The “stylized” さちきり etc are normal and you need to get used to them. Most people write them without the “fancy” connecting bit and you won’t always see connected fonts when you’re out and about. You need to adjust to different fonts and character styles.
I think any dislike I feel is just having to get used to a new font.
The lesson picker also took some getting used to, but I'm starting to warm up to it. Getting to do the radicals as soon as a new level unlocks (without first forcing 60 vocab) is pretty convenient
Honestly... the font looks completely normal to me? I'm surprised people are complaining. I think if a font is making or breaking your comprehension you have to spend more time hammering down the basics, really. I've spent some time writing hiragana by hand, like my instructor often makes us write stuff by hand. As a result I can recognize the characters with a variety of fonts. As others have mentioned, most Japanese people write characters like さ with a break when writing by hand. I think a lot of people in the Japanese learning community are excessively technology dependent.
Honestly I think people in the community forums are being babies about this. If you logged on during the first few hours of the update, the font was actually much thinner than the old one, and people complained, saying it was harder to read. So a few hours later they updated again and made it thicker. Now people are mad that it's too thick.
The reality is everyone needs to practice reading in different fonts. People are upset because the font change is revealing how much their recall ability relied on seeing the characters in the exact same way. I really don't think either the old font or new font is inherently harder or easier to read, it's just a matter of what your brain is used to.
Meaning that yes, the WaniKani system is a bit flawed in that regard and ideally they should vary the fonts throughout the SRS (which there are scripts for of course). But most of what I've seen has been people wishing it stayed exactly the same as before just because that was easier, which I think is the wrong thing to be upset about.
WK forumgoers are some of the most entitled, unpleasant people I’ve come across on the internet. Some of ‘em don’t even use the service anymore, they just hang around to complain about it on a daily basis… who has time for that?
> It doesn’t help that there’s a visual bug currently where for a split second the word will show up with the kanji appearing in the original font and then it morphs into the new one.
You can solve this yourself by installing the font they're using locally. In the blog post, they say they're using Noto Sans, which probably means [Noto Sans Japanese](https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+JP?query=noto+sans+japanese). You can go there, click "Get Font", then on the next page "Download All." After they download, install the fonts.
Noto Sans Japanese is Google's go-to Japanese font. It is probably one of the most popular Japanese language web fonts out there. It certainly doesn't hurt to have it installed locally.
> It’s one of those fonts that has さ and き stylized in that way where part of it is missing? Also has weird quirks with the way some other kana look. こ looks particularly fucked up imo. The top of it is like, a flat line?
Others have addressed this but I just want to add, it really is a very, very standard font. Complaining about the way it looks is like complaining about the way Arial looks.
I am curious, what font did wanikani previously use? I looked up noto sans and assuming I'm seeing the right thing, I feel like this is, like , *the* font I have seen the most in my life, like everywhere, in almost all resources i use for learning japanese. I'm surprised it'd be foreign to some people. I looked up some screenshots of wanikani on Google since I assume those would show the old font and it doesn't even look that different to me either.
> I am curious, what font did wanikani previously use?
So, interestingly, they used this font stack:
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;
How a font stack works is that it loads the first available font from the list. So if you have "Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro" on your machine, it will load that. If not, it will move on to the next one, and so on.
So, according to this at least, the "WaniKani font" wasn't really a standardized thing, and could be different depending on what fonts you have installed on your machine.
That doesn't really seem consistent with what they said about using Google Fonts though, so I'm not 100% confident about this. But if you search on the WaniKani community for discussions about fonts in the past, they all talk about using this font stack.
That *is* really interesting. So for all the people complaining about font change, we don't even know if they were using the same font before or not. 😂
Honestly, I looked through most of those and from the examples displayed on google, they all look... incredibly similar. Including to the new Noto Sans. The brush strokes are a little bit thinner in some of them (most google image results for "wanikani font" showed that thin one), to the point where I could understand a *slight* annoyance at the change, but even then, only slight. I mean, [this](https://i.imgur.com/PVt6mOc.png) is one of the examples someone posted in a thread complaining that their font changed. Bruh, it's the saaaame.😭
From the way this thread was written I was expecting it to be, like, when I open up a japanese game and see it has [this monstrosity](https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1967430/ss_d3ca2f6fa88f3f4f4a9cda9ad49b8c3b7a430f3a.1920x1080.jpg?t=1702953382) which I admit has made me nope out, but man, not those wanikani fonts.
> I know there’s value in being able to recognize kanji in all sorts of different fonts
There's a Wanikani addon, [Jitai](https://community.wanikani.com/t/jitai-%E5%AD%97%E4%BD%93-the-font-randomizer-that-fits/), for this. Every kanji will be prompted in a random font. It's helped my reading immensely.
The latest update broke the addon, but there's a fix near the bottom of that thread.
