Many of the first- and second-person pronouns used in anime are not made-up Japanese. They are real words. However, just because you hear a pronoun often in anime does not mean people use it the same way in everyday life.
Watashi, boku, and ore are all commonly used in real life. On the other hand, if someone today regularly used pronouns such as sessha, warawa, or wagahai in ordinary conversation, they would stand out. To Japanese ears, it would sound less like natural everyday speech and more like the person was deliberately playing a character.
Real Japanese speech also changes depending on a person’s age, personality, position, and other factors. Anime often exaggerates those differences. A strong character, an elegant character, an old-fashioned character, or a childlike character can be made easier to recognize simply through pronouns and sentence endings.
There is another important difference: in real conversation, Japanese speakers often do not say “I” or “you” at all.
English sentences frequently require “I” or “you,” but Japanese can leave them out when it is already clear who is being discussed. Instead of repeatedly saying watashi wa kore ga suki desu (“I like this”), someone may simply say kore suki (“I like this”) in casual conversation.
Anata, often translated in dictionaries as “you,” is especially worth noting. Japanese speakers do not normally repeat anata in the same way English speakers use “you.” They may use the person’s name or title instead, or simply leave the reference to the other person unstated.
None of this means you should worry about learning Japanese from anime.
In Japan, it is not unusual for children to imitate the speech of anime or manga characters when they play. They may copy a distinctive pronoun such as ora or imitate a character’s unusual sentence endings. Because this kind of imitation is familiar, a foreign learner who speaks slightly anime-influenced Japanese is unlikely to be judged harshly just for sounding a little anime-like.
People are more likely to think, “They’re trying hard,” or notice with a smile that the Japanese sounds a little anime-like. And if some expressions are slightly unnatural, they can be corrected later.
In many cases, the correction is not a matter of relearning Japanese from the beginning. It may be something as small as learning that boku sounds more natural than ore in a certain situation, or that anata does not need to be said at all.
Anime Japanese is not exactly the same as everyday Japanese. But anime exposes learners to a huge amount of Japanese vocabulary and spoken language, so it can still be extremely useful for learning the language.
There is no need to avoid speaking just because your Japanese might sound a little anime-like at first. Use the language, notice how real people speak, and adjust the small differences as you go.
