There’s a magic trick where you just go ビビディ・バビディ・ブー!
There is no magic trick, but I suggest learning to write the katakana and what makes what shapes different from others. シツンソ are notoriously difficult if you’re just looking at them, but learn to write them and make mnemonic ways to remember the shapes.
For シ and ツ I think of the way the face looks and direction, “She is looking at the sun.” and the other “A surfer is riding a tsunami wave and having a great time.” Come up with your own little ways and you’ll never forget. But writing practice really helped me here.
i remember me hanging 2 paper on the wall (of both hiragana and katakana with theirs romaji reading) i wrote by hand and one picture on my phone of both hiragana and katakana
and i was checking when ever i forget and i was reading margins here and there… and it worked i can name them eyes closed xx
i still have those on my wall for nostalgia
Hi! I despised katakana for so long. What helped me was to focus on recall. It is much stronger than recognition. I saw this youtube video and wrote it down and took pictures of each one. I had a google doc with each katakana and one image which shows correct stroke order.
Then I wrote each katakana multiple times with the correct stroke order and after that I started to try to write each katakana from memory and checked if the stroke order and shape was correct. When I went one day with perfect recall, I used the SRS and waited 2 days, 5 days etc. Now that I know how to write them myself it is much easier to remember and reading is so much faster too.
As for シツソン:
The stroke from し goes down if you connect each starting line in シ it goes down
The stroke from つ goes right if you connect each starting line from ツ it goes right
ソ if you enlong the line you get a kind of V shape, which for me looks like the cone from a soft cream cone
ん remain so that has to go to the other end (more vertical)
In my experience you can tell シ and ツ apart in most fonts solely based on the relative position of the two dashes. If they’re more vertical and side-by-side it’s probably つ, otherwise it’s し.
ソ and ン however… I still often need to rely on context to guess which is which in many fonts/handwriting.
This is a good example actually: you can tell that the second line starts with フツウ based on the two dots side-by-side, meanwhile I need to use my broader Japanese knowledge to read ソンナノ correctly on the first line.
I’ll be the much needed voice of reason in this thread and point out that knowing 1000 kanji at level 32 (meaning + multiple readings + which word uses which reading) without being able to learn less than 50 three-stroke characters with a single predictive single-syllable reading is ridiculous and very hard to believe.
You’ve mastered the differences between 人大犬太丈木夫未末天矢失 but ワウフラ and シツソン are impossible? Really? Really?
If SRS worked for you so far with 1000 kanji, then the magic trick you’re looking for for katakana is, quite obviously, a simple SRS deck with 46 cards. That’s less items than any vocab level from WK except the first one, so it should be a breeze.
First stroke might not be so distinguishable, but the second one is, based on thickness and tapering at the end, as well as slight direction differences.
The reading speed is still slower. It isn’t just the matter of sticking or not.
Stroke width: In some fonts, the stroke is thicker where it starts, so if the bottom left of the long stroke is thicker you know you’re dealing with し or ん.
Stroke length: In most fonts they won’t complete the full 90 degrees for the long stroke, so the shorter end is where it stops. If it doesn’t extend all the way to the bottom left, then you know you’re dealing with そ or つ. Likewise if it does extend to the bottom left but doesn’t extend up to the top you know you’re dealing with し or ん.
Word matching: Some stylised fonts or sometimes handwriting just has the short stroke(s) as a dot or at 45 degrees and the long stroke as a full 90 degrees, so unfortunately sometimes you are just going to be trying out both options to see which is a word
For シvsツ, if I get confused I start to envision a word that has a small tsu and that is enough for me to remember which one is tsu.
For ソvsン, as long as the font is good I find that only ン looks like a smiley, the other one looks sad to me , like someone trying to smile while they’re hurting inside, so that’s enough to remember that it is so sad.
Usually when I get confused with Katakana it’s between ムandマ, for which my mnemonic is “The mu’s a 4”, because ム reminds me of a handwritten 4.
for some reason the logo to madoka magica stuck in my head (specifically the マ in マギカ) which is how i differentiate them, though I still confuse them on occasion
xx
recently i keep checking on : ユ ,ヨ
if you connect each starting line in シ it goes down 
if you connect each starting line from ツ it goes right 
