Without Wanikani I would have given up on Japanese. It eases you into kanji in a way that Anki or textbooks like Genki don’t. Totally worth it to at least do the trial levels and a one year subscription. After that you can decide for yourself if you want to do all 60 levels or not.
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One year is enough to do all 60 levels on WaniKani.
However, I wouldn’t recommend doing this to anyone 
I’m currently doing that, and if I wouldn’t have so much time to do my reviews, I would drown in them, escpecially considering the fact that I also have to do Bunpro reviews, reading, handwriting etc.
But I agree with you, it’s definitely worth the money!
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I think it depends on where you are in your learning journey and what kind of learner you are.
If you are brand new and have very little knowledge of Kanji, and you also do very well with mnemonics, WaniKani is a very guided, structured way of learning a lot of the most commonly seen Kanji and Words in the Japanese Language. As a one stop shop, it’s very good at taking someone from 0 knowledge to being able to read a good chunk of Kanji.
On the other hand, WaniKani is often seen as very rigid, locking you out of learning specific characters until you’ve studied all their associated radicals, and are at that predetermined “level” of the site. If you want to use it alongside other vocabulary applications, you’ll often run into words you’ve already learned off-site, but will still need to do the reviews on WaniKani for it to progress. If you don’t mind this setback, then I highly recommend trying them out, as I personally use them for radical recognition.
If you don’t learn very well with mnemonics, and you want a much more customizable experience, complete with user-created study material and the ability to both make your own flash-cards and adjust how frequently you review them, you may prefer Anki more.
Aside from being completely free to download on Windows and Mac computers, there are plenty of community-made decks of commonly seen words and kanji, as well as textbook specific decks that have been made over the years. You also have control on how often you want to see cards in reviews, and there are many tutorials on YouTube to help get you started.
At the end of the day, I use both WaniKani and Anki, and if you have time I recommend checking them both out. Trying the free trial of WaniKani to see if you like their system of learning, and then trying out Anki to either make your own deck or use one of the community made decks, as it won’t cost you anything to try either, and only WaniKani has a subscription plan for content past Level 5 I believe.
Hope this helps!
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I use both.
WaniKani carried me through the early stages of kanji learning back when it felt really overwhelming. I have studied other languages before Japanese and none of them had ideograms so I had no idea how to approach them at first, especially with their various readings and meanings.
WaniKani takes control of this aspect of your studies. It gives you a list of kanji and words to learn with specific readings to memorize and once you’re done with those it gives you more. It’s very simple and arguably a bit overpriced for what it is but I firmly believe that it got me to learn more kanji faster than going with a simple Anki deck or just learning through vocab.
On the other hand Anki’s greatest strength is its flexibility and the huge number of pre-existing decks to chose from. One deck I used a lot side-by-side with WaniKani early on is this one: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/911122782
It goes through most basic grammar and vocabulary, including a lot of words not taught by WaniKani. It’s probably worth doing the first ~10 WaniKani levels before starting this though, this way you’ll already have most of the basic kanji under your belt which will help a lot to understand everything.
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Anki is free and you can still learn kanji pneumonics through things like kanjidamage (i used this) or RTK decks. Anki (as i understand it) is generally considered better for vocab as it is:
- self paced so you can do as many or as few new cards as you want
- less limiting for vocab. As I understand it (i might be wrong), wanikani has 6000 vocab words that are primarily kanji focused. You wont cover as many words that dont use kanji and youll have to switch to anki once you finish because 6000 words isnt enough for a lot of things (such as n1)
it seems to me theres not really a ton that wanikani offers that anki doesnt
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I don’t use either of them. Wanikani is too overpriced, rigid, has no updates in forever and a bunch of other issues. Anki is a pain to setup, but at least it gives you quite infinite potential and it’s free. If someone is choosing a app to supplement bunpro here, I’m required by law to recommend jpdb.io. It’s free, simple but very customizable, and has some super powers that neither have, like creating decks instantly from a bunch of text (I’m sure you can do it with Anki someway as well).
There’s also other options like renshuu.org and japanese.io, that I wish I had know before, at least to consider them.
Eventually I will switch to Anki, probably. There’s a bunch of things that there’s no better way to do elsewhere, like sentence mining. But I think only at a later stage.
This is also a good read, if you’re really interested in Wanikani:
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In that case I’m also throwing in Kanji Study into the suggestion pool. App made by Chase Colburn. Top notch.
TLDR: kanji SRS, graded reader sentences, choice of how to review from multiple choice to writing, vocab dictionary, kanji origins if you’d like. All of which is nice to look at in an intuitive ui. Lots to customize but perfectly functional from the start. Active developer attentive to feedback
I will add that Android development may be further along than ios
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I think both Jitaku for writing and Kanji Garden for reading are other, much better options to help you lean kanji than WaniKani. Renshuu.org, previously mentioned, does a bunch out of the box with games, puzzles, grammar lessons, pitch accent quizzes, reading, listening and writing questions, community sourced kanji mnemonics and images for words. It also has a tool to create flash card sets from text pasted in from other sources.
