I’ve finally begun my reading quest. I’m trying to figure out stuff on my own. But the one thing I can’t explain is the seemingly random katakana characters. Is this just a fancy stylistic choice, or is there something else going on?
Unless I’m wildly off the mark:
とりあえず - first of all
はじまります - to begin
yet if you look closely it’s written with リ instead of り
とリあえず
はじまリます
Oohh Dragon Ball. Thumbs up.
No, these are normal ひらがな り、just with a different font where the middle stroke is not closed. You can see that here is a tiny uptick at the end of the first stroke end and the character looks a little “rounder” than what the katakana version would probably look like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYQL5IcXj70
Though in practice the difference between り and リ is often pretty miniscule. I can’t remember seeing only one hiragana being written with katakana only. Although you will sometimes see a mix in words like ググる or ブチきれる and similar.
You will get used to them looking like that pretty fast. And then you might stumble on handwritten kana and そ that look like this (top one) https://stat.ameba.jp/user_images/20200731/06/fude-himawari/b1/f7/j/o1080170114796792697.jpg?caw=800 and that is the reason you actually have to read to get used to reading native materials 
Feel free to ask again if anything else trips you up.
Ah, a handwriting thing, of course! I considered lots of options, but didn’t consider that once smacks forehead
Thank you!
