Learn Anime and Manga Terminology: 60 Flashcards from Shonen to Studio Ghibli

Watching anime teaches you the stories. It does not teach you the vocabulary fans, critics and studios actually use, or the production history behind the shows. Deck XZ9463 — Anime and Manga: Famous Series and Terms (60 cards) is built for that second layer: demographic labels, studio names, technique words, and the milestone dates that explain how a 1917 short film turned into a 26-billion-dollar industry.

Sample cards from the deck

Everything the deck covers

Demographics and genres: shonen, shojo, seinen, josei, mecha, magical girl, yaoi, yuri, ecchi, hentai. Craft and format vocabulary: manga, mangaka, light novel, OVA (Original Video Animation), ONA (Original Net Animation), cel animation, limited animation, chibi, anison, fan service, fansubs, otaku, and the visual shorthand of sweat drops, blushing and the nosebleed. Precursors and firsts: kamishibai street theatre, 11th-century emakimono scrolls, Namakura Gatana (1917), Three Tales (1960), Instant History (1961-64), Momotaro: Sacred Sailors (1945), Astro Boy (1963-66). Landmark works: Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon, Gundam, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, Oshi no Ko. Studios and people: Studio Ghibli, Ufotable, MAPPA, Bones, Studio Pierrot, Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Oshii, Hideaki Anno, Yoshiyuki Tomino. Industry facts: 60% of the world's animated TV shows as of 2016, $100,000 to $300,000 per episode, Akihabara, Netflix and Crunchyroll, the term Japanimation used before anime spread in the 1980s.

Two tricks for this deck

Attach every studio to a show you have seen. Ufotable to Demon Slayer, MAPPA to the final seasons of Attack on Titan, Bones to My Hero Academia, Pierrot to Naruto, Ghibli to Spirited Away. Studio names are the hardest cards here precisely because they are abstract; anchored to a visual memory of the series, they stop being interchangeable.

Sort the demographic terms on one axis. Shonen and shojo are the young pair, seinen and josei the adult pair; male on one side, female on the other. Learned as a two-by-two grid rather than four separate cards, they almost never get confused again, which matters because they are the terms you will meet most often outside the deck.

How to work through it

Split the 60 cards into three runs: vocabulary first, because everything else uses it; then studios, directors and landmark titles; then the dates and industry numbers, which stick best once the works around them have names. Reversed review is worth doing on the term cards, going from definition back to the Japanese word.

If you enjoy this kind of culture deck, see Learn Video Game History and Terminology.

Deck XZ9463 is waiting in the Flip It library at flip-it.app.