Mirai Kana Chart - Hiragana & Katakana Writing Study Tool

This is without doubt the nicest Kana chart app I have yet come across in the entire App Store and I have looked at a great many over the years. Beautifully designed and presented with a choice of black or white themes (I prefer the Black). It has all the options you could require - audio pronounciation, stroke order animations, practice writing, flashcard testgame, multiple kana font display - all seamlessly integrated into a simple and elegant interface. Recently expanded beyond the two basic sets of 46 kana the only room for improvement is in Mirai completing the kana chart with the more advanced multiple kanas. I only hope they will move their existing Japanese apps (formerly iStart Japanese and Kana) to be iOS universal, to be iPad friendly. Great work.

I was looking for a full screen app listing the hiragana (or katakana) taking advantage of the full iPad screen as an "aide de memoire", which this does nicely. It has native pronunciation, but the sound quality isn't as good as I would like - in particular it doesn't cope with many letters in a row (eg trying to use the application as a sound board for speaking a word in Japanese). And I think it needs an option to turn off all the other sound effects (beeps on switching mode). I'd also like diagrams (the combined kana, especially for foreign sounds). One final small suggestion for improvement is to move all the characters a little higher within their box/circle - it is particularly noticeable in the "audio" mode that the kana are in the bottom half of the circle rather than centred, and it looks amateurish.