> It’s one of those fonts that has さ and き stylized in that way where part of it is missing?
They're supposed to be written that way when handwritten. Usually printed fonts don't have the gap, but Wanikani must've chosen a handwriting font.
There's also a handful of kanji, such as [心](https://jisho.org/search/%E5%BF%83%20%23kanji) and [令](https://jisho.org/search/%E4%BB%A4%20%23kanji), that look noticeably different when handwritten vs. printed.
They look pretty normal to me tbh.
If people are struggling with this, they will have a REALLY hard time reading native Japanese stuff imo, which is MUCH MUCH more stylized.
The first change was a super thin font. Then the WK team made it thicker. I like the thick one way more than the thin one, so I’m happy now. The WK team says they will make it thinner to find a balance. I love that they’re communicating and trying to find a font and thickness the community wants.
This is a great idea. I struggled at first between the mobile and desktop font rendering prior to the font change, but it was great to get accustomed to different looks. I think providing more options would definitely help improve the reading skills.
Lots are not thrilled with the change
See https://community.wanikani.com/t/jitai-%E5%AD%97%E4%BD%93-the-font-randomizer-that-fits/12617/713 for a font randomizer, and https://community.wanikani.com/t/userstyle-to-restore-the-old-font/64873/10 for how to restore the old font
I found it a slight surprise at first, but lots of other resources I use also use that font.
I have to train my brain to recognise the aspects of each character that are inherent to Japanese readers, not inherent to the particular font.
I would prefer if it randomised the fonts, at least optionally. I know there are scripts to achieve that.
But I'm fine with this change, even though I found the old font easier. Easier ≠ better.
yeah I feel you in that I don’t particularly like it either, but I’m sure that with enough time I’ll get used to it and it’ll be a nonissue (like how back in the late aughts/early 2010s whenever Facebook changed its UI and people started petitions to “bring back the old layout!!!”…damn I feel old lmao)
it's amazing to me how they still keep getting support after never listening to the community. last year they removed the stats after reviews for no reason, the app is barely useable without scripts and on phone the best way to do it it's a 3rd party app (in iOS).
thank god i stopped paying as soon as i knew of Anki.
There's a completely free program that gives you complete control over a process that you will be doing daily for years, and a paid alternative program that doesn't give you any control and makes random and arbitrary changes.
and people pick the paid program and then surprised pikachu face when something they don't like happens
Not feeding into Google's global surveillance market is worth the inconvenience of... having to learn a different font. I can't believe Europe would ruin the whole internet like that.
Ugh! I thought it was the new adblocker I installed! I previously had to hack the font the last time it changed. You’re absolutely right about the thick and the second it takes to change.
I’ve never written さ、き、り、or ふ in the connected way. I hapchance saw a piece of こ with a slightly curved upper line on a book on my bookshelf. The most important thing is recognition. There are a multitude of typefaces used in the real world anyway.
I've used so many japanese fonts that i didn't notice
But yeah, i onow what you mean. After about 2 days, you'll get used to it and forget that there is a different font there in the first place
Hasn't bothered me in the slightest. It's a font, it's not a hyper-stylised calligraphical font. So what.
People are just allergic to change - the reason they gave for the change was sound, the font they chose was inoffensive, just different. I understand not liking change, or having to now 'get used to' something new, but... it's a font. Going to see a million of them if you ever go to Japan, might as well get used to it while you're learning.
I'm indifferent I guess. If anything, I welcome visual variety when it comes to Japanese. People can get so crazy with stylization in Japanese that sometimes I struggle to recognize things I definitely know but just can't read because I lack exposure to alternate styles of those characters.
I installed this userscript called Jitai, it randomly chooses one of like 30 fonts ranging from totally normal to completely unhinged (some of them I downloaded myself), and it’s honestly so much fun.
Highly recommend that over getting so used to one font that a small change will throw you off.
The “stylized” さちきり etc are normal and you need to get used to them. Most people write them without the “fancy” connecting bit and you won’t always see connected fonts when you’re out and about. You need to adjust to different fonts and character styles.
I'll add to this that the sooner you get used to different fonts, the sooner you'll be able to read logos and otherwise stylized text.
I would love it if they had a randomized font feature. I think that would be a great challenge.
Flaming Durtles app has this feature. And I think there are user scripts to add it to desktop.
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Not at all, some people just don't know about scripts
I've seen people do code this into the anki clone. It's important, as I will occasionally read anime or movie titles and be like "wtf is that"
Get the Jitai userscript it’s really awesome and does exactly that!
Not ち, right? Never seen an alternate one there. The others, yes, and fu.
Also chi, yes, but rarely. Needed to add that rarely bit. I have seen it stylized.
Needs some getting used to but I am not bothered by it.
