No idea what this is below and would suggest removing and replacing with something more direct and helpful?
"Do you remember seeing the construction worker こういち earlier in the 工 mnemonic? If you haven’t yet, not to worry!
For kanji with こう readings (there are a lot of them!) we will use the character こういち every time. He’s one of the people who started this website, so we’ll do our best in the mnemonics to embarrass him as much as possible. Anyways, remember that whenever you see こう, think こういち.
Everyone agrees, the mouth is こういち's best feature. You stare at it lovingly as he whispers sweet kanji readings to you."
I wish I had the kind of self-assurance that leads a person to suggest a complete overhaul of a program with 2100 kanji because I was confused by kanji #1.
Yeah, Koichi was perhaps more useful as a mnemonic back when he was actually participating in the day-to-day. Maybe you can make do with staring at this picture of his face until it sinks in. Try not to think about the knife.
… OP is suggesting the replacement of one mnemonic. That’s barely even a haul, much less an overhaul, and certainly not a complete one. Mnemonics get updated all the time.
It’s hard to be sure because their question is so ill-formed, but I think it betrays a complete lack of understanding of what WaniKani’s mnemonics are and how they work. The consistency of using e.g. Kouichi for every こう is one thing that makes them effective. I said they’re requesting an overhaul because if this completely unremarkable mnemonic isn’t good enough for them, very few of the others will be either.
I agree the question was ill-formed (wasn’t really a question tbh - more of me bringing up something I found confusing), but I do understand what WaniKani’s mnemonics are and how they work. I believe the actual crux of the issue is, as someone brand new to Japanese, I didn’t understand that, “… we will use ‘the character…’” was referring to a person instead of the actual character(s) > “こういち”. My reading was こういち might be used as the on’yomi everytime something is pronounced こう or something like that. I didn’t know about the person (as I assume most won’t) or the construction example. I do understand it is kind of explained, but was unclear to me so I mentioned here as others may find it unclear as well. The other mnemonics I’ve encountered so far were immediately clear and helpful; I imagine that is their standard.
For everyone else, WaniKani is great. I get it and I like it.
Have you been taught the 工 kanji yet? If WaniKani’s referencing the mnemonic used for 工 in the mnemonic for 口, but they’re not being explicitly introduced in that order, then that’s something that needs to be fixed.
What I do is for every kanji with the こう reading is to use a (large) mouth as its mnemonic. After a glance at https://www.wanikani.com/search?query=こう, I estimate about 50 kanji that use こう as their reading and a loudmouth or mouth agape or whatever is a lot more memorable to me than some random person.
