How is character size dealt with?


When reading manga, I frequently notice that I have no idea what a character
says. This is not because I do not know what the kanji is, rather it is very
difficult for me to decipher what the kanji looks like. In printed manga, I
measured that printed kanji are often times 4mm in width and just 2mm in
length. This is exceptionally apparent with kanji that have increased strokes
and are more intricate than others (亭 vs. 璽).

Now this is only really apparent to printed kanji (such as newspapers, manga,
etc.) as

  * a) When ink is involved in printing, intricate characters can appear to run together or strokes can become quite close together.
  * b) Characters on things like computer screens are more clear, not as small and can be magnified.

Now I attempted to perform a search on this topic online, and I found nothing.
I am hypothesizing that maybe native and experienced speakers just recognize
the kanji more easily? Are these problems experienced by others, and how can
this be dealt with?

EDIT: Here's an example (however, this is not the same as it is on a computer
screen): ![example](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7YbBk.gif) (blue arrow indicated
easy to read kanji, red is more difficult)




Thanks to @firtree and the other users in the comments for helping me with
this. I'll re-post specifically what @firtree stated:

> I'm afraid that it would always be hard to read the small-font kanji. Native
> speakers learn lots of kanji by heart, and see them many times, so they
> recognize them even with unreadable strokes, from the general outline.
> That's where the non-square contour actually helps. Also the character
> density pattern helps. And other characters around could help to guess the
> whole word, which takes a vast knowledge of vocabulary. So you can try to
> read easier tests with bigger font size and simpler kanji (like 1-6 grades),
> and see forward to improve your skills.

Practice, memorization and increased familiarity, looking for radicals and
general outlines can all help in identifying small-font kanji.




Thanks to @firtree and the other users in the comments for helping me with
this. I'll re-post specifically what @firtree stated:

> I'm afraid that it would always be hard to read the small-font kanji. Native
> speakers learn lots of kanji by heart, and see them many times, so they
> recognize them even with unreadable strokes, from the general outline.
> That's where the non-square contour actually helps. Also the character
> density pattern helps. And other characters around could help to guess the
> whole word, which takes a vast knowledge of vocabulary. So you can try to
> read easier tests with bigger font size and simpler kanji (like 1-6 grades),
> and see forward to improve your skills.

Practice, memorization and increased familiarity, looking for radicals and
general outlines can all help in identifying small-font kanji.

