Creating a Day When Favorite Anime Breaks Down the Language Barrier for Foreigners
As part of 'April Dream', Media Fusion Co., Ltd. announced a CSR project called 'TalkFun Real'. By using short videos of anime lines, they aim to help 100,000 foreigners in Japan enjoy learning practical Japanese by 2030.
📋 Article Processing Timeline
- 📰 Published: April 1, 2026 at 14:50
- 🔍 Collected: April 1, 2026 at 08:05
- 🤖 AI Analyzed: April 22, 2026 at 09:09 (505h 4m after Collected)
We support 'April Dream', an initiative to make April 1st a day to share dreams. This press release is the dream of 'Media Fusion Co., Ltd.'.
Media Fusion Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Kita-ku, Osaka) hereby declares that through its support project for foreigners in Japan, 'TalkFun Real', it aims to create moments where 100,000 foreigners in Japan feel that 'Japanese is fun' on social media by 2030.
■ We realized something at the Comiket venue
Every year, anime fans from all over the world gather at Tokyo Big Sight. The number of overseas visitors who love Japanese anime continues to increase year by year, and the sight of overseas cosplayers is now a common feature of the venue.
However, have you ever seen a scene like this?
An overseas fan cosplaying their favorite character makes eye contact with a Japanese circle participant. They approach with a smile. But—the words don't come out. They open a translation app on their smartphone, exchange an awkward conversation, and end up only exchanging the feeling of 'I like it'.
Even though they love the same work, the language barrier blocks them from going any further.
This is not a story unique to a special place like Comiket. Technical intern trainees and international students working in Japan face the exact same barrier every day.
■ Being 'unable to speak' is not their fault
It is not uncommon for foreigners who have acquired N3 or N4 in the Japanese Language Proficiency Test to say, 'I don't know how to respond at work' or 'I keep quiet because I'm afraid of making mistakes.'
There is a huge gap between the Japanese learned in textbooks and the Japanese that flies around in actual workplaces and daily life. Meeting face-to-face every day in the same workplace, yet only exchanging standard greetings—right at this moment, there are many people living in Japan holding onto such loneliness.
Among our staff, there are those who experienced coming to Japan as technical interns in the past. 'I thought I would naturally become able to speak if I came to Japan'—they know from personal experience that the gap between this assumption and reality is not a matter of the amount of study, but a problem of 'the opportunity to learn words that can be used.'
■ Anime can be the ultimate Japanese textbook
Here, we would like to ask anime fans a question.
You never get tired of hearing the lines from your favorite works, no matter how many times you hear them, right? Don't they naturally come out of your mouth before you know it? Words learned together with emotions stick in the body many times more than words memorized from a textbook—this makes perfect sense from the perspective of language acquisition.
Media Fusion Co., Ltd. focused on the power of this anime and character culture and launched the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) project 'TalkFun Real' in January 2026.
This project, which provides free 30-to-60-second short videos of 'real Japanese expressions' that are hard to find in textbooks via TikTok and Instagram, is not intended to sell services. We are acting simply so that foreigners currently in Japan can spend their days here a little more happily and with a little more peace of mind.
■ Our Dream
By 2030, through TalkFun Real's social media,
Media Fusion Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Kita-ku, Osaka) hereby declares that through its support project for foreigners in Japan, 'TalkFun Real', it aims to create moments where 100,000 foreigners in Japan feel that 'Japanese is fun' on social media by 2030.
■ We realized something at the Comiket venue
Every year, anime fans from all over the world gather at Tokyo Big Sight. The number of overseas visitors who love Japanese anime continues to increase year by year, and the sight of overseas cosplayers is now a common feature of the venue.
However, have you ever seen a scene like this?
An overseas fan cosplaying their favorite character makes eye contact with a Japanese circle participant. They approach with a smile. But—the words don't come out. They open a translation app on their smartphone, exchange an awkward conversation, and end up only exchanging the feeling of 'I like it'.
Even though they love the same work, the language barrier blocks them from going any further.
This is not a story unique to a special place like Comiket. Technical intern trainees and international students working in Japan face the exact same barrier every day.
■ Being 'unable to speak' is not their fault
It is not uncommon for foreigners who have acquired N3 or N4 in the Japanese Language Proficiency Test to say, 'I don't know how to respond at work' or 'I keep quiet because I'm afraid of making mistakes.'
There is a huge gap between the Japanese learned in textbooks and the Japanese that flies around in actual workplaces and daily life. Meeting face-to-face every day in the same workplace, yet only exchanging standard greetings—right at this moment, there are many people living in Japan holding onto such loneliness.
Among our staff, there are those who experienced coming to Japan as technical interns in the past. 'I thought I would naturally become able to speak if I came to Japan'—they know from personal experience that the gap between this assumption and reality is not a matter of the amount of study, but a problem of 'the opportunity to learn words that can be used.'
■ Anime can be the ultimate Japanese textbook
Here, we would like to ask anime fans a question.
You never get tired of hearing the lines from your favorite works, no matter how many times you hear them, right? Don't they naturally come out of your mouth before you know it? Words learned together with emotions stick in the body many times more than words memorized from a textbook—this makes perfect sense from the perspective of language acquisition.
Media Fusion Co., Ltd. focused on the power of this anime and character culture and launched the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) project 'TalkFun Real' in January 2026.
This project, which provides free 30-to-60-second short videos of 'real Japanese expressions' that are hard to find in textbooks via TikTok and Instagram, is not intended to sell services. We are acting simply so that foreigners currently in Japan can spend their days here a little more happily and with a little more peace of mind.
■ Our Dream
By 2030, through TalkFun Real's social media,