I’ve had this bright spark (which everyone else has probably had at some point tbh) to have a manga with a volume for each level and you unlock a new volume when you finish that level and the volume contains kanji and vocabulary in context (radicals would be tricky but doable)
Not only would it be incentive but good practice of material that was learned in a broader context.
You could incorporate all our favourite mnemonic characters such as Ms. Chou, Kouichi, Jourm etc. and really ingrain the stories and mnemonics in people’s head with visuals.
All of the research I have looked at suggests that visual aids help everyone and manga is one of Japan’s most famous exports (not to mention the motivation for many to learn Japanese) so this is an opportunity begging to happen! From a business perspective this would also be a big selling point for Wanikani too. I would be happy to get involved as someone who enjoys writing and drawing.
What do you kanis think?
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I know myself and others along the way have suggested it over the years and nothing ever came of it so I’ve kind of given up hope that they’ll make a WaniKani manga. It’s a shame as it’s a genius idea of really getting everything to stick well.
I think it’s unrealistic. It’s hard enough to make any manga but if each chapter is constrained to focus on the kanji and vocab from the level that’s going to be incredibly difficult.
Each level has around 30 unrelated kanji and 100-200 vocab items, which are shuffled around across levels fairly consistently. I can’t imagine this can lead to a cohesive story. If you want to use most of the items in the level then each chapter will have to be fairly long and/or wordy. Long chapters will require a lot of panels, increasing artist workload. For a serialised manga it takes a week to make a chapter at the bare minimum. And that’s assuming you have multiple people. Let’s assume it’s going to be 2 years of full time work for 2-3 people.
Is this manga going to be paid for from WK subscriptions or sold separately as an add on? Who would bet that offering a manga will increase the number of new subscribers? If it’s paid extra, how many people will buy it? It’s not an obvious business choice to invest in the manga.
If it’s a fan project, then you are free to find people who want to make it. But given the long term non paid time commitment it’s likely to be difficult.
By the way, there was an example of a beginner manga made for japanese learners. The authors shared it in the community a while ago. Personally it was not something I’d enjoy to read… Really generic and basic story, mediocre art.