You learn the basics and then you watch entertainment in the language you’re trying to learn. Don’t gatekeep.
You can learn by watching anime, but you’ll sound like a 14-year-old. Japanese has various levels of politeness that need to be mastered if you don’t want people to think you’re an idiot.
*source: speak Japanese, lived in Tokyo since late 00s. I often sound like an idiot in Japanese, so don’t get your pants in a bunch.
You absolutely can learn usable Japanese from anime, just as you can learn English from videogames.
I mean, you probably could eventually to some extent… definitely not enough to have a conversation, but you might be able to vaguely understand someone saying something to you.
I’m to the point where I can tell when some things are poorly translated in the subs—i.e. how they could better be translated to english to convey their original meaning. And if I close my eyes I can definitely understand bits and pieces of the conversation. Anime re-uses lots of phrases and expressions, and some words are very distinctive or even happen to sound like an english counterpart of similar meaning. So I’ve learned a good amount of them from sheer repetitive exposure.
Honto ni!
There’s a method of language learning - comprehensible input - that is basically this.
Though you need to start by watching/listening things you can actually understand. So start with Peppa Pig level, where they use basic vocabulary, repeat often, and use many visual aids, then work up to content for adults.
Trouble is finding enough learner level content to watch (without going insane). You need many hundreds of hours of content that you understand 90-95% of.
But even if you start with content way too advanced you’d be surprised what many hundreds of hours of listening to a language can do. Not efficient or recommended, but if they’re ACTIVELY listening to the sounds of the language they could pick up a lot of meaning over such large amounts of time.
My high school Spanish teacher said she learned English after immigrating to the US by watching English soap operas like Days of Our Lives and things like that. I’m sure the same could be done but not sure how exactly. It would probably take a lot of active listening.
My MiL moved here from India and watched soap operas not just to learn idiomatic English but to learn how to dress for cold weather.
Growing up in Colombo and Chennai, it never got cold enough to need socks; she was in Midland Ontario and the soaps taught her how to wear snow boots, winter jackets, scarves, wool hats.
