MaruMori.io & Kitsun.io - [UPDATE: ALL ABOARD THE N3 TRAIN] - Grammar SRS, Grammar Lessons, Reading Exercises, Vocabulary, Kanji and more!

The island above the Pre-N5 one is the N5 one.

On the Kitsun Discord, yes.

I’d head over to the Billing page (click in the top-right on the red panda and select Billing) now if you’re interested. I suspect an announcement will come in soon about this.

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I’m just testing it out myself as I’m getting into more and more native material and looking to start SRSing at least some of that.

I would say Kistun is much more like Anki than WK, but the review style is similar to WK. There are a number of pre-built decks, including a filter deck designed to specifically filter out WK kanji and vocab as “known” from other decks which can be set to any WK level, and a WK expansion pack list with a bunch of common vocab that isn’t on WK but using Kanji learned in WK.

Pros I’ve noticed so far:

  • Can quickly add word cards from the integrated dictionary
  • Dovetails well with WK (see decks mentioned above, plus dictionary entries list WK level)
  • Lots of good premade decks
  • Review style is similar to WK (typing in answers)
  • Includes option to import words in bulk from a text file or Anki
  • Does a lot of the work for you in creating cards which is generally quick and easy (provided you aren’t trying to use a custom template, more on that below)
  • Subs2Kitsun is great for mining vocab from videos, provided you have the video file and the subtitle file
  • Interface is so much nicer than Anki’s stuck-in-the-'80s UI

Cons I’ve noticed so far:

  • No tutorials for how to use
  • Does not handle custom card layouts / templates as well as it could. If you make your own templates and try to add words using the dictionary or the import function you have to decide what to “map” every single field to EVERY TIME you add a word, regardless of whether your template is, like mine, just a copy of the default + 1-2 extra fields that could just be left blank and filled in later (I wanted to add J-J dictionary definition, and a field for “source(s)” = where I saw this word)
  • Related to the above, this makes it MUCH more time-consuming to add cards if you want custom fields vs. setting up Yomichan with Anki and being able to add cards to Anki with all the fields Yomichan can support with just one click (though, admittedly, the setup for that and getting my Anki deck set the way I wanted took me HOURS).
  • Costs money (not a problem for me, if it serves my needs, and does offer 14-day free trial plus lifetime subscription is currently on sale)

Both Anki and Kitsun have a lot of great pre-made vocabulary decks, but Kitsun does better integrating those to filter out known words, so if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for I’d definitely say check it out.

I think for me right now, Anki wins because I’m looking to quickly add my own cards to lists for review with all the fields I want on the card, and while Kitsun has a great interface and a lot of awesome community content, it’s not ideal for what I want right now.

That said, if Yomichan could add a card to Kitsun with the same one-click, I would switch in an instant as the interface is much nicer and there’s a whole lot less fiddling with HTML and CSS in Anki to get the cards the way I want.

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There is also a Lost Levels deck for Kanji missing from WK (on Joyo and grade school lists but not on WK, I think). It’s levels “61 to 70”.

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Although I’m not affiliated with Kitsun, I have done a few calls over Discord with people who wanted a run through to get set up quick.

I’m hoping they add J-J too.

There’s also a non-input option so you can just use buttons if you prefer that. That’s what I use.

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Thanks! I did find the island after playing around with it a little more.

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If interested, I have this Chrome extension for one (or rather two click :slight_smile: ) card generation in Kitsun. There is also one for Firefox if preferred. It only takes two seconds to add and you left-click a highlight and go. It doesn’t have the highlight feature like Yomichan but you can find that in the Kitsun reader but it has to be in the Kitsun-universe. There was a talk to be make a better add-on but if you want to make instant flash cards via Kitsun, I’ve literally made thousands this way.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/search-kitsun/imacbbhnfcapgohgjeligoconimahegb

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To add to this for @evandcs , the WK-reverse deck can do something similar and if you use the 10k, there is a WK tag that can filter content if preferred. But the “WaniKani Known Kanji & Vocab Filter” adds ‘known’ to both kanji & vocab dictionary accounts for deck filtering and like VegasVed mentioned, it’s built as a filter only (not study). It’s also tagged by level so a WK user can start anytime and they can add the filter as they progress levels (or just add the whole thing if done with WK lessons)…whatever a user wants to do. Also worth mentioning, the ‘known’ words get tracked in the reader so you can put content in and find out what percentage and breakdown of difficulty that gets parsed.

