Thoughts on MaruMori.io?

Bunpro
#1

Hi everyone,

I have been seeing this MaruMori, the Kitsun.io people made it, and was wondering if you would recommend it to be paired with Bunpro or not.

My current set up is Wanikani/Kaniwani for kanji and Bunpro for grammar. For vocab, I’m not too concerned but currently use Anki.

I think simple is best, and I have both Bunpro and Wanikani lifetime. If I get a product just for its novelty, that would be a poor investment I think.

When I have more thoughts, I’ll add them in the thread below.

Looking forward to y’all’s reviews~

#2

I feel similarly. It looks pretty well made and if I was just starting out I think I would use it. But at this point with so much time invested in BunPro/WaniKani/Anki and with good learnings habits established, I feel like it would be counter productive to change things up.

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#3

I have been using wanikani for some months now and got lifetime, just thought about starting with bunpro now.

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#4

Looks interesting on paper, but need to see it in action. However, it doesn’t seem to have advanced materials yet, so that’s a no go for me. I already have lifetime memberships for both WaniKani and BunPro, so it’d be just for the novelty aspect that I’d use it.

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#5

I tried MaruMori a few months ago when trying to decide between a few different options. I ended up picking Wanikani & Bunpro instead. MaruMori was cute, but I didn’t like the overall style of learning. (It also didn’t help that the website just completely stopped working for me at one point during the trial.)

I’m guessing they still have a free trial option, but the website either isn’t very clear on that or I’m currently too tired to find that clearly mentioned anywhere. If that’s still an option, it might be worth checking it out.

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#6

I feel like I am making progress at an adequate pace with Wanikani/Bunpro/Anki + italki. Why change anything at this point. I took a quick look at it, it doesn’t seem like their grammar goes very far, but that was just a first quick impression.

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#7

(Background : I have been studying Japanese for years, first in high-school, then as a self-learner with not enough time because of my official studies, then work; I have a N2 passive comprehension level, read novels, watch movies/animes without subtitles, know about 85% of Joyou kanjis through Anki, but have a much lower N4/N3 active production level. This year, I decided to actually get serious again and study to strengthen what I have acquired through native media consumption)

Actually, the more I use it, the more I like it. I have a lifetime subscription to Bunpro/Wanikani and MaruMori. I got this one last, when they had a sale for coming out of beta. At first, I thought MaruMori was too cute, too gimmicky, and the tone in the grammar lessons felt childish. I decided to stick to my 2023 resolve, and actually go through all the lessons one by one. Little by little, I found the grammar explanations stuck better because they weren’t written as bookishly as usual, and they give explanations of nuances which I had never read in my many grammar books. Even though I was wary of the Duolingo style grammar exercises at first, they amount in the end to translation exercises, instead of cloze, and I need both for my learning style for grammar, and always find that there aren’t enough for me in traditional books.

MaruMori is different from WaniKani and BunPro because it is set up as a complete curriculum with grammar, vocab, kanji, reading exercises (the only missing part is listening comprehension). I think some parts are weaker than others, for exemple I really like the vocab SRS here on BunPro because of the cloze sentences, and the kanji breakup mnemonics are better on WaniKani. If you are using a textbook, you probably don’t need MaruMori. But if you don’t (and I can motivate myself to study on the site in short, 10-minutes chunk throughout the day, but I don’t have the time or energy to open a textbook when I come home at night), I think it’s a great alternative.

TL;DR : BunPro and WaniKani are mainly SRS focusing on their own particular subject, and they are very good at that; MaruMori functions more as a complete curriculum, textbook-like. I find they complement nicely for my learning style, and the cutesy design grows on you (grew on me, at least)

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#8

Quick question: What’s the highest level they currently have? N3?

#9

So you recomend all three and not one over the other.
It doesnt replace BunPro or WaniKani, it replaces text books?

Im only invested i little bit into WaniKani(got lifetime just now, currently lvl 7) and I need some grammar and direction. Started the BunPro Demo yesterday.
BunPro or MaruMori or both as the next step?
I have no problem doing 30 mins on each platform daily.

Just trying to get everyting i want/need for the next year during the sale.

#11

N3 will start with the New Year, I think

#12

I see. It’s probably gonna take them a while before adding N2 and N1 material. Perhaps if I was starting anew? But at this point it’s not worth it for me to add.

Thanks for the quick reply!

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#13

I guess it depends on what you are looking for.

You could do everything in MaruMori alone :

  • they introduce kanji, break them down in radicals the WaniKani way (though the mnemonics are different), give you meaning and phonetics stories. They don’t give you special radical lessons though… but I feel the “stories” are more consistent in WK (meeting all those こういち’s and Mrs ちょう)

  • they give you vocab, based on the kanji you’ve learned. The choice is better than in wanikani I think, because the vocab feels more useful (it’s fun learning the names of all the planets in WaniKani, but I don’t use 水星 on a regular basis; the same goes for ナポレオン三世. 早朝 I might use, just to give examples of vocab that both sites gave me this month). They give you more alternate meanings, the way a dictionary would. When they have example sentences, they are good… but not all vocab have them. However, it’s still SRS. The cloze exercises in BunPro are better, especially, I think, if you choose your hints in Japanese only.

