>>170944It's about not knowing the reading. If you find a kanji you have never seen before, you get a reading for it. This makes looking up the word much easier, and if you actually knew the work but had never seen it written before, then you now know both. It's not like the kanji isn't there, you are seeing it and associating it with those hiragana reading. You can go raw from the start though, and some people do prefer it, though it's harder. Furigana is like training wheels for kanji.
