GoKawiilStudy of eight anime shows word coverage overstates line comprehension
An analysis of Frieren and seven other anime found that knowing the 500 most common words gives a viewer 85.9% 'coverage' of spoken words, but only 38.4% of the first 3,000 lines are fully understandable with that vocabulary. The gap arises because a single unknown word in a line of several words blocks full comprehension, even when most individual words are familiar.