When I first started learning Japanese all those years ago, I took for granted that I’d always recognize each glyph once I learned it (outside of shodo, of course). But some typefaces put some weird, weird spins on certain radicals and kana.
I thought it would be useful and interesting to have a thread where we share these. Here are some that I’ve encountered, and I’d be interested to see any that you’ve encountered as well.
Here’s a sign from the first トラック野郎 movie. I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be 門.
Dang, how the heck did I never know this? I’ve seen these symbols, but I never knew there was a word for this simplification. Or that it’s distinct from kakikae.
It threw me too! I didn’t fully make the connection until I saw that square as a radical in other kanji. I’ve put a decent dent in that game and I’m still not used to it.
What threw me even more in this image was と; I thought it was ヒ!
I also encountered that font in “To Heart” Visual Novel. It was kind of shock But when now I think about it and look at it closely, it’s stroke order that helps to differentiate it from 口. It’s visible in the character itself, because lower left corner of the “square” is rounded, suggesting that both lines are one stroke (and of course vertical lines stick over the upper horizontal line). So it’s like two first strokes of 女 kanji got rotated 45 degrees counter-clockwise (so that diagonal lines became vertical), and then, to add insult to the injury, the second one got straightened
I’m a little afraid to get too deep into this on a forum where I don’t know the rules about it! But I’m using the PCSX2 emulator along with an ISO that I ripped a while back from a physical copy that I still own. I fell off the wagon with this game and I should really start playing it again!
Feel free to ask if I can help! I don’t know if I can offer much, but I know what a pain it can be to play old games and I have a lot of experience finding ways to make it happen. I don’t know everything but it’d be my pleasure to save you any hassles that I had to figure out!
I just discovered Akiko Yano and her first album, Japanese Girl/日本少女 from 1976. The music is really good, incidentally, and features some big names from the time. That stylized title in the lower-right corner is pretty out-there. It’s only four kanji but each looks successively less like it “should.”
I’m playing Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth* and 16×16 pixelated kanji are still the bane of my existence. The first kanji in the second line gets me every time: I keep thinking it’s 退 but it’s actually 返.
The sad thing is, the PSP’s display had a 48×48 square allocated for each character. Squeenix could’ve updated the font if they wanted to.
PSA for Valkyrie Profile fans: this game comes with the fancypants edition of Valkyrie Elysium that drops in November, but this game is a PlayStation exclusive. The other platforms just get bonus wallpapers.
Because this language doesn’t hate me enough as it is, I just discovered that the first two panels of JoJolion use a font in which っ is indistinguishable from つ. I can tell from experience which is which (I think they’re all っ), but for a newer learner, this’d be brutal.
But when now I think about it and look at it closely, it’s stroke order that helps to differentiate it from 口. It’s visible in the character itself, because lower left corner of the “square” is rounded, suggesting that both lines are one stroke (and of course vertical lines stick over the upper horizontal line). So it’s like two first strokes of 女 kanji got rotated 45 degrees counter-clockwise (so that diagonal lines became vertical), and then, to add insult to the injury, the second one got straightened 
But I’m using the PCSX2 emulator along with an ISO that I ripped a while back from a physical copy that I still own. I fell off the wagon with this game and I should really start playing it again!
