A love of manga cartoons led one Battersea teenager to learn Japanese all by himself - and bag an A* in this year’s GCSEs.

Kevin Holmes-Attivor began learning snippets of the language so that he could watch his favourite cartoons without subtitles.

One thing led to another, and soon the Salesian College student was buying books and studying 45 minutes every evening to master the language.

He said: “It was hard to keep going at times, especially with other commitments like football, which I play three times a week, but I kept going until finally I reached a level where I could watch an episode of animation in Japanese and understand it almost perfectly.”

Kevin got into Japanese animation after recommendations from his older brother, who is studying art at university.

He soon became hungry for more and more episodes of his favourite cartoons, but the subtitled versions always came out later than the originals.

Japanese is one of the most difficult languages in the world, with three different alphabets and many thousands of characters.

This did not deter Kevin, who bought two language books and began learning a few phrases and characters per night.

He was spurred on by his friend, Alessandro Furusawa-Cadoni, who has Japanese heritage and scored an A* in GCSE Japanese the previous year.

Alex’s mum introduced Kevin to the polite, hard-working culture of Japan, and made countless Japanese meals for him to try.

After much coaxing from Alex, Kevin agreed to take the test, and together the pair went through past papers and a revision CD provided by their French teacher.

In August Kevin received his A* grade after little more than a year of personal studying.

He said: “It was a testament of what enthusiasm and a little hard work can get you. I plan to visit Japan next summer to experience the culture and amazing technology.”

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