I actually have ADHD too, and these tools (WK and Bunpro in particular) have really enabled me to stick to it, stay motivated, and most of all stay organized enough to actually make real progress learning Japanese on my own. Tried Anki for a while, but it was too free-form, unstructured.
So, maybe that’s one of WK’s strong bases of users, those of us with ADHD. The structure is what helps us, rather than hindering us (as some folks have reported feeling).
I think it’s worth mentioning that the “radicals” are made up for the sake of the fixed wanikani mnemonic system and thus they are to a certain extent forcing you to use their mnemonic system even if you end up not needing mnemonics (and personally I don’t think anyone beyond flat beginners should be using mnemonics or even English keywords but that’s neither here nor there). The “radicals” and the naming system for them are pretty much only useful for the wanikani system. Given that you have to review them I’d say it is fair to have the opinion to that the mnemonic system is somewhat forced upon you and that it isn’t a errr “false fact”.
(I’m aware there are user scripts that can help bypass or “fix” this stuff but I’m just talking about the design philosophy of vanilla wanikani)
Hi there! 
That’s definitely me on WK! Thanks to @wct for giving some context on the reason I’m doing this ‘soft reset’ and the rolling reviews.
I took a break from WK because life happened (quit my job, moved, travelled to see family and friends that I hadn’t seen in years, worked on consultancies, etc.) and before I knew it, it was already nine months since I logged in and I noticed there was just way too much I had forgotten after nine months. So I reset until I found myself in a more comfortable situation from Level 21 to Level 16 to level 11 and finally level 7.
Since @simias pointed out that unburning radicals is too much in another WK post, I have since decided to just skip the radicals entirely and only unburn the kanji and vocab items now and I think that’s working out for me. Thanks for pointing that out. I realized it is just like doing a hard reset, which was what I was avoiding to begin with. 
Learning Japanese to me is more of a hobby, something I’d like to enjoy, and not a competition. I think there is no ‘right’ mindset here that you’re talking about, but for people more serious about Japanese language learning like you, I do understand why you would be quick to judge.
Personally, what I like about WK is the structure it provides. It gives you a certain number of radicals, kanji and vocab items to learn and you can see yourself levelling up and making progress. While some of the mnemonics also don’t make sense to me, as others have mentioned, I’ve been using the notes section to create my own mnemonics and I also add synonyms for any meanings not included by WK that I’ve found in other sites I’m using like Bunpro and Satorireader. Of course, I also have some grievances with the system, like some of the updates that simias already mentioned, but I don’t really feel ripped off cause I’ve already gained a lot to begin with.
One of the best things that has allowed me to progress through WK though is the WK community. There’s a lot of activity there such as challenges and book clubs that I felt really improved my experience of WK itself. Bunpro might have this too, but I haven’t started using the Bunpro community actively yet as I have there, so it could be similar.
If you’re interested in using scripts I would suggest reading the Ultimate WK Guide. As others have mentioned, it’s easy to abuse, so be careful!
All the best on your WK journey @Edo9 and hope to see you on the WK community page. 
Personally, Wanikani really did work well to teach me Kanjis - and that enabled me to learn Japanese through immersion efficiently (because I don’t have to look up Kanjis as often as I would have to otherwise). There is in my opinion abolutely no way I’d be as proficient as I am today in Japanese without Wanikani (and with the limited time I had for kanji learning everyday). As people have said though, you really have to combine it with other areas (grammar, reading, listening, speaking) - doing Wanikani only would make no sens to me.
Not sure I would recommend it to someone who already knows so much though (you will probably spend the first 6 months reviewing stuff you already know).
For me, Wanikani was the foundation for all my Japanese learning. I used it for hours daily for 18 months and I found the process simple and easy to go through. Specifically, their mnemonics played a big part in memorising all the kanji.
I would be careful about how many resources/mediums you use for your studies. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and you really don’t need much to get going. I used just Wanikani and read the occasional blog/video on grammar until I found Bunpro.
If you’re willing to invest your time, you’ll come out of it with a nice foundation of kanji and vocab.
Oh and you’ll also realise that despite having memorised all that, theres still hundreds of kanji and vocab which you’ll come across all the time which you’ve never seen before - but thats a different story.
Sorry for bringing you into this, I was definitely thinking about your comment when I wrote that because it was fresh in my mind, but you’re far from the only one and, apparently, not even a good example of what I was talking about. I didn’t know that you stopped for a long time, in this case it does make sense to reset.
I was more thinking about some people I’ve seen on the WaniKani forums who obsess over getting 99% correct reviews and refuse to progress until they get that because they want a strong base or whatever. I think it’s counter productive for all sorts of reasons. In particular because learning more advanced items will generally involve revisiting the basic stuff over and over again anyway.
For me the objective early on in any language is to go as fast as possible until I reach the point where I can engage with native content, even if it means cutting a lot of corners to get there.
We’ll see how this goes. I’ll live up to it if it hasn’t worked out for me by this date.
