What's the English for "Anyone but Me Would've Missed It"? Quiz Ads Offering a Taste of Extensive Reading with Manga Appear in Takadanobaba

To showcase the appeal of Langaku, a manga app for learning English through popular manga, out-of-home (OOH) ads that turn famous manga lines into English quizzes have been planned and produced. They will be displayed around Takadanobaba, Tokyo, from October 28 to November 24.

These OOH ads were designed around lines that everyone knows in Japanese, so that people who see them in English will feel that they can "guess the meaning after all" and that they "might actually be able to read this." The app lets users naturally build their English ability and their speed at processing English text as they read through manga, and even those who have given up on English study in the past can keep going with their favorite manga without strain. The ads aim to let people experience that appeal through a quiz first.

The ads take the form of quizzes based on famous scenes and the English expressions of lines from popular manga, rolling out four versions in sequence, one per week: Bleach, Death Note, Hunter × Hunter, and Naruto. Each ad poses the question "What does this English say?" alongside the English version of a familiar line. The Japanese text of each answer also carries a playful copy line that draws on the world of the work. The Hunter × Hunter line "Anyone but me would've missed it" is paired with the tagline "Don't miss the answer!", and the Bleach line "...Don't use such strong words. You'll look weak" is paired with "Check the answer and get stronger in English." These touches are a little reward for those who notice them.

The feeling of "I can read this in English" that the OOH ads offer can be experienced across an entire volume of a favorite manga with Langaku. "Extensive reading" is a learning method in which learners read large amounts of English they can understand without strain, building the ability to understand English as English. Many people stall on unfamiliar words and give up, but in manga the art fills in the context, making it easy to guess the meaning of unknown words, and it is said to be an ideal material for extensive reading because readers can naturally keep going. In the app, users can switch between English and Japanese just by tapping a panel, and AI explains the meaning of idioms and slang according to the context. The ratio of English to Japanese panels can also be adjusted to suit each user's level, so they can keep up extensive reading without breaking their flow.

Comments have arrived from Professor Hirotoshi Yagihashi of the Faculty of Letters at Seikei University and English instructor Kumiko.