Visual novel Japanese reading statistics
How hard is Tarareba to read in Japanese?
タラレバ
Aggregate vocabulary, kanji, length, and reading-profile data from the DokiDokiDict recommender corpus.
Japanese reading profile
This indexed edition contains 549,302 Japanese characters across 29,366 sentences. By length it is at approximately the 24th percentile of the 76 indexed visual novels. Its vocabulary breadth is at approximately the 20th percentile within the same group.
Those numbers describe the text, not your personal comprehension. A long work can contain more unique vocabulary while still becoming comfortable through repetition. DokiDokiDict's recommender uses your own known words and simulates the work sentence by sentence instead of assigning one universal level.
Also known as: as in What If stories
Vocabulary coverage by starting level
This table uses the same analysis scale as the VN staircase. The first percentage is coverage before starting. The second is coverage of the unread remainder after the first 30% has been treated as read.
| Default VN words known | Starting coverage | Remaining coverage after 30% |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | 70.4% | 79.9% |
| 1,000 | 79.3% | 83.5% |
| 2,000 | 86.9% | 88.8% |
| 3,000 | 90.9% | 92.1% |
| 5,000 | 94.4% | 95.2% |
| 10,000 | 97.7% | 98.1% |
| 15,000 | 98.8% | 99.1% |
| 20,000 | 99.4% | 99.6% |
You would need to know roughly the 2,714 most frequent Default VN words to begin at 90% coverage, or roughly the top 5,513 for 95%.
How to read this: the vocabulary axis uses the Default VN frequency list. Grammar, punctuation, and proper names are excluded, while twenty frequent local words are treated as manageable. The 30% simulation counts a word as learned after four sightings separated by at least five pages. It models exposure and recognition, not guaranteed acquisition.
Works with a similar aggregate profile
These are nearby works of the same type by indexed length, vocabulary breadth, and kanji breadth. Similar statistics do not necessarily mean similar prose or subject matter.
See whether it fits your vocabulary
Import your DokiDokiDict history, Anki cards, built-in SRS deck, or manually known words, then simulate this work against what you actually know.