What's ironic is that Toaplan is best known for one of their worst games, made in a format they always had trouble with - despite developing many core mechanics of the shooter genre and eventually morphing into shmup powerhouse Cave which is still a going concern and not subsidiary of a slideshow game and fanservice company.

Also, I like those things Smork said about everybody being nice because we're already a fringe group.

The kanji aren't really visible but the general outline and context should give clues for what many of them are - that wouldn't be helped by not knowing what the game was about in advance, however. Furigana, lol. I only know a handful of kanji but using furigana in place of a character would just slow me down.