Hi all,
I could really do with some advice!
It’s been about a year since i last did a review, now I want to pick it back up again but I have 1300 reviews to do!
Do I just reset my level to something in the 1-10 range so I can manage it my reviews again? Or do I use a userscript which can manage my reviews a lot better? Or do I just stick to it and keep pummelling through as many reviews as possible?
Don’t ever reset your level. It literally puts your progress back months. Just stop doing lessons and do like 150-200 reviews a day and you’ll be caught up in like a week and a half.
EDIT: the review reordering script exists for stuff like this
I agree with you, but continuing is too frustrating for a lot of people. Low percentages on reviews for weeks could cause people to just give up again despite being faster.
So OP, just ask yourself how ok you are with banging your head against the wall basically lol.
Since they didn’t do reviews for a year, their actual learning progress was probably put back months anyway. You may be “caught up” after 1.5 weeks, but that’s at the cost of probably having failed most reviews and now having hundreds of items on apprentice.
I’d say do try starting the reviews, but if you fail most of them, it’s probably not worth it and resetting might be the better option.
Spending a few week to get back on track is arguably better than setting yourself back a couple of months. It’s not like you “unlearned” what you learned back then, it’s just somewhere buried in your memories.
Resetting to 10 means losing 14 levels which is at the very least 3 months worth of progress.
It’s faster to just get your reviews wrong a couple of times than learn everything again. You can click the wrong items in your review summary and go from there instead of doing lessons for items you already learned before.
In the end it depends on if you can deal with low accuracy for a while. Imo, getting a lot of reviews wrong is frustrating but so is losing months of progress.
Just try getting back on track with just review and decide if it works for you or not.
I feel like level resets are like a test of character or something. Are you here to go learn some Japanese or are you here to go get some high accuracy scores and feel good about yourself? I’d never set my progress back months because months are months. I don’t got time for that. I got stuff to do besides Wanikani.
That’s just me though. OP, do whatever makes you happy 
Both times I got snowed under a review pile, I used the review reorder script and kept going until I found that sweet spot of “nope I definitely don’t remember ANY of this”. The 1st time I didn’t level reset, the second I just moved back 2 levels.
I’d say don’t reset until you know where your long-term memory ends!
Right, time for 3 cents from a gal who did decide to reset her level. Of course, I’ve never got further than level 10 in my WK career but I think my advice can be applicable here anyway.
Get the reorder script and do some reviews limited to lower levels (e.g. 1-15. If that seems daunting, by all means, start with just levels 1-10). You’re not trying to clear your queue here but rather figure out how far your memory can reach at this point. You’ll probably find that you remember a lot more than you had thought!
If it’s fairly easy-going, try adding higher levels to your review pile, until you get to a level where you basically can’t answer any questions right. This might even be level 20 or 21.
At this point you can decide to brave the reviews from the last few levels that you can’t remember well, or just reset to the last level that felt ‘manageable’. Again, it will probably be around 2 to 5 rather than 10-12 levels.
I’m definitely on the team “taking it slow”, I see no point in torturing yourself with reviews of things you literally can’t remember. Give yourself time to re-learn what you’ve forgotten, but don’t set yourself back too far so that you’re repeating things you already know (even if you don’t know you know them).
As someone who has both dug out of a pile of reviews from a long hiatus, and has reset…
Digging out of the pile is absolutely possible. Back when I did it, I made a goal to finish every day with 50 fewer reviews than the day before. First day I got myself to a nice even increment of 50 and then just went from there. If I felt up to it, I might get down more than 50 from the previous day, but considering everything you mess up will frequently come back to haunt you, I didn’t require this of myself. It took a few weeks, but doing it that way I got out of the pile without finishing with hundreds of apprentice items like what would have happened if I’d just banged through everything in a day or two. It was a lot of work, but manageable.