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My advice is try a few different Anki decks and setups first (including playing around with add ons like Migaku Kanji God and don’t forget to use FSRS.) and also take a look at JPDB and Kanji Study (the Android app). As a beginner things will be difficult regardless but if you personally don’t like using any of those tools only then would I suggest looking at Wanikani or other more rigid systems. Anki is generally enough but JPDB and Kanji Study are both pretty good as well, at different things though. Wanikani is only suitable for a certain type of learner and is very much a beginner tool but the others I mentioned will carry you through until the advanced stages. Also the Wanikani SRS algo is awful (no offense to Bunpro there 汗) and I would only recommend it if you are really really stuck and it suits your specific learning routine and personality.
Regardless of what you end up choosing, good luck! The main thing is to just keep pushing.
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You’ll probably want Anki at some point regardless of anything else, because you will encounter vocab and such that is not covered in Wanikani, Bunpro or elsewhere and you’ll want a means to study them in SRS fashion. An easy way is to get a deck that is the entire Japanese dictionary and an empty deck, and just move new words into the empty deck as you want to study them. This won’t have pronunciation help and the like so it’s only recommended for words that aren’t covered in any other convenient place. There are also, of course, decks you can download with pronunciation, sentences and everything else.
As for learning Kanji specifically without Wanikani, you’ll probably want to follow RTK with user made stories, since you can find all of this online and don’t have to pay any money for it. (Search Kanji Kooohii for this, pretty sure it’s still maintained but I haven’t used it anytime recently). I’m pretty sure Wanikani is heavily influenced by the method RTK first pioneered anyway.
Edit: As an aside I did try jpdb.io and it does look promising, though I can’t say for sure I would have used it if I were just starting today.
Personally, I like the structure enforced by WaniKani. I’m still new to Japanese and I appreciate that it’s a tried and true system with a large number of users and a clearly defined path and goal. I think I’ll appreciate integrations with services like Bunpro and Satori Reader as I advance in Japanese. I don’t think it’s perfect, but I was happy to pay for the discounted lifetime membership with the understanding that it’ll take me a few years to get through everything. I’m (gratefully) in a position where paying for WaniKani wasn’t really an issue, but I can understand why others—especially younger folks and students, as well as people living in places with less purchasing power—would look for less expensive alternatives.
I think Anki works well once you know what you’re doing, but beginners would benefit from something a bit more structured. I haven’t seen jpdb before this thread, but it seems promising. It looks like it’s developed by a single person (or perhaps a very small team), though, so I do worry about its longevity and support relative to other options. They seem to make quite a lot through Patreon, though, so perhaps I shouldn’t worry.
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If you want to learn how to learn at the same time as learning, use any one of these self-paced, self-inserted, self-everything tools.
If you’d rather pay someone to do things for you, saving you valuable study time, use WK, Bunpro, etc.
I think people underestimate how much time is wasted learning pedagogy and learning methods rather than learning what you want to learn. Sure eventually you’ll run into 叶う and 凪げ and feel tempted to mine / flashcard them - they’re both JLPT1 after all and not in WK! But…
At the end of the day, by following these programs, by the time you get to the end, you’ll just pick less frequent words up along the way, just like you would English words like festooned, insensate, saponified - all of which I saw in subtitles just last week.
I’m a huge fan of NOT mining sentences. You have enough SRS on your plate, why add Kanji that people who made a career of teaching language decided weren’t important enough to make the top 2000 when it’ll take away valuable time from learning more common ones, grammar, reading another sentence and just guessing what that word meant in context?
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I’m in the boat of staying away from Wanikani. If you are too early on,it won’t teach you any useful kanji (for example, when do they teach 時? probably not until at least a month into study, despite it being a crucial kanji you will literally see every day.) If you aready have a baseline of kanji knowledge, it is far too slow to get back to your level.
Plus at least when I was using it, the vocabulary is so niche, most of the time you will never use the word and they don’t contribute to any actual learning(lookin at you ex-partner) not to mention for lifetime in WK, you can get lifetime renshuu and lifetime bunpro and cover all vocab, kanji, and grammar for the same price.
You are better off going with jpdb or renshuu for kanji study, as they provide kanji much more in context of what you are reading/learning. As far as Anki goes, it’s really versitile. Not much else to say about it. I only have experience on the android app, which feels limited so it doesn’t feel right to say much.
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Anki:
gives you an english keyword and asks you to write the kanji on a seperate paper.
Pros: great for ‘reading’ style reviews, an example sentence with a word underlined. flip it over for meaning and hiragana
Pros: can learn anything with anki. Your student’s names, countries in the EU Japanese prefectures
Pros: supports listening quizes
Pros: Open source
Pros: offline
Pros: cheap/free
Pros: Cards written in CSS. Want to have furigana on click? a stroke order gif? if you know CSS anything is possible, if not you can probably find an ad-on from someone who does.
