Well, websites can serve the specific font as requested and completely avoid this problem. I’m more curious as to why they choose to not go that approach. There may be a good reason (for example, filesize/load times)
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On my note about subjectivity and objectivity above. If people could take a screenshot of their particular issue with the weight I would interested if 2 people are looking at the same thing and having a different opinion, or if people are seeing different things.
perhaps use this page: https://www.wanikani.com/vocabulary/斜体 and take a screenshot. If you can provide that along with your browser and OS that would be a big help.
My version looks like this when I hover over the characters:
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True, though I welcome the traditional approach. The web is filled with enough bloatware and the less web apps we have the better (which I know sounds ironic coming from a Wanikani user hah!)
The problem was that it wasn’t consistent before. Different users would get different renderings. It is now consistent.
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Stock Lenovo Ideapad 3 15" running Windows 11 build 22621.3007 - stock Japanese language pack installed through Windows. Running Edge Version 121.0.2277.98 (Official build) (64-bit)
And to be clear - I see no issue with this screenshot and personally have no issue with the fonts as of now. I think the hotfixes were great and addressed all my concerns. Just sharing the image for the sake of helping out.
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Firefox 122.0.1 on Linux.
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Just booted up my PC, I don’t think I would have noticed the change if there hasn’t been an announcement. But I just woke up and apparently it had a post launch patch already lol
But I appreciate less reliance on Google (coming from the person who abandoned Chrome on every device like a year ago)
Honestly I already do a lot of immersion, font changes sometimes just go totally unnoticed by me. I only ever notice if it’s a very thin font like in Minecraft’s default Japanese font, or a very uhhhh sloppy or traditional? Either way it doesn’t seem to be the case here.
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Aside from the improved security, I think it’s nice being exposed to different fonts as it slightly challenges my knowledge to see if I really can read as much as I thought. Big fan of this update!
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Agree. I didn’t notice any change either.
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We do serve a specific font now. That font is Noto Sans JP, with a fallback to Noto San SC for unicode characters that are missing in the JP font.
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Perfect! I’m curious then - is this the same font you’ve been using all along, just now no longer imported dynamically from Google Fonts? If so, how come the font weight changed with the update? I think I’m still confused about that. You say it was inconsistent before but now it’s consistent - how come that switch required it to change so dramatically? Was the font changed? Was the font weight changed? And if so, why? (You don’t actually have to answer that, I’m just curious.)
Sorry. If this is the case and now everyone have a consistent styling - I apologize for misunderstanding. Got the wrong impression. Though, I don’t like that font it’s very “cartoonish” and reminds me of comic-sans (and too thick). Again a subjective opinion, but I hope people will provide enough feedback and this will be addressed.
Off topic but what immersion do you find works best? I’m low-mid N4 level 
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Mine seems to look exactly like yours. I believe regarding the line weight preference, objectivity is only possible up until a certain degree, as at some point, it will always become subjective.
(Windows 11, Firefox)
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The old font stack was this:
font-family: "Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro", Meiryo, "Source Han Sans Japanese", NotoSansCJK, TakaoPGothic, "Yu Gothic", "ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3", メイリオ, Osaka, "MS PGothic", "ＭＳ Ｐゴシック", "Noto Sans JP", "PingFang SC", "Noto Sans SC", sans-serif;
The new font stack is this:
--font-family-default: "Noto Sans", "Noto Sans JP", "Noto Sans SC", sans-serif;
Previously Noto sans was quite far down the font stack, so it would be served if you didn’t already have one of the other fonts already installed on your machine.
We now always serve Noto Sans and all users will use Noto Sans (unless it is overridden by a script).
So the font changed because your machine was probably using one of the other system installed fonts.
Hopefully that clears it up.
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Now the font is Noto Sans. What was the font before?
Thanks! Seeing the old font stack is great and what I was looking for. I’m still confused why the weight changed so much for everybody though. I totally get that the font itself changed because my PC was choosing a different from this new one, but that doesn’t explain why everybody across the whole site suddenly started seeing a font significantly thinner than the previous one. The font’s weight should have stayed the same, no? Anyway, I’ll let that question be rhetorical since the answer doesn’t actually carry value anymore and is purely for curiosity’s sake. Just doesn’t seem right that the font weight would change so drastically just because the font itself changed, and it seems weird that the people reviewing the change would look at the new font being so thin and think it was a welcome change given that it was so drastic and hurt legibility. But, again, rhetorical. Thanks again for being so responsive and engaging with the concerns. I think the new font (now that the thickness was fixed) looks just fine and will just take a bit of getting used to.
The comment directly above yours answers your question
Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro was the default if available on your device, so probably that