Learn English, sort of, with Moetan

by JC Fletcher { May 27th 2008 at 4:00PM }

Moetan is a series of English lesson books which follow Nao, a high school student, and Ink-chan, an underdeveloped magical girl who is the subject of the moe content. The series combines bizarre, terrible Engrish with inappropriate-looking young girls to create something that is, of course, popular.

While we are, of course, fairly disgusted with the depictions of the girls in here (magical girl transformation scenes in particular are always off-putting), we're more worried about what passes for English teaching. Just as in the books and anime, the English text is far from native-speaker quality. An example sentence found in Moetan DS: "They say lunatic people are making the English word book."

[Image via ITMedia]

Tags: english, idea-factory, moetan, moetan-ds, training

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Char6296 @ May 27th 2008 4:13PM

Magical Girl transformations... that sounds wrong... An English word book... that's a dictionary, right? And what kind of name's Ink-chan!? Even for a Japanese name that is WEIRD.

Ken Shammy @ May 27th 2008 4:13PM

From here, the katakana (i think) kinda looks like it's spelling out 'Tiths'

PyrosNine @ May 27th 2008 4:20PM

MoeTan corner is the sh#T!

This isn't meant to actually be a learning course, except maybe for rough beginners of learning English.

It's actually meant as a joke series and Edutainment, as it does teach english, but the sentences and words are intentionally comical for people who know English or Japanese fluently. I don't know if it's still on youtube, but there were these "Moe-Tan Corners" which gave out "Helpful phrases" in english and Japanese, like:

"The animation team always goes over the top on the first and last episodes."

"I like you, come home with me and f*ck my sister!" (a movie quote)

The point is, it's not meant to be taken seriously, though it does look like it's cashing in on the educational DS games out there.

Must BUY THIS!

DG10050 @ May 27th 2008 6:04PM

I'd swear there was a loli anime called Moetan. :\

rislim @ May 27th 2008 6:57PM

There was an anime for it last year.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=8034

Yan @ May 28th 2008 2:08AM

theres about 7 subbed episodes so far. 5 more to go! though we really need the uncut uncensored dvd episodes in subs like kodomo no jikan

rikki @ May 27th 2008 8:44PM

"...magical girl transformation scenes in particular are always off-putting"

wtf! You guys must never have watched Sailor Moon or anything as kids.

The transformation sequences are pretty much the only watchable part of the show for 99% of magical girl anime. The rest of it is generally badly-animated love triangle crap.