i learn a lot from watching naruto and it's songs.
the first japanese phrase/ sentence i learned was hajimete kimi to shabetta, its a song from naruto. and i learned the entire song and meaning, which taught a lot. AFTER THAT, i learned simple things like konnichiwa and stuff. and then once i learned the kana's, i wud follow along in the new songs with the subtitles in kana. so anime definitely helped me read japanese. of course the actual anime itself added a lot to vocabulary and stuff. but yea....yay animes.