I’ve heard positive things about it, but I think it starts you from absolute 0. I could be wrong about that though. I use kanji study and absolutely loved using it for the kodansha learners course. It’s the only app that has a good reading version of the graded readers for KLC since the physical books show the answers and the books are hard to use digitally.
KLC worked wonders for me, but once I got up to 1200 kanji it felt very grueling. That might just be me, but if you use the manuscript paper, it felt tedious when kanji start taking 12+ strokes and having to recall them from memory. It’s part of the grind, and for some people it may not be practical.
My first post here was the same thing asking about Jalup I got negative responses, but I did it anyway.
The best method is the one you use. So good luck with wani kani
As another fellow ADHDer, I fully agree with this.
I’ve gone on and off of my learning of Japanese, and only really started to take it seriously last year, but I’ve had WK for something like 4 or something years.
Even if I didn’t make much progress, and even reset my level down a couple of levels a few times, it was still a consistent until I was much more mentally prepared to actually take studying seriously.
The best thing OP can do here, is try out WK for the first few levels, and see if they like the system.
If they know all of the words in the early levels, it’s not really going to hinder any growth in their learning, and they might find they like the way WK is structured.
It’s always nice finding something that suits your style of learning, it just makes it easier to make it a normal part of your every day life.
I also agree with being unhappy with WK, but fortunately, the main purpose of the site still does what it’s meant to do.
Also, the people that are in charge of updating vocab and kanji meanings/level are doing a pretty good job.
I like WK and it’s helped a lot. However, I’ve been adding lots of variety in my study of Japanese and thus have less time each day to spend on WK. My reviews have been piling up, I’ve been getting more items wrong and my progress has slowed down dramatically (~lvl 22 in 22 months). But I’m happy I did so: for a few months, I found myself knowing kanji I had no business knowing when my grammar and vocabulary skills were still very basic.
The main problem I have with WK is its inflexibility and the ways it’s been screwing users over in the last year or so. I still can’t get over how they removed the summary page and never brought it back - and then, one day, my streak was lost because they changed something in the API.
In this sense, WK and BP are like night and day.
I now mostly use Tsurukame (which I heartily recommend, also in Anki mode on my phone where it’s more difficult to type).
So I feel like if RTK didn’t really vibe for you, WK probably won’t either? Since their approaches are somewhat similar. I bear a bit of a grudge towards WK because, several years back, I focused on study using it and bunpro (lacking a solid on-ramp to reading because people kept recommending sources that were just too difficult for someone who had never sat down and read Japanese before), and felt like I made so little meaningful progress because, after three months, written Japanese anywhere I looked was just outright incomprehensible to me, eventually leading to me quitting learning the language. Fast forward to a couple years back, and it took me those same three months to relearn everything I’d forgotten and then jump into native material, just by focusing on bunpro and graded readers.
If you like flashcards and don’t mind an obnoxiously long on-ramp to actually doing anything with your language, WK is like… ok, probably? But I think WK’s mnemonics are a mixed bag, iirc its radical system doesn’t do a great job of pointing out compounds with shared readings (e.g. 険 剣 検), and the vocabulary it teaches you isn’t super useful because it’s taught essentially in isolation (because you are highly unlikely to be able to actually read the example sentences for a long time) - you likely won’t get a solid instinct for when weirder readings are used until you read a lot. I understand why it works for some people, but I feel like for me, there were far, far better options, and I wish I’d gone with those in the first place. It’s definitely better than Duolingo at least lol
I can see what you mean. When I started learning with RTK several years ago I could identify several kanji, but not understand what I was reading. I’m in different spot know where I know thousands of words, can have conversations, and have finished light novels. Still, my Kanji is weak.
I tend to learn things better when I take a deep dive, but it helps if I get my feet wet first. It’s a rather unique situation for me, but then again that was the case with Bunpro as well. I’ll be here in a year to see how my WK experience went.
I never got to like Wanikani mainly because the system forces you to do things its way, instead of the system working for you. What I mean is, if I am studying Kanji in Context, I cannot change the order of kanjis that appear to me. Honestly, the other drawback is that it doesn’t teach you context which makes it more difficult to memorize. For higher levels, context increases the retention level. Instead I have searched for many apps to help me write kanji and I found these three I like:
https://www.nowpro.co.jp/result/3124/
If you like Wanikani so far, go for it but don’t forget that drawing practice is what makes the kanji get stuck long term. For me, it is just that it is not made for the flexibility intermediate nor advanced users need. Do take advantage of the deck Simias made… It’s pretty good!
Thank you, Simias.
And all the best with your learning adventure, Edo9!
PS. I also have scattered knowledge, but I found Kanji in Context the best resource to get up to speed. There are several anki decks available but I’m making my own to optimize my learning.
If you’ve finished a light novel and know thousands of words, I personally wouldn’t call your grasp of kanji “weak.” Gaps in your knowledge are more or less inevitable unless you’ve been learning the language for a decade or more, and if you’re this far in, WK study time will just leave the gaps in different places imo.
