Year 1
People weren't lying when they said progress is exponential.
My first attempt at reading a single episode took me a week to finish. Two hours each day in that week. You didn't misread, by the way. I did mean a single episode. Not a single arc, nor an event, but a single episode. A single episode took a fucking week.
Now, I can consistently down an episode everyday in around 1.5 hours. I COULD do more episodes per day, but I'm trying to balance my schedule around unexpected circumstances so that I don't feel like shit if I got busy and have to read less. Gotta make it sustainable.
This is less important, but my first Anki session took me 2 hours, and now I can finish it consistently in around 15 minutes.
I want to go for 30 minutes per episode and 5 minute Anki sessions one day, but I'm not going to bother rushing to that. I think I've reached the point where I can just keep reading and hope that my speed will eventually improve. Even if it doesn't, 1.5 hours per day isn't that bad, and is sustainable for me.
One thing that surprised me most is how much my comprehension improved. I comprehended 35% of Main Story 3-1 when I first started, which is hilariously low. And that was with MTL help. Nowadays, I don't use MTL anymore and I'm unironically getting 98%-99% comprehension, which might as well be 100%. I still look up words with Yomichan, but I'm not going to beat myself over that because looking shit up is just a natural part of learning.
Speaking of comprehension, I wanna talk a bit on how I count it. I simply count all the lines in a given story and then count how many I missed. My definition of "missed" here is if I still don't understand the line after looking up the words I don't know. If don't understand something, but do after looking up the words, I count it as comprehended. Again, looking shit up is just a natural part of learning.
...Yeah, I understood THAT little back then even with MTL help. All those low comprehension was because I still couldn't understand shit even after running it through MTL. If you were a Japanese teacher and got me as your student, you'd probably think I'm mentally retarded. (I probably am anyways)
With that out of the way, I wanna give some "awards" to some of the stories and characters I read. All of them just are talking about the difficulty.
Most Comprehended
With only 1 line missed. To be expected since this is the latest thing I read as of the time of writing this.
Least Comprehended
With a whopping comprehension of 35%. To be expected since this is the first thing I ever read. The reason I started with arc 3 is to get rid of the "new story available" notification on the menu so it's not too obvious that I'm a refugee. Yes, I took this screenshot from Taki's game room.
Thought Would Be Easy, Is Easy.
Children!
Thought Would Be Easy, Is Hard.
Politics.
Thought Would Be Hard, Is Easy.
Thanks, Hiyori.
Thought Would Be Hard, Is hard.
Was expecting a bit of difficulty because of Anna, got my ass handed to me by something else entirely.
Moving on to the characters! Most of them are easy anyways, so I'll be mentioning the harder ones only.
Hardest to Comprehend
I don't know how to put this...it feels like she speaks as if she's 60. Sometimes I even wonder if she was written specifically to filter Japanese learners.
Thought Would Be Easy, Is Hard
I thought I wouldn't have too much trouble with her considering I didn't when dealing with Maho. Her comedy skits filter me.
Thought Would Be Hard, Is Hard
I struggled to understand her spoonerism even back in EN, really only understanding after Shizuru spells out what she meant. Not doing any better in JP because I may not even understand Shizuru's explanation here.
That is all for this year. See you next August.
Arc 3 would be so much easier if it weren't for her. Well...again, I need to be challenged every now and then so that I actually learn.