In this article, we attempted to analyze the features of kanji that appear in anime and manga. For the data, we elicited 1000 words for 4 genres (Love, School, Ninja, Samurai) from 69 anime and manga works popular overseas, and selected a Basic Kanji 100 (single kanji) and Intermediate Kanji 150 (kanji words) based on how often they appeared.
We analyzed the data from 5 perspectives: 1) Comparing the Basic Kanji 100 to the JLPT kanji level; 2) showing the coverage rate of kanji words in the 1000 genre words by the Basic Kanji 100; 3) parsing the Basic Kanji 100 into nouns, verbs, adjectives; 4) semantically categorizing the Intermediate Kanji 150, and 5) pointing out common kanji that appear frequently among 2 or more genres.
The results show that 90-98% of the Basic Kanji which appear in anime and manga are within the level of JLPT standard and these Basic Kanji cover 46-59% of kanji words for each genre. Also, each genre kanji is characterized by the proportion of the parts of speech and its semantic category, and specific kanji appear frequently in 2-4 genres.
This implies that kanji frequently appearing in anime and manga are applicable to standard Japanese language education, and also may contribute to enrich the vocabulary needed to read a specific genre of manga. Thus, for application to the classroom it would be effective to select a specific genre suited to students' needs and levels, and to show the link from basic kanji to kanji words, making use of the characteristics in parts of sentences and semantic category of each genre. Finally, students can be given experience of success in reading manga of a specific genre, to motivate them to learn more kanji.