Learning japanese thanks to anime

[nataliedujour]

Anime and manga is a good place to start, but eventually you want to graduate up from that. It's important to keep on challenging yourself. 
Anime will teach you some commonly used words and phrases, and learning to sing the theme songs can help you with the overall flow and stress of the language, but it's not as helpful if you want to speak to real Japanese people. Real Japanese people do not talk like anime characters!

Great point on using the theme songs to learn the flow of the language! That's exactly what did it for me, and I feel like my pronunciation and pacing are better as a result.

On a related note... that's also where I first started to learn hiragana/katakana. I would find the romanized lyrics to my favorite themes, and then challenge myself to write them down in kana! 

[Nekomimi_mode]

I watch A TON of anime. I've at least watched 400(I know, it's an obsession) and I completely agree. Anime definitely helps you with Japanese, I guess it's that whole "If you hear it long enough you start to understand it" logic. I watch all types but I'm mostly a supernatural anime connoisseur so I'll leave a few must watch ones below. 

Hellsing- If you only ever watch one vampire anime this needs to be the one. Not only is the soundtrack amazing, the character development is 100% believable and interesting. There aren't many surprises or twists per say but it's wonderful all the same. Watch Hellsing Ultimate instead of the original one because Ultimate actually follows the plot of the manga while the original kind of just starts doing it's own thing about halfway through. Beware though, there is a lot of blood and gore so it's not for the faint of heart, also Alucard is super OP.

Trinity Blood- Another vampire anime but this one focuses more on how what they do effects those around them instead of the main character himself. There isn't much character development for the main character, though they have flashbacks to a time when he was conflicted with himself. They also let us learn a little about his past. The main character in this one is the OP(over powered) type so while there is a lot of conflict you don't really feel any dread over the main character losing until about half-way through. It's set in a word where vampires and humans live apart but there is still a lot of conflict between the two and the church is trying to make headway in making a treaty to help resolve some of the underlying issues. 

NightWalker- This is also a vampire anime(surprise!) and a pretty old one at that. It focuses around a vampire detective(there are a lot of those aren't there?) who works with his human assistant and part time helper(who doesn't know he is a vampire). That's about as much as I can say about this one without spoiling the entire plot. 

Kuroshitsuji- A demon butler(Finally not a vampire) works for a young boy who is head of the Phantomhive household. The Boy, Ciel, is given orders by the Queen of England to investigate certain issues that can't be handled by the police. Okay, the pacing and character development of season one is perfect. It doesn't go too fast or slow and you find yourself starting to empathize with the main character more when at first you'll probably just think he's a brat. Season two was terrible. Somewhere along the line they decided they should add a second season that is not related to the manga in anyway and season 2 is that exactly. They add characters that don't exist in the manga and pretty much train wreck the whole thing. They redeemed themselves a little bit when they recently made Book of Circus which gets the anime back on track.