kanji meanings + pronunciations). it's more like a japanese third grader or something.

N4 and N5 are that you still don't know all the most basic verbforms, you know little to no kanji, and you basically can't understand anything yet aside from simple sentences like "i am a cat" "where is he?". it's more like a japanese 3-year-old (japanese toddlers, by the way, mix up informal and formal japanese all the time and basically just copy sentences they've heard their parents say and the rest of the time say nonsense - foreigners' japanese is basically like that too).

Edited 2018-01-06 06:19 am (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. I think I'm probably at N3 level. Definitely need to build up my vocabulary .

no prob, the levels are confusing and no one seems to properly explain them anywhere!

the thing that's helped my japanese the most by far (aside from going on my current exchange) is anime/manga. you really can learn japanese entirely from immersion, the problem is you have to watch a freaking ton of japanese shows (with japanese subs added) and most people don't have the patience/time for that. i wish i was 10 years younger so i could sit and marathon naruto and become fluent in japanese in one summer lol.