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I would add cloud native application as a pro (and con). I know for some that has it’s own drawbacks, but having apps to do reviews on mobile is a huge win over the jank that is ankiweb syncing.

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I also tried that Chrome extension, but for me at least it only opens the page “https://kitsun.io/dictionary/{thing I highlighted}” which I could do just as quickly (at least in Firefox) with a dedicated keyword search in the url and copy/pasting. You still then have to go to that page and create the card you want from the dictionary results and run into the aforementioned issue of that taking a lot longer if you added any custom fields.

Example:

It did seem to save my settings for some of the mappings this time (tried at least 5 times yesterday and it didn’t), so it doesn’t take quite as long, but still have to navigate to the separate page and copy paste the URL and context sentence manually it’s definitely not the one-click from the highlight to automatically create the card in Anki with the vocab word, reading, dictionary results, url, and context sentence automatically without ever having to leave the page you’re on that the Yomichan Anki integration has.

Let me know if you know of settings to get it more streamlined than that, though!

I do have one issue with my current Yomichan integration: since I configured my Anki for “Reading” and “Meaning” cards to act like WK and require typed answers and Yomichan has no field equivalent to WK’s “English synonyms list” (just full dictionary entries), I have to go into Anki and manually select a synonym list. But I may just decide to do away with “Meaning” cards with English synonyms altogether in favor of regular Anki-style cards with the full J-J and J-E dictionary results.

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Ah, yeah, I almost never review on mobile (for WK or Anki). For WK I missed my add-ons too much, and for Anki it’s not great at syncing, like you mentioned (thought it does work most of the time if you give it time).

The bigger issue for me and where Anki also wins out (though I didn’t mention it because it’s likely not an issue for many people besides myself) is that I have horrible WiFi signal strength in a number of rooms in my house, and sometimes find myself being cut off in the middle a a review session in WK and Kitsun on my laptop because they don’t have an offline mode.

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I don’t have problems with it in normal use (using Ankidroid for Android mostly, on multiple Android devices, plus occasionally the desktop app on mac or linux), though a full sync takes forever doing the media download stage. I have it set to autosync on open and habitually push the sync button before and after a review run.

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Thank you!

We’re working on this and personal synonyms/notes during lessons & reviews at the moment. Should be working with the next update! Sorry about that :laughing:

Agreed! We’ll put it on the prio todo list :slight_smile:

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The MaruMori announcement on Kitsun was made along with the announcement of the double bundle sale, just before you posted this comment :laughing:

As others have mentioned, the bigger island just above the PRE-N5 island is the island for N5 :smiley:

We’re working on adding some more clear signs about where you can click and what each island is and such, sorry for the confusion!

Thank you! So happy to hear you love Kitsun!

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I always use the default if just adding vocab and if really want a custom template, I can mass edit in card manager pretty easily, but for vocab mining I don’t do custom templates since just trying to capture content fairly quickly. So I don’t really recommend the custom template via the extension method (and using the Kitsun dictionary) since you will be mass picking and then have to set it for every tab launch. If you are the same tab and are making a deck not by the extension, it will hold the last values you put it and that would be preferred method for using custom templates in the generation method…depending how and what you creating the content (I’ve used this method as well). If you can customize a preferred default template as your first choice so it always shows, I’m not aware… @neicul?

Highlight the card


Select the default

Pick my my mining deck, cntrl/cmd+S

It may depend how you prefer to mine. I add quite a bit through the Kitsun app itself as well such as adding cards through other means where I’m in conversation, watching a movie, …just random times when I’m not behind a PC to to use the extension to highlight a word. Again, I just go with the most efficient method possible in this scenario unless I’m making a custom deck some purpose with a custom template. If someone really likes Yomichan, I don’t see why not to use it with Kitsun if one wants…just have to export a apkg and insert into Kitsun. Seems like a pain but if some want J-J dictionaries or pitch accent or some custom feature. The Kitsun dictionary is getting an overhaul so some of these will automate fairly soon it sounds, the pitch accent thing was announced today.

And for those that want to use the Reader tool, if you want a highlighter effect while reading, it auto-generate as a default card (not custom) but it also add the context sentence from what you are reading.

