What JLPT Level Do You Need to Understand Anime?
N5 gets you most of the way. I matched every word spoken in the first 12 episodes of 120 anime against the JLPT word lists. N5 words, counting the particles and grammar endings N5 teaches, make up 63% of the dialogue. N4 brings it to 70%. After that, each level adds less.
How much each level covers
| Level | Adds | Running total |
|---|---|---|
| N5 | 63% | 63% |
| N4 | 7% | 70% |
| N3 | 5% | 76% |
| N2 | under 1% | 76% |
| N1 | 1% | 77% |
| Not on any list | 23% |
Source: Watch Anime, Learn Japanese, Chapter 4. 1,432 episodes, 3,313,663 spoken words. Totals are rounded from unrounded shares.
What that means
N5, the beginner level, is a good goal: it covers most of what's said in the average anime. N4 takes you to 70%. Imagine watching and understanding most of what they say. N3 adds another 5%, and N2 and N1 together add about 2%. The gains get slower at the top, but the skills there are still worth it.
Even all five levels together reach 77%. The other 23% is words that no JLPT list includes, so passing N1 doesn't mean you'll understand every line of anime.
A shorter path to the same place
N5 asks for a lot more study than 210 words, and it gets you about the same share of anime. The 210 words anime uses most make up 67% of the dialogue, a little more than N5's 63%, because they're picked from anime itself instead of from a test.
That's not a knock on the JLPT. If you're taking the test, study for it. If your goal is anime, start with the words anime uses most. See the 20 most common and the full curve.
Try the Top 10 Verbs in Yomikit →The book
- Watch Anime, Learn Japanese: the 210 words as word cards, the top 1,000 list, and this JLPT breakdown with the rest of the data.
- Top 200 Japanese Verbs in Anime: the 200 verbs that reach 80% of the verbs you'll hear.
Questions
- What JLPT level do you need to understand anime?
- N5 covers 63% of the dialogue, counting its particles and grammar endings. Through N4 it's 70%, through N3 76%.
- Is N5 enough to understand anime?
- It's enough to follow a lot of everyday scenes. The 210 most common anime words reach a similar 67% with far less study.
- Does passing N1 mean you understand all anime?
- No. All five levels together cover 77%. The other 23% is words no JLPT list includes.
How I matched the levels
The JLPT hasn't published official word lists since the test changed in 2010, so I used the widely used lists compiled by Jonathan Waller, from the open-anki-jlpt-decks project. Each word in the count was matched to the highest level it appears at, and particles and grammar endings were counted as N5, since that's where they're taught. The words and episodes are the same ones behind every page here: the first 12 episodes of 120 anime, counted as described here.