[Amnell]

I prefer subs because the whole reason I watch anime any more is to hear the Japanese language. Okay, it's also 'cause anime is just awesome... But still!

I've heard all the things about how one shouldn't attempt to learn any Japanese from Anime/Manga because it's very colloquial and informal on top of being different from "real" spoken Japanese, etc. To that, I say that it still doesn't hurt to be learn to recognize the breaks in between words, and the only way to do that is to listen to a native speaker of the language. Since I'm not acquainted with any of those, anime is my only option.

I don't want to repeat my experience with learning Spanish: After five classes (six if you count the one I was in the middle of when I moved to California), I can speak Spanish fairly well, I can read it, and I can write it. For all of that, I couldn't have a conversation with a native Spanish speaker to save my life because I've only had three different teachers and my ear is trained to hear the way THEY speak--and none of them were native speakers (one was actually a native Mandarin-speaking Chinese, in fact).

I'm hoping to avoid replicating that by listening to the voice actors from anime when they speak their native language. So far it seems to have worked... With just one Japanese class so far, it's hard to tell, though.