  • I like the grammar explanations because they give lots of tiny nuances, and they build on each other. Don’t get me wrong, I actually love BunPro, I first came to this site for the grammar, and it’s very high level, and very professional. But though the MaruMori banter in the grammar lesson feels weird at first, I find myself remembering the tiny details because there was a funny example involving a weird sounding character eating pizza… And I like the unscramble grammar exercises, Duolingo-style, because I first try to translate the whole sentence before unscrambling the words, and I feel like I need translation exercises for production. They also have conjugation practice (though they are a bit tedious)… but the cloze exercises for grammar are better I think in Bunpro, because they are less ambiguous.

And yes, I feel like it replaces textbooks because if you follow their “Adventure”, you’ll get though some grammar, then some conjugation exercises, then some vocab, and a reading exercises that brings the various points together, then some more grammar, etc, etc…

If I had to rank the three sites globally, I would put BunPro first because it feels the most professional of all for exercises, then MaruMori because it feels the most complete, and WaniKani last because having learned Joyo Kanji by rote with Anki, I’m not 100% convinced about learning radicals apart (I was also wary of RTK when I was using paper textbooks). But to me MaruMori simply has a different focus (teaching you about nearly all aspects of Japanese) from the other two (giving you SRS for grammar/vocab or kanji respectively)

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#14

Thank you for the details on MaruMori! Does it make learners write full sentences as practice like a textbook does further in (I’m on a free trial in N5)? I feel that’s something any duolingo style learning apps often lack, that repetition of actual creation as opposed to putting together a puzzle of words, and I appreciate how Bunpro makes me type at least the grammar points out.

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#15

Thank you everyone for all your thoughts and if you have more, please feel free to share below~

@Magyarapointe From what you’ve shared, it seems like for me this site is more for convenience. I’m generally skeptical that Marumori can offer everything that a Japanese learner needs (I know Jalup tries to do something sort of similar) since there’s many different ways of learning Japanese and like what goal you want exactly, though bundle deals would be a cool way to support and save money (ex. Wanikani and Bunpro).

With everyone’s thoughts in this thread, I just opened a free account on Marumori like 5 minutes ago and the art does look cute. I do think that it would be QoL improvement for Bunpro to have some themed art so that it’s easy on the eyes, particularly on the website, not necessarily to the extent of Marumori.

I have been a bit stuck on grammar recently, in terms of N4 grammar, there’s lots of ghosts in my reviews right now.

and them still working on N3 also, though it does seem like they’re pumping out development changes quite fast…

@Bleepbloop

“If it’s good enough, why change it?”
I definitely agree with this, like money spent on Bunpro and Wanikani is already three digits in terms of dollars, I’m tempted to look at new sites when my progress stagnates, but more accurately I likely need to change my strategy/commitment. I welcome thoughts on like getting yourself out of the language learning plateau.

When I have more thoughts I’ll put them below~

#16

Disclaimer: I’ve only tried Marumori for like half an hour at this point.

One thought I’m having with Marumori is that I do like how they explain their grammar. I’m comparing the Marumori page for “The Difference Between 内・中 and 隣・横: Prepositions 3” and I don’t see a Bunpro equivalent of either directing me to a resource that can answer this or an article itself about like prepositions.
[ ]

However, this makes me think that basically Marumori is basically like an online textbook, like what Tofugu’s Etoeto was supposed to be. And it looks like I might actually benefit from a textbook instead of just doing Bunpro vanilla.

Wait a second, my thoughts are evolving as we speak… XD Y’all come for the ride if you’d like

Basically I looked at the Bunpro page for かどうか (JLPT N4) | Bunpro – Japanese Grammar Explained and looked at Japanese Ammo Misa’s page, and the main grammar nuances are there. So maybe I pulled a big oopsie and never bothered to check the resources :eye::eye:

I will say that for now I don’t think the SRS in Marumori is quite necessary, especially the vocab, I’m not interested in learning like “first rank” right now… I kinda just want to mine vocab as I read manga…

[ ] Eventually I do want to mine vocab, and jpdb.io is a resource that I found for anime, and Migaku is another resource… If y’all have thoughts on those, please share below~ or maybe I should make a new thread for that.

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#17

So many new cool resources these days, both new ones and updated old ones, and I’m 3 years into WK, Bunpro and native content, I just can’t spread focus anymore :sweat_smile: I wonder though how MaruMori compares to something like Renshuu. Renshuu also seems like a full course with vocab and grammar, but the website looks more dated (might be a good thing actually). And I guess there’s also jpdb to compare to.

In terms of my own situation though (which is similar to yours) I just do WK+Bunpro and native content, that’s pretty much enough for my needs. I was doing KameSame, a KaniWani analogue, for the first half of year too, but eventually dropped it, because I found native material more effective for my goals. Sometimes I use Torii to fill that gap of native vocab that isn’t on WK (you can set it up with WK API key and then do 10k core + exclude WK stuff you already study). But I don’t really have a routine with Torii, and do it in a laid-back manner. Honestly at some point it’s just too many SRS/resources for my time, so I stick to the basics :sweat_smile:

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#18

Thanks for this post, trying to find a good site for grammar…

MaruMori looks really good.

We’re very spoiled for Japanese resources it seems…

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#19

trying to find a good site for grammar

Bruh

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#20

You come into my house and you ask for a grammar site recommendation?

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#21

If one is unable to find a good grammar site via this forum, we have failed in our primary goal….

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