Hi everyone, I have a fairly quick question before I start my day.
Recently I have been trying to be more proactive in engaging with native Japanese material, with intent to learn new stuff (of course) and generally gauge my level of comprehension. Starting and stopping every time I encounter something unfamiliar- vocab or grammar- would make for a pretty miserable experience I think, but I am pretty decent at picking out the more “key” items in a given sentence to make sure I put it into my studying ecosystem.
The way that I have been doing this primarily is by searching a term on Bunpro and adding it into my Vocab SRS. Using the Bunpro-provided N5-1 vocab lists + some user-created lists has provided me with a really extensive dictionary that I can add content into at any point with just a click, and since I already use Bunpro for Grammar- it works well for me.
I have little reason to believe that I am putting myself at a disadvantage for doing this- but after using these forums for months or just glancing around online it seems that Anki always comes up in conversation/reccomendation, but Bunpro vocab seldom does? Is there some kind of disadvantage to Bunpro’s vocab system in comparison to Anki? Are there nuances or advantages to Anki that during my limited (I really do not care for the interface) exposure I didn’t pick up on that would support my learning better?
Combining Bunpro’s wealth of content (like Kana-only terms or the Kanji items not present on WK) with the WK content sync has made it a really accessible and pretty encompassing platform so I wouldn’t like to turn away from that utility, but if it isn’t fully efficient for any reason I would like to make sure I am not putting myself at a disadvantage for committing to it.
Any advice would be appreciated, thank you!
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Anki is well renowned and most importantly offers a free ecosystem for SRS flashcards which can be used for anything you want.
You’d probably be putting in more work towards your decks with Anki, so if anything you’re saving time and effort.
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Bunpro vocab is still relatively new and in development. While the N5 to N1 vocab all come with example sentences and (currently TTS) Audio (but real voices are already being added), the additional vocab sentences and audio is still in the works.
Personally, I prefer bunpro over anki and would never switch. 
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Anki has been around since 2006 and built a reputation, and thus is ubiquitous. Its strengths are customizability, and common integration to things like Yomitan or dictionary apps. That’s it.
If Bunpro is working for you, stick with it. I usually use https://jpdb.io/ for vocab, but sometimes Anki for specific things (mostly shadowing or proper nouns - which aren’t always in jpdb)
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Just my opinion, but for me nothing beats my anima/drama cards mined with Memento in one click sent directly to Anki with the subtitle sentence, a picture of the scene, and an audio recording of the entire sentence. For the more complex words I’ve researched a bunch with Japanese definitions, written down notes of various usages and rarely kanji nuances so I don’t have to look it up again.
Many words have several definitions and usages, I just underline whichever I want to focus on and if I see another usage I underline that one too.
With the card I just do a single word on front and everything else on back and flip the card after I’ve gone over meaning+reading in my head and then I listen to the audio and immediately move on to the next card. I’ve seen the scene, I recognize the characters, I get pulled back into the moment and feel a stronger connection than just random sentences with machine audio.
There’s also a lot of fun things I can do with it such as an extension to look over all my kanji knowledge and pick a new kanji here and there by repositioning the card to next in queue.
I did Bunpro vocab for a while. It’s just okay, it was fine for a few core words, but I quickly abandoned it because Anki just gives me far higher retention and for the vast majority of words I don’t have to do a thing other than press + add to anki while watching something and then wait for it to show up in my queue one day.
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