When I first started WaniKani I remember two very “beloved” figures that would never, ever steer me wrong on a reading!
Our dear friends, Hard Gay and Charlie Sheen.
Nowadays, I tend to keep the old mnemonics on as much as possible just because I prefer them but I’m starting to see more and more “sheep” for shi, and no charlie sheen. Like, it’s cool and I get why they might get rid of this public figure that a lot of people wont remember, but it was so much easier for me to envision charlie sheen doing dumb stuff to help me remember a shi kanji. sheep? sheep can’t do anything! what can I “try” to do with a sheep? charlie sheen would absolutely try to break into a construction site, that’s what’s memorable to me! I guess it’s all a matter of taste but now that my brain is used to remembering one common point between all the “shi” kanji, it’s harder for me to memorize without making my own charlie-sheen based mnemonics. same goes for the beloved sei sei sei’s, yknow? although there are more hard-gays in the “old mnemonics” option than charlie sheens, at least.
I wonder if anyone else has some old mnemonics that have disappeared in the long history of wanikani?
I habe the same problem as you. This sheep stuff just never clicks for me 
I have lot‘s of problems to remember the new mnemonics compared to the old ones.
Charlie Sheen was indeed a good mnemonic, but alas, he always came with an expiration date as a pop-culture reference.
I understand the reasons for pulling the old mnemonics but generic terms really should be substituted with something more direct and meaningful.
I barely know who Sheen is, so it didn’t work well as a mnemonic. But I grew to love Hard Gay! Sei sei sei!
I agree. Usually for each kanji I have a visual image and the concept in the image that is not one of the radicals in the kanji is the meaning of the kanji. So you really need something to stand out. However Hard Gay and Charlie Sheen were on the other end of that spectrum, where I had no image of those people. After a while they became some amorphous blob of a concept, but it slowed me down a bunch at the start.
When they tell you you’re useless.
Go to Wales and find out 
Just tty to create your own charlie sheen mnemonics then
Or New Zealand.
I suck at creating mnemonics 
that‘s why I pay for Wanikani
We miss you
The other day I was thinking exactly the same.
Charlie Sheen the samurai, kidnapping kids, etc…
Now every time I found the stupid sheep, I try to think: What would Charlie do here?
I’m happy they got rid of him frankly. I don’t know who he is so it wasn’t memorable at all for me. I even looked him up multiple times to try and remember him, but no… it just never worked for me.
Unless you’ve reset to level 1 since the mnemonic change happened, you should be able to toggle an option to see the old mnemonics.
now we wait for a userscript that automatically replaces the word sheep with charlie sheen
I have the same problem. The others were different enough to be memorable, the whole point of the mnemonics. Now, they are just common things. It is just harder for me to remember. If something was out there and I had to look it up on the internet to find out what it was, like Hard Gay, I just remembered it more.
Sometimes, I won’t remember a reading and I go to the mnemonic to try and remember what it was and it is different again. I suppose that is fine. But, some of the very specific mnemonics were easier to remember. You know?
This is one of those things where I didn’t know what was different (restarting wk after a 3 year break), but I could tell stuff changed; and now, like Plato’s allegory of the cave, the illusion has been destroyed and I will be missing something I didn’t know was even taken away.
I couldn’t agree with this more. “This kanji is read ‘shi’, so think of ‘sheep’” is not a helpful mnemonic. I end up just memorizing the ‘shi’ reading by itself, bypassing the mnemonic altogether. I understand that is the ultimate goal, but it is certainly not the most efficient way for me to learn.
I contrast this with Mrs. Chou, who I’ll never forget. She had such a detailed, rich description that I ended up creating a little doodle of her in my notebook. Each new kanji she’s a part of comes with a new addition to the story, and to the drawing. Unfortunately, no other reading mnemonic has come close so far. Hoping for better things down the road 