Why is 画 so early?

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The kanji 画 is introduced in level 6, but the first vocabulary items using it (画像, 映画) are only in level 13. This strikes me as rather odd – surely, this could be moved to around that level, or a single-kanji vocabulary entry (e.g. かく) added to level 6 or 7? (Or 画家 be added, as 家 is in level 7, although that word is apparently not extremely common?) I understand that the kanji is rather simple so can be introduced early, but there doesn’t seem to be a reason to burden the beginner levels with kanji that go unused for quite some time.

I certainly find that I remember kanji more easily if I also learn associated vocabulary (perhaps just because they come up more often in reviews, then).

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@Mods can you comment on this?

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I don’t have an official answer, but there are a lot of visually similar boxy looking kanji on that level and the previous one, so it may be to help the recognition discrimination early on. Plus the construction is fairly simple

画; 両; 毎; 雨; 南; 曲; 直

Strangely, 画 doesn’t keep the leaf stem on WK Community, so your mileage on visual similarity may vary.

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That’s Chinese variant.

画 Japanese

画 Chinese

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WK often moves items from one level to another. It’s possible that 画 used to be level 13, or maybe the 画 vocabs used to be lower level, I’m not sure.

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You might want to check your browser settings because it does for me.

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It looks fine at home. I guess the work PC has a font missing or something. Weirdly, the kanji in the address bar displayed correct on my work PC.

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It’s a common problem called Han unification. It causes chinese looking characters to be drawn using a chinese font predominantly. WaniKani Community prioritize Japanese glyphs check here if you’re bothered.

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Yes, though my real fix on mobile is not this, but… changing forum language to Japanese.

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Thanks! I’ll ask the content team to take a look.

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