As for resetting. I reset from 23 to 1 at the beginning of this year and I’ve just recently gotten back to 23. Could I be much further ahead now? Sure, but my reset wasn’t due entirely to a review pile. I really messed myself up by abusing the reorder script and skipping vocab lessons to level faster than I should have been. I had several levels worth of vocab lessons backlogged, and that paired with the hiatus that happened when I went from working an overnight WFH job back to being in the office during the day resulted in me not remembering what seemed like anything at all. Had I stuck to it, I might have recovered, but it would have taken months anyway and I’m definitely a bit “here to go get some high accuracy scores and feel good about yourself” so… 
For me, in that case, after trying some reviews and feeling like I had legit never seen many of the items ever before, I felt it was better to spend months properly building that foundation. I probably didn’t need to go all the way back to 1, but it just felt like if I was going to do it, I was going to do it all again rather than have myself finding later that things I had previously burned I no longer knew at all. You’ve got to do what you feel is right for yourself, but I definitely suggest grabbing the reorder script and going for digging out for a bit before you consider a reset. You might remember far more than you think you do and what you don’t remember could be super manageable in comparison to going through it all again.
I took the leap and did a reset after about 6 months with no Japanese exposure of any kind.
First I reset to level 3, because I wanted to keep all my burns. But I still had a giant pile to review, so I bumped down to 2. Well, I was forgetting tons of them, and instead of being in a “learning” mindset and rebuilding the connections, I just found myself guessing, getting it wrong, seeing the right answer, and then losing it again immediately. At no point was I re-learning the mnemonics. And when I peeked at my “burned” items, I was staring at a lot of symbols that carried no meaning or pronunciation I could dig up in my mind.
I took another break to reconsider it all, then took the plunge and reset to level 1. Deleted the reorder tool and the override tool, because as much as I promised myself I wasn’t abusing them, I totally was.
Re-starting isn’t the right choice for everyone, but it was definitely the right choice for me. I’m going through my Lessons slower so I don’t have a ton of things sitting in Apprentice (currently trying to keep it around 30, which I know is pretty low).
I’ve walked away from this language and come back to it about 4 times in my life, and each time I feel like I’ve lost 100%, but each time I also re-learn and pass my previous skill levels, faster and faster every time.
I wouldn’t reset. Just do a decent number of reviews every day, without doing any lesson. Eventually your pile will go down. Initially your accuracy will be very very low, no reason to worry. In fact, low accuracy means that you get more chances to review an item and eventually learn it. You are here to learn some kanjis, not to see nice small numbers in the “to do reviews” or nice high numbers in “accuracy”.
Just my 2 cents. Good luck anyway 
On the contrary, for me, it was when I made the decision to let go of “nice small numbers” and focus on being “here to learn some kanji” that I was finally able to let go of my pride re: user level, admit my language foundation had turned to mud, and decide to rebuild and restart anew.
Edit: I respect anyone for choosing to stick through it or reset, either is better than quitting and walking away. Wanikani works best for me when it feels fun and manageable. Digging through a backlog for days/weeks feels like work, not game-ified learning, for me
I had to reset my level recently. I tried to force myself to keep going but I had no motivation and just stopped altogether. So now I have some motivation but, it was only a few levels for me.
Hey there! Well… I don’t think you should reset your level. Just as some other here recommended, use the reorder tool. I think it’s pretty convenient. Some days I am not able to do all my reviews even if it’s only around 100.
And here comes the tool.
first the vocabs (if time, then)
second the kanji (if time, then)
at least the radicals.
I am doing fine. Even if the latest one get a bad mark, thanks to the low levels I prioritize I get my candy and rid of the things I know. So the next day I have more time for the undone items
And yeah it may cost aaaaaa lot of time to get to the next lvl, but I am here to learn in a proper way not to level. 
But this way you can handle your 1k reviews, without feeling too frustrated, as long as you have the breath to do it step by step. ^-^
Find ways to mitigate the frustration. I know how it feels to lose interest after failing multiple in a row that you feel like you should be getting. Just work at it. Don’t try to do too much all in one sitting.
Try doing 10 reviews every 15-30 minutes. Go into your reviews, and immediately hit the wrap up button. Push through, no matter what your accuracy is. It’s just 10 reviews, after all. If you can work this into an 8-hour workday at the office without catching hell, you’ll have 160-320 reviews done. If you don’t do work like that, try to fit it into 4 hours of home time, and you’ll have 80-160 done. Eventually, the old calcified knowledge locked in your head will soften up, and you’ll be able to sit down and do a block of reviews.
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