POP in Japanese ポップ体, is a mono-weight typeface for the Japanese Kanji

Kanji

Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

 writing system. It is similar to both sans-serif

Sans-serif

In typography, a sans-serif, sans serif or san serif typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without"....

 and script-based

Penmanship

Penmanship is the technique of writing with the hand using a writing instrument. The various generic and formal historical styles of writing are called hands, whilst an individual personal style of penmanship is referred to as handwriting....

 typefaces in the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

. The POP typeface is designed to effect the look of handwritten Kanji, as though produced by a felt-tip marker. Its loose, casual structure makes it similar to casual scripts in the Latin alphabet.

A common misconception is to associate POP with HGSoeiKakupoptai (HG創英角ﾎﾟｯﾌﾟ体), but it is only one of many types of casual script fonts produced in Japan, even from the font's foundry Soei (創英企画). Its popularity came from being distributed with Japanese version of Microsoft Office 2000

Microsoft Office 2000

Microsoft Office 2000 is a release of Microsoft Office that succeeded Microsoft Office 97 and was designed as a fully 32-bit and Y2K compliant version to match Windows 2000 features. All the Office 2000 applications have OLE 2 capacity, which allows moving data automatically between various...

, and it was also sold by Ricoh

Ricoh

or Ricoh, is a Japanese company that was established in 1936 on February 6th, as , a company in the RIKEN zaibatsu. Its headquarters is located in Ricoh Building in Chūō, Tokyo....

under TrueTypeWorld ValueFontD2.