While, as you say, there have been and there still are other writing systems that mix semantic elements with phonetic elements, or in which what is written does

While, as you say, there have been and there still are other writing systems that mix semantic elements with phonetic elements, or in which what is written does not determine completely the intended pronunciation (like in the systems that write only the consonants), there has been no other dead or alive writing system where these features are so extreme, causing a complexity and ambiguity even remotely comparable with the Japanese writing system. There is nothing romantic about this. Apart from its writing system, the language itself would not be unusual at all, except for being a mixed language, especially in the technical and scientific styles, with a huge amount of words of Chinese origin that behave very differently from the native words, which is also a consequence of the writing system, through which these words had been imported.