Would learning the most frequent radicals greatly benefit me in learning Kanji? I saw on a random wikipedia article that just 52 radicals occur in 3/4 of the 常用漢字. Learning 52 radicals probably wouldn’t be that hard, but I wanted to know if it is really worth it.
Help in what sense? It would probably be beneficial in terms of writing them faster/more legibly, but not very helpful in terms of meaning/pronunciation.
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I can’t read at all really, but learning the radicals just helps to not think the kanji are a bunch of random drawings. I have tried to learn Chinese and feel the same way, that learning the radicals doesn’t help much.
Using WaniKani to memorize the different readings of each kanji (and the patterns of when each reading is used) would be more helpful.
The advice to “learn vocabulary not kanji” makes sense to me.
Learning radicals (and kanji study in general) is valuable for reading Japanese and understanding kanji structure. There are many kanji that look very similar so being able to identify different radicals can help distinguish them.
For example: 金 is the kanji for “gold” and “money” while 全 is the kanji for ”whole" or “complete”. The only significant difference between the two is the addition of two strokes at the bottom of the “gold” kanji. There are many kanji that look very similar so being able to identify different radicals can help distinguish them.
That being said, it is not necessary to learn Japanese. Kanji can have several different readings so when reading a sentence, its going to be context that helps you know which version is being used. This also makes it much easier when (and if) you do learn the kanji. The experience isn’t “ok, i’ve never seen this before and have no context for this, but it is apparently pronounced のう、の or あらたせ (this is made up for example’s sake)” to "Oh, I’ve ran into this word before, that’s what it looks like!
So, in summary, radicals are very useful to learn kanji, which helps you know what a reading for a kanji could be (which is valuable), but it is also equally valid to just learn vocabulary, be exposed to countless contexts in which that vocabulary is being used, and learn that way, Either way, you’re going to need tons and tons and tons of exposure
sorry, i didnt elaborate that much. i meant that learning the radicals could help me memorize and identify the kanji better.
I think it depends on your learning style, how you memorize things better.
For me, it would not help, because it does not make sense to my brain to learn smaller “abstract” chunks just to learn bigger “abstract” chunks, because my brain does not make the connection between the two.
So I stick to learning the kanji themselves in context. Context is the goat for me. I learn x kanji together with a few frequent words containing x kanji. I separately learn kanji words with example sentences.
Try different approaches and stick with the one you feel the easiest. Radicals are just as good of a starting point like any other.
thanks for you feedback, ill experiment with different learning styles and see which one works the best for me 
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Tools like Wanikani use radicals to “get you to learn them faster”. It does make sense, but only if you’re going to put in a significant amount of effort over a shortish period (1-2 years). If you don’t know anything about kanji yet, starting out with that method is probably beneficial. But I imagine it will pay off only when these (sort of) corner cases of multiple very similar kanji start to appear, which is maybe 25% of the way in.
Having completed the Wanikani journey (2.5 years in), I don’t remember anything about the radicals. I am currently just trying to brute force remembering the difference between similar kanjis with some moderate success. Right now none of the learning tools can really beat consuming actual japanese media.
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Usually the similar appearing kanji have different enough meanings that which kanji is being used is obvious by context. Now, writing in kanji is a different story, but fortunately I can rely on my computer most of the time for that. 
When I first started learning kanji, I tried to memorize the radicals, but I gave up pretty quickly. I picked up some radicals right away, but others were hard to remember, or I kept mixing them up with other radicals. BUT I find some radicals really useful, like the ones for person, water, hand, and to go… (e.g. for telling apart 待 and 持 or for remembering 休 = 人 + 木 = a person rests under a tree).
Still, for me repetition works best.
So, yes, in my opinion, it would be beneficial for you to “try” to learn the radicals, meaning to spend only a little time for learning them (don’t know, probably at most a week), because they could help you at some point, but you’ll have to figure out for yourself whether memorizing all of them will actually help you. Since there isn’t one learning method that works perfectly for everyone.
There some very helpful components, and some less helpful ones.
You should definitely familiarize yourself with these ones:
- left-hand meaning radicals (see List of kanji radicals by frequency - Wikipedia e.g. 氵＝水=water, 忄=⺗=心=heart)
- right-hand phonetic components (see Kanji Phonetics - TheMoeWay although I haven’t used their deck specifically and cannot vouch for it)
The rest of WK / Heisig “radicals” that don’t have either etymological or phonetic rooting, and are made purely for English-language mnemonic convenience, can be skipped until much later.