Do you think watching anime actually teaches you how to learn Japanese?

[N192K001]

Both 'Yes' & 'No' for various reasons.

Yes, in that actual Japanese is used (and taught by diffusion/familiarity).

No, because the Japanese they use is generally artificial, highly stylized, and problematic if used in actual situations in real-life Japan today. Can you imagine non-Americans & non-Brits trying to master English via South Park, Disney' cartoons with Goofy or Donald Duck, and/or Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator series?

The YouTube channel That Japanese Man Yuta has actually been covering this with his series of videos analyzing the Japanese dialogue of various anime-characters across many series.
https://www.youtube.com/c/ThatJapaneseManYuta/videos
He even discusses your topic in 2videos:
'Should You Use Anime to Learn Japanese?' (7min:14sec)https://www.youtube.com/embed/i31yBwLBW-4'"Anime Characters Don't Talk Like Real Japanese People" Explained' (19min:23sec)https://www.youtube.com/embed/SyKq-onzS44(If he discussed this in older videos, I don't know. These videos, I've watched for myself in recent memory.)
For more specifics (or to better understand this via examples), consider watching some videos of his anime-dialogue analysis series. My familiarity with the anime discussed are limited (since I'm more old-school, and my crazy schedule has been crowding-out what little time I have left in the day to just sit-back and watch some anime, like I want to).

[ibodi]

It is like English, I watch it, probably fix my hearing and how they pronounce only if I watch it carefully. I still doubt my pronounce when I speak.

[btbc92]

It only can teach you certain things and it really all depends on what you wanted from what I heard. Most Japanese anime has his own makeup on the langauge. So if you're not careful, when you speak to real Japanese they're going to start assuming that you're watching too much anime. I believe it was a video or two that had explained that this at least five to seven animes that actually speaks real Japanese. It's best to actually find a video. I can only teach you certain things but not everything. That I could tell you my personal experience.

[Little_Bumblebee]

I think it can help you with a few words and phrases and give you some information about their culture - which helps a lot when learning the language.
But, I don't think it can teach you the language 100% only from watching anime.

Some are better at learning languages, so some find it more natural, but I do believe that in order to learn hiragana, katakana, kanji, grammar, and all the other stuff, like the hierarchy they have in language, for that you need some proper teaching.

[shinnaeun]

Yeah I think so