The story is set in 1949 and follows Japanese-American comic book artist Kevin Yamagata as he draws the popular detective series "Billy Bat" for "Marble Comics." When he learns he may have unconsciously copied the character from an image he saw while serving in occupied Japan, he returns to Japan to get permission to use Billy Bat from its original creator. Upon arriving there, however, he becomes embroiled in a web of murder, cover-ups, and prophecy that all leads back to Billy Bat.It is soon evident, however, that the truth of Billy Bat's nature is far larger than Kevin could ever guess, spanning millennia and across the world. (Source: Wikipedia)Note: Won the Max und Moritz Prize for "Best international Comic" in 2014.
Japanese study overview
Billy Bat is a Japanese manga of 296,675 characters, with 12,274 unique words and 1,771 different kanji. Its difficulty rating on Jiten is average, 2.8 out of 5. The full vocabulary list ranks all 12,274 words by how often they appear, and you can study them on Jiten or download them as an Anki deck.
Vocabulary highlights
Here are some of the words that appear most often in this media, as well as a sample of its rarer vocabulary.
- 描くto draw×622
- 言うto say×612
- 僕I×574
- 私I×479
- 俺I×445
- 今now×313
- 話talk×285
- 君you×272
- 漫画cartoon×238
- 思うto think×237
- 知るto know×221
- 年year×217
- 長崎尚志Nagasaki Takashi×76
- 浦沢直樹Urasawa Naoki (1960.1-)×71
- 百地Momoji×62
- ソ連Soviet Union×48
- 日系人non-Japanese of Japanese descent×48
- 雑いcoarse×48
- 伊賀Iga (former province located in the west of present-day Mie Prefecture)×33
- 国鉄national railway×32