I made Detective Conan flashcards for learning Japanese through anime
For anyone learning Japanese with anime, I’ve been experimenting with a flashcard setup based on Detective Conan episodes.
A lot of flashcards only include a word and a translation, but I always felt that this isn’t enough to really understand a word. So I used AI to add more useful sections to each card:
• Reading
• Meaning
• Context and nuance
• Frequency
• Example sentence
I also used AI to preselect important vocabulary from each episode, mostly for intermediate and advanced learners.
My workflow is: before watching an episode, I quickly drill the important words in Brainscape. Then I can watch the episode more smoothly without constantly pausing whenever I hear an unknown word.
I also included an audio snippet from the actual episode for each card, so the example sentence can be heard in the original spoken context.
The hardest part was the subtitle timing. It wasn’t always correct, so I wrote a few scripts to clean up and adjust the audio clip timing as much as possible. Some snippets are still not perfectly aligned, but I tried my best.
I also made a reversed version of the deck, where the English word is shown first and you have to recall the Japanese word.
I started with Season 1, which has 42 episodes, and there are already about 3,860 flashcards included. I’m planning to add more seasons soon.
Here are some screenshots of the cards and deck setup.
Main deck:
Conan Season 1
https://www.brainscape.com/p/3VM9-LH-E4DAJ
Reversed deck:
Conan - Season 1 Reversed (English)
https://www.brainscape.com/p/3VM9-LH-E9ULK
The goal is basically to make anime-based Japanese learning more contextual, practical, and fun.
Curious what other Japanese learners think about this approach.
Posted May 26, 2026, 8:24 AM UTC