These kanji are really difficult to distinguish for me as they look very very similar. Do you have any methods of your own to tell which one is which? They are almost always wrong in my reviews. I have no troubles with matching the meaning with the reading, I just can’t say which one is which visually.
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You just need to pay attention to some key visual elements:
未 - looks like 木 with an extra line, and it’s pointy (i.e. upper horizontal line is shorter than the lower one)
末 - same general shape as the above but it’s wide on top
夫 - it’s like 大 with an extra line, a different group from the ones above
矢 and 失 are similar but there’s no tip sticking out in the arrow kanji, it’s similar to 天
(note, I don’t remember any of the mnemonics by now, I rely on the visual differences, like how R is different from P and B)
When it comes to reading, it’s easier because when you see a word like 週末 there’s no way it’s 未 over there. So based on context you’ll be eliminating many similar looking kanji. 末 often comes in the last place in a word (年末、月末）, while 未 is often in the first place like 未来、未婚、未熟.
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For 矢 I visualise it as the lower half of the bow, the person is pulling the arrow back, so it remains FLAT across the top
For 末 and 未 you need to recognise the shape so you can do the following going from the bottom up
Not Yet (未) is recognisable as the longest line is NOT YET at the top of the Kanji
End (末) is recognisable as the LONGEST line is now at the END of the Kanji
For 夫 (Husband) The Husband is an ADULT with an extra line through it
For 失 (Fault) - The way I recall this is its the "HUSBAND’s FAULT), and the way i tell the two apart is the HUSBAND has a little bit stuck in his side for messing up
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First of all, if we are going to use the WK radicals method, break down the kanjis using the radicals. Search them in the kanji search section and see which each kanji is composed of, and when they finally show up on your reviews, don’t rush to answer and take your time to make sure of the meaning. I’ve heard that the self-study script is great for reviewing items outside of the SRS schedule so maybe that would help.
If you wanna go full-on mnemonics, I actually have a differentiator mnemonic for not yet未 and end末. Imagine you are the top line and your rival is the bottom line. Your goal is to outgrow the bottom line in length! However, you’ve not yet未 reached your goal, you’re still growing. Some time later, you’ve finally outgrown the bottom line! You’ve reached the end末 of your goal. This is the happy ending of your journey. The end.
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If you practice writing them out the problem will go away immediately.
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Also, try to write them side by side. It really helps to emphasize the difference when you’re trying to write them.
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some mnemonics that may help:
矢 vs 失: ‘fault’ is the same as ‘arrow’ but with an extra bit at the top, meaning there was a ‘fault’ when trying to write it out
末 vs 未: for ‘not yet’, the top horizontal line is shorter than ‘end’
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The problem with this is that most of these are made up of themselves.
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thank you 
Thank you. And yes when they are combined with other kanji it is easier to remember.
I think it might help if you look at the ancient forms of some of these characters. I mean, that might increase your memory load, but at least the ancient forms often look like what the kanji are supposed to represent, which might make things easier.
First of all though, one fact: quite a lot of these 𠂉 symbols in modern kanji used to be perfectly symmetrical in ancient writing, and they often resembled a small ‘U’. Knowing this might help you reconcile some of the differences between what you’d expect the kanji to look like and what it actually looks like. Now then (don’t mind the sentences in kanji in the pictures making no sense: they’re written in Chinese, not Japanese)…
矢:
You can imagine the 大 as the tail and body of the arrow, with 𠂉 being the head. (You can mentally push and deform it a little, and then centre it so you have a ^ on top of 大.)
失:
As you can see, everything but the last diagonal stroke (roughly 乀, but without that little extra bit) is actually a hand (something like ≠. Can you see the five fingers? Count each protrusion aside from the one at the bottom, which you can imagine as the wrist). That final 乀 represents a falling object. That’s why 失 means ‘loss’ – you lose something when it falls out of your hand. (I know the WaniKani meaning is ‘fault’, but I genuinely cannot see how that’s more useful or intuitive than ‘loss’, which is the meaning I use for almost everything in Chinese and Japanese, and it works really well.)
夫:
You have a big man (大) with a topknot held together by a pin (一) representing how he’s become an adult. If that doesn’t work for you, then you can pretend the 一 represents a log or some other heavy load which a husband/man should carry. (Please excuse the traditional gender roles if that’s offensive, but also note that quite a few kanji are based on such traditional concepts.)
Finally, the way I remember 末 and 未 is this: 木 is a tree, and the roots (丨and 𠆢) are the ‘end’ of the tree. The shorter horizontal line (一) is a position marker. If something has already happened, then I’m nearer the end, and so the horizontal line is on the bottom (末). On the other hand, if something has yet to happen, then I’m further from the end, and the line is on top (未).
I hope all this helps. All the best! がんばって!
EDIT: I second all the suggestions to write the kanji out if you can, but I know not everyone wants to write kanji, so I decided to make all this as visual as possible so that hopefully, you won’t feel the need to write anything or learn stroke order if you don’t want to.
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Wow! Thank you for the detailed explanation, it made the whole thing very clear in my head.
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@Jonapedia Do you mind sharing the name of this book? It looks quite interesting 
They’re actually pages uploaded on this Chinese website. Honestly, however, how I find them is just by typing ‘[kanji] 字源’ (じげん=‘character origin’ – the word exists in both Japanese and Mandarin, just with a different pronunciation) into Google Images. I think it works best with Simplified Chinese characters, but using the traditional form of any kanji should work fine as well. There’s quite a bit of overlap between Japanese Shinjitai kanji and Simplified Chinese + Traditional Chinese, so there shouldn’t be too much trouble, but if you don’t get any results for a particular kanji, you might want to see if it has a traditional form.
@Jonapedia Very helpful 
Thank you!
@selinchan There’s also 朱 later on, restoring the balance: 3 kanji with 大 at the bottom and 3 with 木 at the bottom 
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