Hey guys!
On anki I am going through the core series to learn vocabulary and am about 40% of the way through. At the same time I was doing JLPT N3 vocabulary on Torii but recently finished it. (I know the words in N5 and N4).
So, my question is.; Should I go to N2 vocabulary on Torii or should I just now focus primarily on Anki. I don’t think I’ll take the JLPT (at least not yet) but I learned a lot of useful words going through N3.
Thanks!
I don’t think there is anything wrong with going onto N2 vocabulary alongside finishing off your N3 stuff. My decision would be purely dependant on how much free time I have (there are no students at my school at the moment because of this very very annoying virus, but I have to go into work for 8 hours a day, so if it were me I’d be all over it! 
)
Other than that… maybe pay particular attention to what vocabulary sounds more formal or more casual. Lots of keigo vocabulary comes up in N2 so you would have to be careful not to say that with your friends, and of course the reverse is true for when speaking to your boss, teacher, etc. in casual speech.
But yeah in summary if you have the time you should go for it!
Ah okay so I should stick to Anki and do the N2 as well?
btw, i recently ran into an app named torii srs. it is basically wanikani with words. i know lots of people loves wanikani, i geniunly don’t.
it has core 10k option or you can go with by the exam levels. seems pretty handy actually and you have write something too, it makes it even better. it’s now beta has a few flaws but a good alternative indeed.
thought i’ll just let you guys know.
That’s actually what I used to learn JLPT N3 Vocabulary. Love the app!
I mean, WaniKani has ~6,300 words, too. It’s just that they’re all chosen to reinforce the readings/meanings of the 2,000+ kanji it teaches.
Really though, the best way to go about vocab is literally any SRS platform that supports it; the whole idea of SRS is to efficiently remember LOTS of things (minimize the time spent reviewing, while maximizing retention).
oh yeah, i should mention that as “wanikani without kanjis and stupid mnemonics” 
I use a combination of vocab books and Houhou for learning vocabulary. Though should say I reached level 60 in Wanikani. At the end of the day you just want to find a tool that you like, that also covers a lot of content and allows you to add your own content too. Anki, Houhou, Torii seem to cover that.
If you aren’t planning on taking the JLPT any time soon, you’d be better off doing sentence mining for your new vocabulary and increasing your immersion time than going onto N2. It’s important to see the words being used in real contexts to really understand what they mean and how they are used, the anki cards aren’t enough to really understand the meaning of the words unless they are simple nouns and your ‘core’ vocabulary will depend on whatever you are interested in doing in Japanese e.g. reading fantasy novels, playing video games etc. so start sentence mining new vocabulary from whatever you want to do in Japanese and you’ll see better returns from that than learning keigo stuff in N2.
What exactly is sentence mining?
Well basically… it means looking for sentences with new words you want to learn while you immerse in Japanese content.
Every time you learn a new word you should also have a sentence that uses the word.
It’s best if the new word is the only word you don’t know in the sentence.
That is called an “i+1 sentence”.
So, you do the thing you enjoy doing in Japanese like watching anime, or reading a detective book or playing a video game, and then when you notice a sentence with a word that you don’t know that you want to learn, you take the sentence and turn it into a flash card in Anki.
You can even use programs like subs2srs and anki addons like Morphman to automatically convert anime/movies/dramas into anki flash cards that have English, Japanese, pictures and audio and to find the sentences in that content that are i+1 for you and even order them by usage frequency etc.
Anyway the key point is that its better to learn words you find through immersion because each specific context has its own ‘core vocabulary’, so if you want to be able to play video games in Japanese for example you need to learn a lot of words that will not appear in that N2 book so you should just make flash cards for them in Anki as you come across them in a video game. There are many common Japanese words and phrases you won’t find in JLPT vocab books or the core series. Also, its better to learn the words from native content because you’ll remember them easier and understand the context the words are used in better.