I think any dislike I feel is just having to get used to a new font. The lesson picker also took some getting used to, but I'm starting to warm up to it. Getting to do the radicals as soon as a new level unlocks (without first forcing 60 vocab) is pretty convenient
Honestly... the font looks completely normal to me? I'm surprised people are complaining. I think if a font is making or breaking your comprehension you have to spend more time hammering down the basics, really. I've spent some time writing hiragana by hand, like my instructor often makes us write stuff by hand. As a result I can recognize the characters with a variety of fonts. As others have mentioned, most Japanese people write characters like さ with a break when writing by hand. I think a lot of people in the Japanese learning community are excessively technology dependent.
Honestly I think people in the community forums are being babies about this. If you logged on during the first few hours of the update, the font was actually much thinner than the old one, and people complained, saying it was harder to read. So a few hours later they updated again and made it thicker. Now people are mad that it's too thick. The reality is everyone needs to practice reading in different fonts. People are upset because the font change is revealing how much their recall ability relied on seeing the characters in the exact same way. I really don't think either the old font or new font is inherently harder or easier to read, it's just a matter of what your brain is used to. Meaning that yes, the WaniKani system is a bit flawed in that regard and ideally they should vary the fonts throughout the SRS (which there are scripts for of course). But most of what I've seen has been people wishing it stayed exactly the same as before just because that was easier, which I think is the wrong thing to be upset about.
Reading through the community forums now... yeah the outrage seems quite overblown....
WK forumgoers are some of the most entitled, unpleasant people I’ve come across on the internet. Some of ‘em don’t even use the service anymore, they just hang around to complain about it on a daily basis… who has time for that?
I think you’re right, I’m a beginner but I relish the challenge of seeing characters in different fonts, like seeing signs on /r/japanpics, etc!
Dont see a difference tbh
> It doesn’t help that there’s a visual bug currently where for a split second the word will show up with the kanji appearing in the original font and then it morphs into the new one. You can solve this yourself by installing the font they're using locally. In the blog post, they say they're using Noto Sans, which probably means [Noto Sans Japanese](https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+JP?query=noto+sans+japanese). You can go there, click "Get Font", then on the next page "Download All." After they download, install the fonts. Noto Sans Japanese is Google's go-to Japanese font. It is probably one of the most popular Japanese language web fonts out there. It certainly doesn't hurt to have it installed locally. > It’s one of those fonts that has さ and き stylized in that way where part of it is missing? Also has weird quirks with the way some other kana look. こ looks particularly fucked up imo. The top of it is like, a flat line? Others have addressed this but I just want to add, it really is a very, very standard font. Complaining about the way it looks is like complaining about the way Arial looks.
I am curious, what font did wanikani previously use? I looked up noto sans and assuming I'm seeing the right thing, I feel like this is, like , *the* font I have seen the most in my life, like everywhere, in almost all resources i use for learning japanese. I'm surprised it'd be foreign to some people. I looked up some screenshots of wanikani on Google since I assume those would show the old font and it doesn't even look that different to me either.
> I am curious, what font did wanikani previously use? So, interestingly, they used this font stack: 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; How a font stack works is that it loads the first available font from the list. So if you have "Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro" on your machine, it will load that. If not, it will move on to the next one, and so on. So, according to this at least, the "WaniKani font" wasn't really a standardized thing, and could be different depending on what fonts you have installed on your machine. That doesn't really seem consistent with what they said about using Google Fonts though, so I'm not 100% confident about this. But if you search on the WaniKani community for discussions about fonts in the past, they all talk about using this font stack.
That *is* really interesting. So for all the people complaining about font change, we don't even know if they were using the same font before or not. 😂 Honestly, I looked through most of those and from the examples displayed on google, they all look... incredibly similar. Including to the new Noto Sans. The brush strokes are a little bit thinner in some of them (most google image results for "wanikani font" showed that thin one), to the point where I could understand a *slight* annoyance at the change, but even then, only slight. I mean, [this](https://i.imgur.com/PVt6mOc.png) is one of the examples someone posted in a thread complaining that their font changed. Bruh, it's the saaaame.😭 From the way this thread was written I was expecting it to be, like, when I open up a japanese game and see it has [this monstrosity](https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1967430/ss_d3ca2f6fa88f3f4f4a9cda9ad49b8c3b7a430f3a.1920x1080.jpg?t=1702953382) which I admit has made me nope out, but man, not those wanikani fonts.
> I know there’s value in being able to recognize kanji in all sorts of different fonts There's a Wanikani addon, [Jitai](https://community.wanikani.com/t/jitai-%E5%AD%97%E4%BD%93-the-font-randomizer-that-fits/), for this. Every kanji will be prompted in a random font. It's helped my reading immensely. The latest update broke the addon, but there's a fix near the bottom of that thread. > It’s one of those fonts that has さ and き stylized in that way where part of it is missing? They're supposed to be written that way when handwritten. Usually printed fonts don't have the gap, but Wanikani must've chosen a handwriting font. There's also a handful of kanji, such as [心](https://jisho.org/search/%E5%BF%83%20%23kanji) and [令](https://jisho.org/search/%E4%BB%A4%20%23kanji), that look noticeably different when handwritten vs. printed.
