Stick with it for a few levels and you’ll be able to do so. Eventually you can get to the point of 500+ reviews everyday. Which is not fun, trust me. But you can go slower if you choose to do so, you absolutely have control of the pace.
I’d say that’s largely untrue, all the kanji seems to have its uses and the vocabulary is there to make sure you get the readings down, so it’s not always important but it does contribute to your learning.
Level ~2: Why is Wanikani so slow?
Level ~7: How do I deal with the workload?
Level ~14: How do I deal with the burnout?
Level ~21: Should I reset?
It happens so often that anytime someone makes a thread complaining about the speed, no matter how counterintuitive, I warn them about the SRS ramp-up and burn-out risk because they are most at risk of falling into the trap of burning themselves out.
Many such cases. Even if they could handle the maximum workload with 400-500 reviews daily, they wouldn’t for long. Many underestimates the workload overtime and that they have to deal with it even on their busiest and worst days.
They could try to start an anki deck and do 50-100 cards a day and see how long they’ll manage. They will quickly realize that the workload will be somewhat rough to deal with.
So If I was OP I would do just that, and continue with WKs slow speed and have an anki deck on the side for me to play around with.
Thanks everyone for all the suggestions of sites/apps!
And I hadn’t realized it would ramp up so much, I did try looking around before posting it and found nothing of anyone saying how much the reviews ramp up. I was honestly just worried I would be stuck with doing like 1-2 reviews a day of stuff I had already memorized.
And to the people saying I’m rushing it and such, I’m not. I’m just enjoying learning Japanese but the site makes me currently basically unable to learn anything for days at a time.
You can search for topics in the WaniKani Community by clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the upper right-hand corner. Try putting in search terms like ‘workload’ or ‘burnout’ or ‘drowning in reviews’.
From May 2013:
From July 2015:
From June 2018:
From December 2020:
And here’s something that I posted in March 2023:
Well you are only level 1. Give it a couple of levels. Also MaruMori.io is a good website.
Some advice if I could give it to myself just starting WK years ago–don’t just use WK. Get your kanji practice here, if you decide to stick with this app, and then use the rest of your free time elsewhere. Enjoy the freedom from reviews while it lasts, haha, to get in some listening (+shadowing) practice, maybe check out Japanese Ammo with Misa or Sarah Moon Japanese on YT to work in grammar and vocab, etc. Even build your own decks with Anki. It’ll take time to figure out the right routine and balance for your own needs. But I do echo everyone else here that reviews can quickly overwhelm you once you get a few levels in. Good luck 
I’d say the opposite about the workload. Not worry about it too much.
Don’t get hung on trying to finish the Reviews. Though, a sizable of amount of at least like 50 or 100 everyday is recommended. (The amount that might hard to imagine early on.)
Sorting ascendingly by SRS level might be helpful for eventually clearing out to 0, but the native option of by Level ascending may also be helpful to some extent.
For Lessons, there is no need to clear immediately too. Though, if you don’t know what, don’t try to sort on this one.
If you can’t clear the Reviews, probably you shouldn’t add more Lessons.
Even with max speed, there is no need to do all lessons at once, only radicals immediately, and Kanji spread while radicals not completed. Vocabularies don’t directly count towards progress.
Why is the timing an issue then?
Yeah, massively this, but expanded to whatever SRS system you end up with. Spaced repetition is great for efficiently learning words (and some other things), but it’s also a commitment to a daily slog through whatever reviews are waiting for you, and it can never work as the only thing you do in language study. I think the ideal is that it’s a part of what you do, but kept to a fairly small time burden to leave room for the interesting parts of learning and using a foreign language.
(I would actually low key advocate not doing systematic WK style kanji study until you’ve done a bit of a textbook and had a few old school “just memorize” encounters with kanji. Then you have a clearer idea of why you need it and what it’s doing for you. But that’s partly just “that’s the way I did it” talking )
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