Does using Anki's Wanikani deck affect the SRS?

As many Wanikani users know that a Wanikani deck is available on Anki , I was wondering if doing Wanikani on Anki will affect the SRS so I stop using both or if it doesn’t really matter at all?

There shouldn’t really be any need to do both, and the farther you go in WK the more unreasonable it’ll be to keep up with the workload.

Really the only way that the SRS gets “messed up” is let’s say you had a burn review coming up on WK, and just a day before then you failed the same item on Anki. Then it comes up on WK and you burn it because it’s in your mind. That wouldn’t be an accurate representation of your memory of the item, but outside of that extreme, it’s not a big deal to review things outside of the system.

But is there really a point of paying for Wanikani when it is exactly the same on Anki? Of course, it is too late to change now but for someone discovering WaniKani for the first time isn’t it better for them just to use the Anki deck?

The Anki deck includes the mnemonics? If so, that’s kind of shitty of whoever created it, because that’s WK’s intellectual property. You can’t copyright the order of how you teach the kanji or anything, but the mnemonics and made-up radicals are WK’s.

Plus, WK’s leveling system is a way of forcing people to prove themselves before they move on. Anki, generally speaking, just lets you keep hitting the SHOVE MORE KANJI DOWN MY THROAT button until you are choking and give up after a few weeks.

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Yeah that is a very good point. Anki does have a way of forcing you to remember kanji which causes people to burn out. The Anki deck does include the mnemonics which is a plus in some sense however, unlike WaniKani, it doesn’t create this computer game like atmosphere in which people can learn without thinking about learning and just having fun.

From my brief experience:

WaniKani is for the long-term boost.
Anki is for the short-term boost.
If you have time and if it doesn’t affect your WK progress, do both.

I don’t think that using Anki exclusively is worth because anyone can easily burn out for no reason. I think we should use WaniKani as the main tool. In here, you can’t do more than the system itself allows and that leads to a more healthy long-term practice. Those people that only use Anki love to say they learned 500 Kanji last month but I seriously doubt they’ll know them next month… while in here, most people tend to remember at least 80% to 90% of what they’ve learned.

However, I don’t think Anki is completely useless for Kanji learning. For example, I’m doing a deck right now about the “N5 Kanji”… You could also make like a deck exclusive for Japanese verbs where you learn to identify verbs by their kanji. Anki allows me to have a more specific goal.

It’s like studying for a subject in college. You have your own notes (Anki) and you have the textbook or whatever (WK). You need both. Only reading the notes might give you some new ideas but it doesn’t teach you how to really connect them. The WaniKani system does all the connection that you need.

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The gamification factor of WK is what keeps me going. I consider that to be both the mnemonics AND the social aspect though I generally just lurk on the boards.

I’ve used Anki and RTK in the past and gotten up to ~1300 kanji in which I learned “words” with often vague meanings and zero vocabulary. This pretty much led to burnout. I’ve gotten so much more out of WK in the past few months and feel the pacing is so much better. When I get a little tired of reviews, I pop on the boards for a few and that seems to get me going again.

I also agree that hard work goes into producing IP and think it’s only fair to be (reasonably) compensated for that effort. (Don’t get me started on Big Pharma.)
That being said, I have no problem with using both together, but I’m not convinced the time is well spent.

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