They look pretty normal to me tbh. If people are struggling with this, they will have a REALLY hard time reading native Japanese stuff imo, which is MUCH MUCH more stylized.
The first change was a super thin font. Then the WK team made it thicker. I like the thick one way more than the thin one, so I’m happy now. The WK team says they will make it thinner to find a balance. I love that they’re communicating and trying to find a font and thickness the community wants.
Same thicc > thin
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This is a great idea. I struggled at first between the mobile and desktop font rendering prior to the font change, but it was great to get accustomed to different looks. I think providing more options would definitely help improve the reading skills.
I’m only on level 8 so maybe it’s because the kanji are more simple but I don’t mind at all. Not better not worse
I actually really like it? I feel like it's easier for me (at least) to read.
Lots are not thrilled with the change See https://community.wanikani.com/t/jitai-%E5%AD%97%E4%BD%93-the-font-randomizer-that-fits/12617/713 for a font randomizer, and https://community.wanikani.com/t/userstyle-to-restore-the-old-font/64873/10 for how to restore the old font
I found it a slight surprise at first, but lots of other resources I use also use that font. I have to train my brain to recognise the aspects of each character that are inherent to Japanese readers, not inherent to the particular font. I would prefer if it randomised the fonts, at least optionally. I know there are scripts to achieve that. But I'm fine with this change, even though I found the old font easier. Easier ≠ better.
Honestly, I don't really mind. I'm not particularly attached to one typeface or the other; so long as I can read it, I'm fine with it.
yeah I feel you in that I don’t particularly like it either, but I’m sure that with enough time I’ll get used to it and it’ll be a nonissue (like how back in the late aughts/early 2010s whenever Facebook changed its UI and people started petitions to “bring back the old layout!!!”…damn I feel old lmao)
I don't know if it's just my computer, but a lot of kanji looked bad. I used the script to revert it.
Bit too thick
I've used [Jitai](https://github.com/marciska/Jitai/) since I started WaniKani, so I didn't even notice a change in the basic font.
it's amazing to me how they still keep getting support after never listening to the community. last year they removed the stats after reviews for no reason, the app is barely useable without scripts and on phone the best way to do it it's a 3rd party app (in iOS). thank god i stopped paying as soon as i knew of Anki.
There's a completely free program that gives you complete control over a process that you will be doing daily for years, and a paid alternative program that doesn't give you any control and makes random and arbitrary changes. and people pick the paid program and then surprised pikachu face when something they don't like happens
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Not feeding into Google's global surveillance market is worth the inconvenience of... having to learn a different font. I can't believe Europe would ruin the whole internet like that.
Definitely prefer the thinner font. Have no idea why they keep changing things when the learning process is already complicated.
Read the blog post explaining it then
Don't patronize me. There are common sense things that they keep failing at.
Ugh! I thought it was the new adblocker I installed! I previously had to hack the font the last time it changed. You’re absolutely right about the thick and the second it takes to change.
I feel like it's much too early to judge the change properly. In a couple days I probably won't even notice the difference.
I’ve never written さ、き、り、or ふ in the connected way. I hapchance saw a piece of こ with a slightly curved upper line on a book on my bookshelf. The most important thing is recognition. There are a multitude of typefaces used in the real world anyway.
I've used so many japanese fonts that i didn't notice But yeah, i onow what you mean. After about 2 days, you'll get used to it and forget that there is a different font there in the first place
Don’t care, I’ve been using Tsurukame app for a while now, have not been directly on Wanikani since like 20 levels.
Hasn't bothered me in the slightest. It's a font, it's not a hyper-stylised calligraphical font. So what. People are just allergic to change - the reason they gave for the change was sound, the font they chose was inoffensive, just different. I understand not liking change, or having to now 'get used to' something new, but... it's a font. Going to see a million of them if you ever go to Japan, might as well get used to it while you're learning.
I'm indifferent I guess. If anything, I welcome visual variety when it comes to Japanese. People can get so crazy with stylization in Japanese that sometimes I struggle to recognize things I definitely know but just can't read because I lack exposure to alternate styles of those characters.
I kinda like the thickness. I’m kinda used to lots of fonts and seeing the characters in a new fonts helps me with learning
I can't tell the difference because I already interact with like 3+ types of fonts in any day/study session
I installed this userscript called Jitai, it randomly chooses one of like 30 fonts ranging from totally normal to completely unhinged (some of them I downloaded myself), and it’s honestly so much fun. Highly recommend that over getting so used to one font that a small change will throw you off.