At level 46 there is currently the Kanji for “Slice” with the following mnemonics:
You use your car and an axe to slice down a pedestrian. This innocent guy is just walking along the road when you drive up to him in your car and axe him to death with your axe. You’re all like, VROOM! AXE! Now this guy is dead because you sliced him down in cold blood.
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Imagine driving your car, waving your axe out the window and slicing this guy down. Hear his scream ring in your ears as you slice, slice, SLICE.
and
You were driving around in Zanzibar (ざん) when you sliced down this man. Luckily, Zanzibar has no laws at all, so you won’t get arrested for slicing down this guy with your axe.
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Zanzibar is a crazy place, huh? Continue to drive around Zanzibar as you wave your axe out your car window looking for another victim to slice.
While absolutely memorable and definitely creating a strong impression, the conveyed picture of Zanzibar being a lawless place where you can axe down people from your car and go unpunished is weirdly derogatory to Tanzania. I think there are probably many more mnemonics that are memorable but do not spread an over-the-top brutal image of a country. This is why I think the team should consider changing it, even if there are not many users from Tanzania using Wanikani.
Personally, I’ve substituted my own character of Zan the cruel angel into a few mnemonics with ざん.
(The name is a reference to the song 残酷な天使のテーゼ, which is memorable to me, but might not be to everybody.)
斬
Meaning: There is a car coming down the road with axes sticking out of it. It’s slicing people up as it goes!
Reading: Who would do such a thing? Of course; it’s Zan, the cruel angel! He’s always doing horrible things like this!
暫
Meaning: Your car and axe are on the sun … but only temporarily! One second your car and axe were pristine, the next they were melted beyond recognition, after being temporarily transported to the sun!
Reading: Who is behind this? Why, it’s Zan, the cruel angel! He used his angel magic to teleport your car and axe to the sun, just to mess with you!
残
Meaning: Yakuza bars barely exist. There used to be tons of them, but now only a tiny number remain.
Reading: The remaining Yakuza bars are all run by Zan, the cruel angel. He uses them to launder money from his cruel schemes, and to lure people into joining his cruel gang.
I believe that Zanzibar is the mnemonic they use for all kanji readings of ざん (of which WK has 3). In fact by design they try to almost always use the same mnemonic word for a specific reading (see all the usages of ‘home’ for ほう).
Whether or not this particular Zanzibar mnemonic for slice is a good one is an arguable point. If you operated under the constraint that the content team wants to keep the mnemonic word to be Zanzibar, what might you suggest as an alternative association?
They could mention the Anglo-Zanzibar War, where British and British-aligned Zanzibaris defeated troops loyal to the newly-ascended sultan of the island in under an hour, making it the shortest war in recorded history. Actually, wait, that’s probably worse