I would strongly endorse simias and Thousand JP’s comments. Wanikani is based on the paired-associate learning of sets of semantically unrelated lexical items. Context is everything in language learning and use and Wanikani requires you to go elsewhere to use the items in context. Hence the encouragement of reading, etc, on the Wanikani community pages. The return on time investment is indeed low for genuine learning. I just finished all 60 WK lessons as a means of both review and extension of vocab knowledge. I have been battling kanji for four decades and found the review of learned material, roughly through Lesson 45 - to be an enjoyable exercise. But the last 15 lessons involving mostly new material was a largely empty exercise, with the previous material soon forgotten. This was partly due to my age, I am sure, but the experience reinforced my view that flash card approach embodied in WK is of very limited use for beginning or advanced learners. I think Bunpro is a far superior for beginning and continuing learners. It is an excellent learning resource.
KanjiStudy is totally fantastic. Kanji Study is easy to make time for and I really enjoy the paleolinguistic content.
Hey I was reading that!
I didn’t know what any of it meant but I will still trying to read it! >:(
It’s ok I kept the good parts
I see, there have already been made a lot of posts about is, but I won’t read through all of them, so it might be possible that I say something that has already been mentioned. Since I am a WaniKanian myself, I will try to answer this question as objectively as I can.
WaniKani can be a great tool for learning Kanji, especially if learning with mnemonics is your style of learning. If you go at the fastest speed (like me), you can complete it in about one year, if you go at a more reasonable pace (like many others), it should take you two years. Regardless of how you choose to pace it, if you go through every single item, you’ll end up knowing about 2100 kanji and 6700 vocab (I’m not sure about the exact numbers, feel free to correct me if you know them).
However, there is one thing you should be aware: WaniKani alone won’t help you to learn Japanese. Sure, it gives you quite a few vocab, but you also have to practice reading, listening and/or production, depending on what you expect from the language. Since you use Anki for vocab, WaniKani would most likely mainly help you at learning Kanji, but, it does a great job at what it does if it suits you.
I’ve heard many people complaining, however, that WaniKani subscriptions are rather expensive, and I see what they mean, as the prices are about double the prices on Bunpro, but on Bunpro, you learn grammar and also have the possibility to learn vocab. This means with WaniKani teaching kanji and vocab, and Bunpro teaching grammar and vocab, I’d say both of them roughly teach you the same amount of items - I know that 1000 grammar points are way less than 2100 kanji, but if we’re talking about the total amount of items you can learn, which is for both above 7000 to 8000, I think, it is indeed not really justified by WaniKani to make you pay double the price that you pay for Bunpro.
Another aspect you have to be aware of is that WaniKani can easily end up taking most of your time that you use for studying Japanese if you don’t pace yourself carefully. I’ve read many posts of folks that achieved level 60 in one year saying that their general Japanese skills are somewhere around N4 to N3 (and I hope that I won’t end up in the same situation lol), while others who went a bit slower with WaniKani had passed the N2 around the time they got to level 60, for example.
This is a bit unrelated, but might perhaps be interesting, especially regarding the pacing. I haven’t “officially” stated it yet, but my goal is to get to N1 level in one year after I initally started learning Japanese. My background with Japanese back then was zero, the only thing I knew where two words, these two being こんにちは and ありがとう. I do not plan on taking an exam, as I am doing this for myself, but in one year, I will try to find N1 test material somewhere to test me myself if I am that level. Now, this might seem to be a contradiction with what I said earlier, but I have a lot of time to study Japanese every single day, in general, I usually do four hours of studying and practicing every single day, from Monday to Sunday, but I could basically also just do five or six hours a day, I don’t really have a limit of how long I am able to study (except for the natural rotation of the Earth that causes night and day, of course). But, I still try to keep it at around four hours so that it doesn’t take over my life. So, this is how much I study to be able to maintain my pace, and I’m currently at N4 grammar wise (already finished). While I currently don’t have an active subscription, I plan to buy one for one year during February (the reason I don’t wanted to renew it right after my free trial is because I wanted to practice N5 and N4 a bit before moving on).
Now, having WaniKani and Bunpro together appears to be a dream team, and it is… if you pace yourself correctly. In the last week before my trial expired, I had to do more than 100 reviews every single day, additionally to the ones on WaniKani. So, if you go too fast, it will end up consuming most of your time that you use for studying Japanese, and why the heck am I talking about pacing right now if the topic is if you should use WaniKani???
Back to the topic : Is it worth buying WaniKani? This can’t be answered with a simple yes or no, since it has its pros and cons. In general, I would say if you think that the learning style that WaniKani uses suits you, you could try it for a month or two and then see if you still like it. After that, you can still change your mind. But if you choose to use WaniKani, you should always keep in mind to pace yourself correctly so that it doesn’t end up taking away too much time from your Japanese studies.
(This post didn’t end up quite as I’ve imagined, as 50% of the post is about me lol)