# Onomatope: Japanese Mimetics — Manga and anime vocabulary > Manga and anime vocabulary (iPhone/iPad app by Jakub Dwojak.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/onomatope-japanese-mimetics/id6808981682 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Jakub Dwojak](https://appshunter.io/developer/6801993670) - Category: Education, Reference - Price: Free with in-app purchases - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 18.0 · 4 MB - Languages: American English, Polish - Released: 2026-09-09 - Data updated: 2026-09-14 - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/onomatope-japanese-mimetics/id6808981682/reviews.md ## What is Onomatope? Three hundred onomatopoeia are not a list to memorize. They are a system where the sound carries the meaning – and that is what this app teaches. Something small and light rolls ころころ. Something big and heavy rolls ごろごろ. The difference is two dots, not two separate words. さらさら is smooth, ざらざら is rough. ぱらぱら is light, ばらばら is scattered. Understand what 濁点 does and you can guess a word you have never met – no dictionary gives you that. FOUR THINGS, MEASURED SEPARATELY Fit in a sentence. Which of four similar sounds this sentence asks for. The sentence always says why – something small and light does not roll the way a boulder does. Meaning. What the word says on its own. Always from the sound to the meaning, never the other way round: without a sentence, four similar sounds have no single answer. Shape and attachment. AっBり is sudden and finished, ABAB keeps going. And how the word enters the sentence: 〜と, 〜する, 〜だ・の. Sound rule. What 濁点 does to a word. Measured only on material that is not on the review schedule, so it tells you whether you can guess a word you have never seen. THE PAIR, NOT THE AVERAGE The app does not say "ごろごろ 44%". It says: you put ごろごろ where ころころ belongs – but not the other way round. With these words the direction of the mistake is the whole information, and an average hides it. FIVE LEVELS, NOT JLPT Body and how you feel. Voiced pairs. The 〜り and 〜っと shapes. Feelings and people. The world: weather, food, textures, manga. You hear ぺこぺこ on your first day in Japan and it is on no N5 list – so the levels are practical, not exam-shaped. The first two are free in full. WHAT COMES BACK, AND WHAT DOES NOT Words come back on a schedule, because they are facts and facts fade: nothing in the sound of ぐっすり tells you it is about sleep rather than mud. Rules do not come back that way – 濁点 works whether you were reminded of it or not. A rule is not forgotten, it is left unused, and that shows up in your mistakes rather than on a calendar. WHAT IS NOT HERE No keyboard input: we measure the choice between four sounds, not your thumb. No question about whether a word is written ドキドキ or どきどき – manga writes everything in katakana, so that question has two right answers. No accounts, no ads, no subscription. No network: the app runs entirely on your phone. ONE PURCHASE Levels 1 and 2 are free in full – not out of generosity but because a free version should be shorter, not pretend. The rest is a single purchase, with nothing to renew. ## Pricing and in-app purchases Base price: Free. **One-time purchases** | Purchase | Price | Type | | --- | --- | --- | | Onomatope Premium | $2.99 | one-time | ## Version history (last 4 releases) ### 1.1.2 — 2026-09-13 New words now arrive in order. The app no longer hands you a level five word while level one is still untouched. You choose which family apps you see. The cards in Settings and the rows in Your Japanese are set separately, and hiding deletes nothing. Voiced pairs are now an exercise on the word itself. The question about what the voicing changes waits until you know both words, and its answer and explanation come from the same word. There are now 201 items to learn instead of 216. Nothing was removed – fifteen pairs stopped being counted twice. Your progress on those pairs moved to the voiced words. Every item now has its own review date. Two words learned means two bars on the chart, and a mistake on one no longer erases the other. Review reminders come back on time. They are rebuilt every time you open the app and count only what the app will really ask about. The check screen leads straight to the word. It also says what a greyed out Check is waiting for, and the guide now shows on first launch. ### 1.1.1 — 2026-09-10 The review button no longer promises questions the session cannot ask. A word from a level you no longer have access to kept its due date, so the counter offered reviews that ended at once with a score of 0/0. Answer tiles keep their size from one question to the next. After a long answer they stayed stretched for the rest of the session, also where the answer was three characters long. Support and reports go to our own address. Bug reports and feature requests now reach onomatope@jd-japanese.pl. ### 1.1.0 — 2026-09-09 Sentence translations where you need them. On the check screen and on the card that introduces a word. More than one answer can be right, and the app says what parts them. Where a sentence takes several words, all of them count, and the note names the nuance instead of leaving you to guess. The attachment question no longer shows its own answer. The gap now covers the ending too, so the question asks what you know rather than what you can read off the sentence. The Polish interface speaks Polish everywhere. Question prompts used to follow the phone language instead of the one you chose. The Your Japanese section shows the whole family. Your own row sits in its place in the order rather than above the list, and Kifuku and Shindan joined it. ### 1.0.0 — 2026-09-09 No release notes. ## More apps by Jakub Dwojak - [Kaname — Japanese Grammar](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kaname-japanese-grammar/id6801993668) - [Katsuyokei — Conjugation](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/katsuyokei-conjugation/id6802813564) - [Joshi — Japanese Particles](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/joshi-japanese-particles/id6803144744) - [Kazoekata — Japanese Counters](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kazoekata-japanese-counters/id6803676309) - [Bunmyaku — Japanese Reading](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/bunmyaku-japanese-reading/id6804188062) - [Kuzushi — Casual Japanese](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kuzushi-casual-japanese/id6805788146) All apps by Jakub Dwojak: https://appshunter.io/developer/6801993670 --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-14.*