If helpful, I hardly ever timeout on Kitsun, so I can step away from review and comeback whenever and at least all the add-ons I’ll ever need plus more are native on Kitsun, none of these script patch ons to make life livable and the app works really solid. At least I know if there some major ios upgrade, a 3rd party app won’t evaporate unless generously updated by an unpaid/un-obligated users

The price thing comes up often with the Anki comparison and so called free…I’ll just remind WK lifetime is more expensive by $100 for finite content of ~8000 and non-native app and many don’t hesitate here with that purchase (including myself, no regrets)…but the 10k deck alone supersedes the content by a long shot with a more robust study experience plus all the community curated decks plus access to Anki integration materials as well and other features like the Reader or subs2kitsun…the content is infinite with a very smooth platform that is actively updated. I happily paid to be lifetime user here (WK) for that level avatar, mnemonic and humor to keep myself motivated but unfortunately, the longer curated content is used usually, the less useful it becomes requiring different means of study as the user progresses…I’m hoping MM can solve that, I think they can do it. Plus my time to set things up is not free and there is customer service aspect that I have relied on in Kitsun to help design what exactly what I need for my studies. Also the daily experience and UI is an enjoyable experience, something that adds up to quite a bit over time given the time spent…but just my experience, I understand everyone has specific needs they want to address with their own study experience and many want a platform to play with with their coding experience beyond just language learning. But the ‘free’ thing that comes up…it’s extremely relative. I look at what I what I paid for classes or iTalki…the Kitsun lifetime is easily my most valued purchase for everything I ever attempted with language by far.

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Aside from the deck mentioned by @VegasVed (and it working a little bit different, as you’d still have to hibernate (indefinitely suspend) all “known” cards in other decks), you are also able to import your own lists and directly adding them to your known words. After that you can pretty easily hibernate anything marked as known and not have to deal with them again :smile:

With MaruMori we actually “fixed” this problem. If you suspend a word or kanji, you won’t see them in any of your lessons or reviews in any study list you have. They automatically get filtered everywhere for you.

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This sounds like it should be a global setting in Kitsun “Auto filter out known words from all decks”.

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Thanks for the nice review, it also gives us some feedback to work with! :smile:

This actually should work for the dictionary modal, iirc it should prefill everything with the custom template that you used the last time you generated a custom card. If that’s not working then something might be bugging out!

As another option, you might be interested in MaruMori, where you add vocabulary/kanji from the integrated dictionary with one click to your study lists (decks). You could use the personal notes field to note down where you encountered the item. (Small note though, as mentioned above the personal notes field does not work yet, we’re currently implementing it :laughing: ). MaruMori is more restrictive in terms of settings though, so this might not always be a good fit for you over Kitsun or Anki.

A browser extension (and MPV plugin) is on the roadmap for both Kitsun and MaruMori :smile:

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Yeah, I tried doing a mass edit to a different template yesterday but since I had input the original cards from the Kitsun dictionary without those extra fields, I would have had to go back and look up the other info I wanted (context sentence, J-J definition) which added time later.

I tried using the Yomichan > Anki > export > import to Kitsun, but had 2 issues with that:

  1. Kitsun required me to define a mapping for the “Basic” template for Anki cards even when it isn’t used for any of my cards:
  2. Not only can you not set a default template, it seems, but also all user-created templates appear at the bottom of the list and Kitsun has all these really narrow scroll bars that are hard to grab with the mouse and the dropdowns don’t seem to respond to either letter key presses for the first letter of the one I want or down arrow keys (at least not on my computer):
    image

Would you mind clarifying on how you do mining? I’m still really new to trying out Kitsun so if there’s a method that could work to mine and then bulk-import in a format that works for me, I’m definitely up for trying it!

Sadly, one of the drawbacks of the dynamic nature of Kitsun is that this is really difficult to do, both from a backend perspective, and a UX perspective. It might hibernate so many cards by accident accross different types of decks (e.g. what if you are learning how to write kanji in one deck, but already know those kanji in Kitsun in general? Or a English → Japanese deck, just to name a few things). Fields are completely freeform, and so is the data inside of it, which makes it very difficult to query properly too.

That said, I’m still looking into options for this, so hopefully I can figure out a solution later :smile:

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This is because Anki automatically includes this template, it seems. To get around this, you can simply assign anything to that template and then delete that imported template when you go to Manage Cards after the import.

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