Re: Can't identify character set and collation used in string comparisons

[Rick James]

> Charset for connection and rest: utf-8

Let's see this (for confirmation):
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'char%';

Let's further verify that you are using utf8 in the client:
SELECT HEX('ø');
I would expect one of these:
F8 -- latin1
C3B8 -- utf8
6F -- the client is mangling the string before it gets to MySQL.

> I can't find anything matching these tests.

There's always a new wrinkle in charset/collation issues. :(