Not so much a lightbulb moment, but it is gratifying to start reading a manga and realize that you recognize several kanji-based vocab already! Granted, I know Rose of Versailles by heart, but to recognize words like “being born”, “composition” and even “more than” (a compound vocab I learned last night, along with other words based on “by means of”) is quite a feat for me. I do have a bit of grammar knowledge, so I’m not just reading isolated words.
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I’m reading Rose of Versailles right now for the very first time! While I’m in general not a manga fan, I’m so delighted to be able to read and recognize so many of the kanji I recently learned with WaniKani 
. And I’m really having fun. All my Japanese female friends have read it and have endlessly recommended it to me.
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I just learned the vocab 北海道 (Hokkaido), and it turns out to be in the title of today’s main headline on NHK NWE. (The same headline had the word 発電所, which I’ve yet to learn, but since I already know that the middle kanji = electricity and the rightmost one = place, with the help of the photo, I deduced that it means “power plant”.) 
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@ulisan what is it about?
@ladyjaye75 same, hokkaido was one of my first delightful discoveries, is really common on the news
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@Ninkastmin It’s about Queen Marie Antoinette, the Court of Versailles, the French Revolution…I am enjoying it a lot but it’s a really girlie manga 
. I read the first volume out of ten so far.
Since I saw the anime 君の名は last weekend, I’m now considering to read the light novel based on the movie next. I never thought I’d ever get into anime but I loved that movie. I’m so happy to discover new things!
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The other main character in Rose of Versailles (more so in the anime than the manga) is Oscar de Jarjayes, a woman raised like a man so she could fulfill her family’s duty as royal guards (incidentally, in the manga and the original version of the anime, EVERYONE knows that she’s a woman; in the French dub of the anime, her true gender is a secret known to only a select few).
When reading the manga (and watching the anime in Japanese), don’t forget that Oscar’s dialogues will use masculine speech rather than feminine.
Rose of Versailles is a classic in the shoujo manga and anime genre, though the setting and action makes it more of a hybrid shoujo-shounen series.
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I struggled remembering the stroke order of ‘Nailbat’ radical 扌for ages until i realised it’s just a squashed version of the ‘Genius’ radical/kanji 才.
I wonder if there are any semantic similarities between the two? It seems to havemore in common with 手.
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I don’t think there is any connection between 扌and 才, except that they are superficially similar.
It wouldn’t have even occurred to me because of the last stroke being the opposite direction.
扌 is a modification of 手, that’s why the radical is called 手編.
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I love both, but they’re different. However, I grew up with the anime, and I’ve always loved Osamu Dezaki’s directing style, so it may be a tad closer to my heart.
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Like Leebo said it’s the hand, and the kanji also often indicate you are doing something by hand.
The “squashed” version of 才 is for example in 在.
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If you like a good loom, you should check out the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology in Nagoya. I actually didn’t know what a loom was before I went there.
There is a giant loom machine in the foyer because Toyota were loom machine manufacturers before they started manufacturing cars - which is a pretty amazing leap!
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Now that I didn’t know. See, that’s why I read most threads.
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After a few months I resumed playing Youkai Watch 3 and Animal Crossing New Leaf on my Japanese 3DS. Last time I played both games was before I joined Wanikani, so I could only understand some words here and there, but not enough to really understand too much. I did have some basic grammar knowledge, so I can recognize conjugated words and know how most sentences are structured – that’s how I used to get the gist of what I’d try to read.
Well, even at level 8, my reading skills have definitely improved. There are still many kanji I don’t know, but many more words I can recognize. For instance, in Youkai Watch 3, there was “向こう” in a dialogue. I now know that it means “over there”.
It’s small things like this that bring home the fact that I am indeed learning and not merely stuffing my skull…
I’m not sure how but I didn’t realise the last stroke was the opposite direction.
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