Ah… So Kodansha only helps its user remember the characters, but does not focus on the readings, right?
Ah, I misspoke a bit. It’s not that they don’t provide readings or anything, it’s just that they provide ALL (or most of) the readings along with example words, so it tends to be quite dense, and you don’t get a sense of which readings are most common. WK is more newbie friendly in that it curates what you see and tries to provide those readings most commonly used. I’ll probably be using Kodansha to do a second, deeper pass of the kanji once I finish up here.
Edit: Having voice recordings here is also pretty helpful.
Edit2: Oh, Kodansha doesn’t really talk about the readings either - no mnemonics for them, just sort of listed out and you’re on your own for them.
The purpose of mnemonics isn’t for them to be remembered for years, although that might happen incidentally for certain people. The purpose is to ease the transition from knowing nothing to knowing the info without an aid. I don’t think I ever thought of a mnemonic during a burn review.
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This is true, however some mnemonics do tend to stay with me… 
(For example, I was able to recall some tofugu’s hiragana mnemonics a year after I learned to read the syllabary 
)
Personally, I like WK because it has helped me to make a habit out of learning kanji. Additionally, I find the example sentences and the audio files accompanying the vocabulary helpful. Also, the pacing and the distribution of the characters per level are better when compared to the kanji Anki decks I have tried to use so far.
I don’t mean to come off as saying that people should quit WK – far from it. In fact I agree with all you wrote and then some! WK does a lot of things right – it’s just that I also think that WK usage can greatly be supplemented by other resources. Transitivity rules, mnemonics, and some parts of speech shenanigans are a few of the major sore spots I have.
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The ones that require some knowledge on a specific person I also agree are pretty bad, and not memorable, however others with stupid and wierd ways to explain a meaning often sticks, but the goal is always to stop needing to think of that silly memory object, and instead just find the word and spelling on your own. I personally find that through excessive repetition. But as far as Mnemonics go, some are good, others are not… to be expected really when there are this many kanji to do… can’t all be good, just how it is.
I still do not know who Charlie Sheen is
But, as per We are not all American - #88 by koichi , this is going to change!
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Also what this guy said… im lvl 2 and I find myself skipping a lot of Mnemonics… usually give it a read over but im finding more and more kanji and vocab where the mnemonic doesn’t help me even once… thank goodness too cuz I want to learn a little faster than I currently am xD
I always read the mnemonic 98% of the time because if you visualize the story more vividly and crazier things happen then you can remember the word better. Also I think the stories are hilarious, including the example sentences. The last one for 正直 (honest) was “I need to be honest all the time because I am an underwater Martian prince and I need to set an example for people.”
Edit: A lot of people are saying that it’s hard when the mnemonic needs a certain person, e.g. Charlie Sheen, but I didn’t know that Charlie Sheen was a real person when I read it the first time so I just imagined him as a cowboy or something.
I don’t start with the mnemonics. Most often the meaning and readings just stick in my mind on my first read. But when they don’t, I look at the mnemonics. I know they’re long and often a long shot from being helpful but sometimes they’re good.
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Yes, I do find a lot of the mnemonics a bit useless, sometimes they’re just a string of nonsense like ‘if you put a lid on your forehead and then put your legs in your mouth then everything will become clear’. On the other hand, some of them I do find work pretty well though.
The thing is, people seem to get caught up with the idea that WK makes you use its mnemonics, and this isn’t really true. They sort of make you use their radical system (which is slightly different to the ‘official’ radicals, but let’s not get started on that subject). There’s nothing to stop you making up your own mnemonics, and I often do, using things that are personal to me. For some things I use names of friends or references to things that only I would really understand. The mnemonics WK provides are basically suggestions to get you started. Take them or leave them.
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I think the mnemonics are really useful. especially the zany ones. Any time I see a review and charlie sheen pops into my head through whatever story I originally read, I automatically know that reading is shi. Same with koichi, same with that crazy ms chou breaking bird necks and leaving nails everywhere, same with my chronic lack of ketsup and many, many more.
Because oldmate charlie is used for more than one reading it gives you a common neural link with stories associated with that object (and therefore with those readings). So even if I know a word before learnijng the kanji I’ll check the mnemonic because that mnemonic might be useful for helping me learn a homonym in the future that I don’t know.
I even looked up hard gay on youtube. I can hear his voice in my ear every time I’m looking at a planet, or heading west, or carefully correcting the shogun’s homework. For someone like me studying around a full time work schedule and a part time degree in a different field, mnemonics are not only invaluable, they are essential.
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I use them about 10% of the time, and the rest is SRS so far.
So they’re not quite “useless”, but normally not my cup of tea. (Though, I am new, so I might end up relying on them more as I get overwhelmed)
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And the reason for that it’s that research shows that emotion can improve cognitive process. Of course, if you’re exposed to some kind of information a number of times, it will eventually set in, but mnemonics should help make it faster/easier.
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I think it depends on the kanji, the mnemonic, and your ability to learn.
I personally only use the mnemonics if I really have trouble learning the particular kanji. I seem to get most kanji by just SRS alone, but in some cases the mnemonics have really helped me.
For example in level 8 there are two similar looking kanji (service and throw). They use the radical LOITER+IKEA and THROW+IKEA. Really the only reason for me to tell them apart every time, is by imagining someone finally waiting to be helped at ikea and someone so angry he is gonna smash the crap out of that smällbjö lamp . Not exactly the same mnemonic, but they were of great help. I do agree that some are more farfetched, and not all that helpful. You can create one yourself tho, or copy paste the kanjidamage one.
That is literally the mnemonic I came up with. I completely agree with your point. Some mnemonics are really good, i.e simple and memorable while some are like a short novels with complex character development and detail 
I think WaniKani has an obsession of using the same mnemonics over and over even if they don’t make much sense.
Not sure what you mean to imply by that. Are you referring to the way that し is always Charlie Sheen, and not something different for different kanji?
The fact that each onyomi is paired with a specific recurring “character” in the mnemonics is one of the core points of the site.
Yeah. I think its good that mnemonics are re-used where possible.
But when another mnemonic would be much more applicable to that kanji then it should use a different one. Such as saying “She stops” rather than “Charlie Sheen is saluting at the sky…”. I find that would be much more memorable since it’s shorter and thus easier to remember.
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Eh, that’s easy to say now when it’s just tossed out in the conversation. I have my doubts about which story would stick in my head after a month, but as I said before, discussing Charlie Sheen is moot.