Japanese language question about the title

[Leebles]

So I took a few years of Japanese in highschool. I remember only a tiny bit of Japanese. But I can tell, in the opening screen title card thingy of Doubutsu no Mori, that the "doubutsu" (animal) is spelled out in hiragana while "mori" (forest) is a kanji character. Why is that? Is the kanji for "animal" harder for kids to read than the one for "forest"? Is it a stylistic thing?

 

[xiaonu]

My only guess is that to avoid confusion, but I'm not entirely sure either. It's a good question. I think maybe because separately the words 動 and 物 are pronounced differently when separated. Like for example 一人 .. one person. hitori. Person can be spoken several ways. hito and jin. but ri..? I can't explain that, but its not spoken like ichijin or ichihito if you catch my drift. Just like 動物 together is doubutsu, but separately 動 is do and 物 is mono. Welp that's my terrible guestimate/explaination ;;

 

[thatawkwardkid]

My guess is that it looks "cute" in hiragana. But im not sure if im correct, idk why mori is in kanji if doubutsu is in hiragana.

 

[AskaRay]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyōiku_kanji

Kids learn "mori" in first grade, but the separate kanji for "dou" and "butsu" are learned in third grade

that may be one of the reasons

 

[(ciel)]

I think it's probably mostly just a stylistic choice. There are a lot of words in Japanese that even have kanji, but hiragana is more widely used (kawaii). I think it just looks better for a video game, is easier for younger kids, stuff like that.

- - - Post Merge - - -

My only guess is that to avoid confusion, but I'm not entirely sure either. It's a good question. I think maybe because separately the words 動 and 物 are pronounced differently when separated. Like for example 一人 .. one person. hitori. Person can be spoken several ways. hito and jin. but ri..? I can't explain that, but its not spoken like ichijin or ichihito if you catch my drift. Just like 動物 together is doubutsu, but separately 動 is do and 物 is mono. Welp that's my terrible guestimate/explaination ;;

hitori is always hitori and doubutsu is always doubutsu, though. Kanji that are together have unique pronunciations just because that's how they are I don't think it's especially confusing, especially to native japanese speakers, especially since doubutsu is a fairly common word. If something does have a weird pronunciation, they do usually put furigana above it, though (I've seen that in lyrics on music shows, or titles of things)