Con: many people find the settings confusing
Con: only has “reveal and grade” type reviews.
Con: from 2009 and looks it
Con: Cards writen in HTML. “<br”>
Con: ‘Nicer’ grading might give you false confidence
Con: need a seperate paper
Wanikani:
Shows you a kanji, you type in the pronouciation or english word
Pros: intergrates with bunpro
Pros: easier to start
Pros: learn the difference between similar words
Pros: grading is stricter
Pros: has an order to learn and where to start built in
Cons: no example sentences in reviews
Cons: expensive
Cons: fewer settings in the app, have to use add ons
Cons: strict grading can be frustrating is 一 one or ground?
Cons: English meaning and pronouciation lock you in. I knew that 力 is power, but it keeps asking me until I can remember it’s りょく.
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Mmm I’ll knock out a couple of your Anki cons. I don’t use Anki for kanji specifically, but Vocab which has kanji
You could do it this way. Idk what the premade community decks are, but you could prompt yourself with clonze vocab words and fill in the blank. Or use the keyword and just type/write your answer. (Google handwriting can be really nice for this)
Again, clonze. You can also type in answers and have it highlight correct/wrong parts. Yes, you do grade it yourself but that doesn’t mean you can’t prove your recall before you reveal
This… Is true. The settings are annoying so for the average user it will look like this. But you could find nice preset templates online, one time copy paste done
Not necessarily. Might be easier to use a paper for more space, But Anki has a whiteboard built in you can draw directly on the card, flip, and grade. Or again with Google handwriting in place of keyboard
If you mean the 4 button answer system, you can easily change to just 2. Pass or fail, making it as strict as you want. With answers that you type or draw you easily tell how well you know it and it’s up to you to not cheat yourself
Not saying it’s better than wk because of these, just clarifying objectively for op. I will say if you want a better Anki, it’s definitely more hands on than wk
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I prefer Anki myself and agree with all of your points
This definition of how to study anki is based about ‘RTK style’ kanji decks. This is the predecessor wanikani is based on and the most common type of ‘kanji’ flashcard [as opposed to a vocabulary or sentence card]
#2 Anki is better at reading questions and wanikani is better at input translation Neither of them are as good as bunbro at input cloze. As you mentioned, you can reveal and grade a cloze in Anki.
#4 the update stopped inverting colors in dark mode. And my kanji deck is now black text on a black background. Please help! I deleted “font-color: black;” from the css tab and I still can’t see anything
#5 wanikani is a stricter grader, and anki is a nicer grader. I listed ‘wanikani is stricter’ as a con for wanikani and ‘anki is nicer’ as a con for anki because it’s a major difference I think you need to know going into these apps.
#6 I use whiteboard on mobile too.
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What works at the beggining of studying Janapese may not work in the later stages…
There is something simple and elegant about WaniKani: “Just do it.” Everything is already set up and its just about execution and doing the reviews everyday. I feel like if somebody is starting out with Japanese and wants to build up knowledge, it can get the job done.
Persnally I think that Renshuu.org pro (or lifetime where everything is available ) is probably a better choice (at least for me). When I started studying I would print out Kanji / Vocab practice sheets from there. Now there are schedules and other tools which make it possible to use Renshuu like WaniKani.
Anki is amazing. Amazingly complex and amazingly great haha. Personally I think its a great choice when other tools start to not work as efficiently. But it does requite I think some HTML / CSS / programming knowledge to get the most out of it. I have set up the questions and the cards in a way that makes sense to me and I experimented for like 2 months before starting to add more vocab / kanji to make sure its right for me (the UI, question types, what I need to add). I constantly use the whiteboard to just scribble on the cards when making tests. I only study on Anki on my phone and only add new stuff on my laptop haha
I would say that Anki is a companion, not an or. No matter the system you choose, there is always a use for Anki. You’ll notice that more when you advance, for example, you’ll need to remember a specific book’s vocabulary or kanji, Anki will help you to remember best that information. And about WankiKani, there are many alternatives, personally never liked it, but if you finish the trial chapters, the system might be useful for you.
Other options not mentioned here:
https://www.kanshudo.com which has an option to add cloze to the flashcards.
https://kitsun.io includes some Wanikani-like decks if I remember correctly.
https://www.coscom.co.jp which includes a lot of skills, grammar, verbs, conversation, news articles, and kanji (including workbooks) from beginners to intermediate.
For iOS
Kanji Toon
Now Production app to learn Kanji 漢字練習
Some already mentions Jitaku app.
Andriod
Japanese Kanji Study
There are a other options I haven’t mention here… It is worth a search to find what would suit you, unless you are dead set on these two options. Best of luck in your studies!
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Does wanikani teach all the radicals or just some before a pay wall?
WaniKani has just some of them before level 3, the free limit point if I remember correctly