[lyall]

I fell off the WaniKani wagon pretty hard. Made it to level 28 (out of 60) going about as fast as it'll let you then took a break during a trip to Japan, of all places. Long story short, almost three years later my review queue still contains 2140 items.

However, I don't think falling off the wagon ended up being a bad thing for me really. I was very early on in my Japanese learning journey when I started, and at level 28 I was far better at kanji recognition than I was at any other relevant language skill—I couldn't really speak or understand anything yet I was learning how to read "攻撃". Stopping WaniKani then let me focus more on listening practice and led to my skills balancing out a bit.

Overall I believe WaniKani is a great tool, and well worth the money. But it covers just a small slice of what it takes to learn Japanese.

As a coda, I'm only now getting back into dedicated Kanji study again. However this time I'm following the book "Kanji in Context"[1] and using Anki to ensure recall. From a slightly more advanced perspective, it's all the more rewarding when you get to a character you know you've seen many times but never really got to know explicitly.

[1]: https://www.iucjapan.org/html/text_e.html

[wodenokoto]

Isn’t it annoying to get all new mnemonics? And since you have to start over regardless why didn’t you start all over on wanikani?

> at level 28 I was far better at kanji recognition than I was at any other relevant language skill

Ironically that is what RTK recommends students. Learn all the meaning and readings of kanji and then start learning the language.

[lyall]

Kanji in Context targets intermediate/advanced students that already know at least a few hundred kanji, and it doesn't provide mnemonics or radicals or anything. It's fundamentally just a list of words to memorize, which through doing so teaches you the most common/jōyō readings. There's a bit more to it than that with the workbooks, etc. but overall it's much more streamlined that WaniKani.