This is basically the part 2 of this post. These things aren’t entirely compulsory for learning Japanese, but they pop up in HypMic and…maybe…if you want to learn how to translate things in general.

Again, I accept any feedback on this, so long as it’s not disrespectful or anything.

Wordplay and rhyming being abundant are two of the core things that make HypMic stand out, being a rap project. (Well, many character names in anime tend to have some kind of pun for example, the name Mimimi Hibakari from episode 3 of the anime is a pun on “me, me, me all the time” – but rhyming is something that comes up a lot less.) Unlike English, which rhymes using sounds (assonance, alliteration), Japanese rhymes using syllables and homophones. If you don’t get what I mean by rhyming with syllables, take a look at this Rhyme Strike guide. There are also cross-language puns, drawing from kun’yomi readings, on’yomi readings and/or English readings (e.g. goroawase).

The good thing about having Japanese rap as a basis is…if you’re reading this, you probably know English fluently. Japanese rap is a globalised product, built on the foundations of rap from the Anglosphere (particularly the US), and thus heavily uses English as you can probably tell from HypMic‘s lyrics.

How HypMic can help at this stage: You know Rhyme Strike – the game in ARB you play for more rise? You’ve probably been trying to avoid it because you didn’t have enough confidence in your language skills, but take your time (…not too much time, but enough to select some answers, even if they turn out to be wrong) and see how far you can go with it. The Rhyme Strike guide can help you with some of the more notorious kanji.

Again, the resident pungeon master Sasara can help you understand puns if they’re at a level that you can understand. Try and break down the rest of those division puns at the end of Tragic Transistor.

You gotta be careful: for Japanese tests such as the JLPT, you’re being asked for specific things and not necessarily overall comprehension. If you learn about an accent first (such as Sasara’s Kansai accent), it can be hard to change your habits, which is why people tend to teach standard Japanese first and then give accent knowledge afterwards. Furthermore, people say the JLPT N1 is difficult because it contains Japanese not seen outside novels or newspaper articles – in HypMic, that would be things like your 小官 (shoukan) or 小生 (shousei)s, odd niche pronouns you barely find outside media.

Other things I want to mention which may trip up people looking to understand Japanese more widely include, but are not limited to, censored words (the use of circles like these -> ○○ to censor out trademarks or to make a joke) and other references which you have to learn to infer from context. They’re not things you can learn in a classroom, especially if, say, you’re talking about the widely-memed Emergence/Metamorphosis (…for obvious reasons). There are two ways to go about it: one is lots of exposure to different kinds of texts in whatever language/s you’re comfortable with. The other is being able to Google like an absolute beast and backtrack from there.

(…admittedly, I bring up the circles because of their appearances in mochi Jakurai comics, but same difference.)

How HypMic can help at this stage: Using the Google method I just mentioned, find out where all the references for the character quotes (e.g. “The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity”) and the drama track names (e.g. “Don’t Play No Game I Can’t Win”) come from, since these are all English sources translated into Japanese as far as I recall. No using the relevant HypMic wiki pages!

Likewise, HypMic is one of those series where characters consistently use a slew of extremely casual talk and the only real way to learn these is through immersion, whether through prose novels, manga or even social media (Japanese Twitter is a good source of slang). In the case of slang, the kanji for grass (草) is sometimes used to represent laughter. This is because the Japanese word for “laugh” starts with a W and a row of Ws looks like…well, grass.

In terms of practicality, Doppo is your best bet to emulate since you can transfer some of his speech to business contexts (of course, give or take his grievances with his balding boss), but Jakurai also typically speaks in a rather formal manner and is, in that sense, probably one of the easier characters to understand at times for a more advanced textbook learner since he’s more likely to stick to set grammar patterns, keigo etc..

One final thing I want to mention is onomatopoeia is particularly useful if you consume manga – from personal experience, people who learn Japanese in the classroom don’t really learn it (some of the textbooks I used had a lesson focussing mostly on this as a result, but just one lesson won’t help) but it can show up in real life occasionally. I’m well aware onomatopoeia is one of my own weaknesses, so I’ve made some efforts to translate sound effects where I can. I find the Jaded Network‘s SFX database handy for this, although occasionally I’ll go elsewhere for help.

I’ve only been able to say a little bit about everything and I know I’m far from perfect in my understanding in Japanese myself, so you can comment below if you need any help.