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In English, you must always speak about yourself using the words "I" and "me", and to mention people hearing you speak you must use the word "you" almost always (leaving aside some special cases when you'd use "your highness", "the reader", or something of the sort).
Japanese does not have such useful words. It's all special cases. There is no neutral "I" or "you" words that you can use in all circumstances. Instead, there is about half a dozen words for "me" and half a dozen words for "you", none of which is neutral. Some of them are humble and are used to speak respectfully; the rest are arrogant and are used to speak either disrespectfully or familiarly.
Evolutively speaking, all pronouns get "eroded" with time: what were respectful pronouns some centuries ago are now used only familiarly. That's why the (nowadays) despective pronoun kisama きさまis spelt with kanji meaning "honoured", and that's why, in the national anthem of Japan, the Emperor is addressed as kimi きみ, which was anciently a respectful way os address meaning "lord" or "highness", but nowadays, when used in conversation, sounds sometimes like "buddy" and sometimes like "you bastard", depending on the tone of voice.
If you have to do a crash course on Japanese or begin an inmersion then watashi わたし"humble servant" works fine to say "I" or "me" inmost situations. To say "you" you might say anata あなた. That's not a word a Japanese would use to everybody (never to their boss!), but, if you use it, the worst that may happen is that you sound like a foreigner trying to speak Japanese.
However, manga characters are not so limited in their choice of ways to refer to themselves or their hearers, and we must learn to understand them even if we are planning not to use them.
The most common words a manga character uses to speak about themself are ole おれ, boku ぼく, and watashi わたし. There are several less common words with the same meaning, such as atashi あたし, atakushi あたくし, atai あたい, washi わし, onole おのれ, seshsha せっしゃ. sometimes you use your own name to refer to yourself (doing that is humble or childish).
To speak about their hearer they use omae おまえ, kimi きみ, the name of the hearer (plus sann さんor kunn くん), or the title (I mean, anything like "president" or "officer" or "conductor"). There are dozens of less common words with the same meaning, such as anata あなた, annta あんた, onole おのれ, kisama きさま, otaku おたく.
All these are NOT interchangeable. Some are humble and some are proud. Foreigners can use humble pronouns all the time without problems, but a manga character who is threating to kill another will only use humble pronouns sarcastically.
A curious pronoun is anata あなた, which may mean "darling". When a girl stops calling you Smith-sann さんand uses anata あなたinstead, that means she thinks she's going to marry you. However, if she calls you annta あんた, that's just like an American woman addressing you as "John Harrington Smith!".
There are few dozen words meaning "this person", "that person near you" and "that person over there", which may be used to refer to anybody else but you and me, but most of them are despective. The exception is ano kata あの かた"that gentleman / that lady".
Me, TarzanHow to Read Japanese MangaPersonal Pronouns
Copyright (c) 2003-2008
Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/manga/pronombres.en.html
Last revised: 2008-10-19