Bimoji vs くずし字学習支援アプリKuLA
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Bimoji
Master beautiful Japanese handwriting with this app. Practice hiragana, katakana, and hundreds of kanji characters with guided stroke order and scoring. Improve your writing for any occasion.
- Practice hiragana, katakana, and kanji
- Guided stroke order display
- Character scoring and feedback
- Repetition writing and progress tracking
- Model and suggestion display
- 300 new newspaper-common characters
Read full descriptionHide full description
300 new characters commonly used in Japanese newspapers and other media have been added! The “Beautiful Japanese Handwriting” has been powered up with more characters to practice, focusing on characters that are often handwritten and commonly used in addresses and people’s names. There are many occasions when handwriting is required. If you can write beautifully, you can write with confidence on those occasions. It’s easy to think that writing beautiful handwriting is a matter of aesthetic sense or innate ability, but it is about getting the hang of how to make it look beautiful. In the “Beautiful Japanese Handwriting,” points for writing beautifully are displayed for each character in the model, and by being aware of these points, the character will change. ◆About the character to practice ・In addition to 46 hiragana and 46 katakana characters and 50 basic kanji characters that are often used in daily life, you can practice 300 kanji characters often used in newspapers and other media. ・The basic Kanji characters are selected from a mixture of basic character building blocks, so they can be applied to writing other Kanji characters. ・Displaying the stroke order helps you remember the correct character ・In the hiragana practice, the original kanji are also displayed for reference, so you can deepen your understanding of hiragana by practicing while visualizing the kanji. ◆Functions ・Equipped with the function of judging the characters by mark. ・Judging standard is graded by full marks. ・Model and suggestion is displayed when finished writing. ・Repetition writing is available! Your writing will be recored. You can see your progress by looking objectively. ・90 or more points is considered as “Beautiful Handwriting”. ・Judgment is expressed by the table. ・The difference of the first score and the top rating which came out after practice is displayed as a growing point. ・Sound ON/OFF ・Reset recording Beautiful characters can be written by writing over and over. Beautiful characters are the property of your life.
くずし字学習支援アプリKuLA
Learn to read historical Japanese cursive script (kuzushiji) with this educational app. It offers character learning, contextual reading practice with classic texts, and a community forum for asking questions and connecting with other learners.
- Learn hentaigana and cursive kanji
- Over 3000 character images
- Contextual reading practice with Edo period texts
- Progress tracking with review tests
- Community message board for questions
- Connect with other learners
Read full descriptionHide full description
Have you ever wanted to read what it says in old Japanese paintings? How about books that describe swords from the Edo period? Reading books from the Edo period or earlier requires the ability to read “kuzushiji” – characters written in a style not used today. KuLA, the Kuzushiji Learning Application, was developed to help people learn kuzushiji effectively on a smartphone or tablet. Using the test and social-media functions in KuLA will make learning difficult characters easy and fun. KuLA has three main sections: -Learn This section is for learning how to read hentaigana (hiragana that are no longer used today) and cursive-style kanji, using over 3000 images of individual characters. Progress can be checked using the review tests. -Read Remembering only the characters isn’t enough for reading actual texts. In this section, kuzushiji can be practiced in context using images taken from books published in the Edo period. This version currently includes Hojoki (An Account of My Hut), Shinpan Nazonazo Sugoroku (New Edition Riddle Sugoroku [an illustrated board game]), and Aramimei Zukushi Koshu (New Sword Inscriptions, Continued). -Connect Did you find characters you can’t read? Why not ask other users?! The Connect section features social-media tools which allow communication with other kuzushiji learners over the internet, such as by posting a question to the message board with attached pictures of difficult characters. Let’s enter the world of classical Japanese literature and documents with KuLA! KuLA was primarily developed in the Graduate Faculty of Letters, Osaka University for the research project “Developing an International Educational Program Related to Japanese Classical books” (Project leader: Professor Iikura Yoichi) and was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research (2015).
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: くずし字学習支援アプリKuLA at 50% against Bimoji's 10%. くずし字学習支援アプリKuLA also leads on iOS requirement (13.0 vs 15.0). Bimoji's advantage is update cadence (every 6 weeks vs every 9 months). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Bimoji ships an update every 6 weeks, くずし字学習支援アプリKuLA every 9 months. The most recent releases landed on September 27, 2026 and July 17, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Bimoji | くずし字学習支援アプリKuLA |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 4.6 (12 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 9.5% of reviews | 50.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | — | 12 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks — better | Every 9 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 91 MB | 74 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Gloding Inc. | Yuta Hashimoto |
Customer experience
Bimoji
くずし字学習支援アプリKuLA
In-app purchases
Bimoji
No in-app purchases
くずし字学習支援アプリKuLA
No in-app purchases








