I am level 9 and have 400+ reviews piled up. Had a few bad weeks, kept telling myself I’ll do it all tomorrow it’s okey-dokey. But oh well…
I am kinda thinking on restarting now. Dunno if I should do it.
400 reviews isn’t that bad if you do batches of 100. No point in restarting, it just creates more for you to go through and halts your progress.
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I had a couple of really busy weeks on school, so I didn’t do anything for around 4 weeks. I got around 650 reviews. I just started doing them, and while doing them, it actually made me realize how much I still know. It takes a couple of days to finish everything, but that doesn’t matter. I only had 150 apprentice items after reviewing everything, and I was quite proud of that. It really gave me a boost for continuing on WK.
If you reset everything, you lose months of progress, and you have to do all the ‘really easy’ kanji & vocab again, and maybe then you really feel like not doing wanikani anymore. Just start out again, do as many reviews as you can handle, and start having fun again! Good luck
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400+ reviews can be very daunting if you’re not used to them but it is also very doable. On the other hand you’re only level 9, resetting a few levels (or even all of them) isn’t a huge deal. So it’s your choice really.
Tackle them down and be proud of your achievement! First few levels aren’t that difficult and it would be a pity if you resetted. @Lucasf is right, you’ll lose your progress, and I’m sure you remember a lot. Just don’t do lessons for some time and focus on reviews, and you’ll be there. I’ll keep my fingerst crossed, 頑張って! 
Thanks guys, I guess it’s ain’t as bad as I thought. Gonna go do a hundred now. Cheers!
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i came back after a year and had over 2k reviews…i wish for 400 lol…finally under 300 apprentice after a week and half…but at 1500 guru for the moment /lesigh
2k reviews, jesus christ, I hope I never end up with this much. Good luck to you!
I’ve never seen why anyone would want to reset their progress personally. Makes more sense to just battle through them and let the SRS do it’s thing?
As others have said, break it down into smaller chunks.
I for one, hit the “wrap up” button as soon as I start a review so I do 10 items. 400 might seem a little daunting but it’s not if you look at it as 40 batches of 10 (works for me anyway lol).
The answer is, we are week and want to get rid of the problem right here and now without dealing with it efficiently. 
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heyo, fellow level 9 here.
i quit wanikani at level 8 because life and stress got in the way and i let months of reviews pile up. i had my account reset in january and even though i’ve worked at wanikani fairly consistently since then, i’ve only gotten back to level 8 and finally surpassed it now, 4 months later.
there is definitely a hump for you to get over at level 8, but you should definitely stick with it. those 400 reviews are nothing compared to the time it would take for you to go through 8 levels again. don’t worry if you’ve forgotten a lot of them- just get them wrong and let SRS do its job.
ganbatte 
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for ur viewing pleasure.
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I ended up with almost 3k reviews after 3 years away. I went for restarting, but it was more because of the 3 years away and having forgotten so much due to disuse. If it’s only a couple of weeks stick with it and you can get your review numbers down.
Life has been getting in the way for me big time lately and right now I’m at over 1.1k reviews and counting. I was only a few levels from 60, too…! 
I was at 950+ a few months back… Even doing only 20-50 reviews a day (and no lessons) I got through them in about a month. (My accuracy was low in the beginning, so my will was weak… As I did better I did more reviews). You too can dig yourself out!
If it’s been longer than 6 months (how long I was away) or a year, maybe go back 5-10 levels and still dig yourself out. I believe in you!!!
(Here was my thread about that journey… https://community.wanikani.com/t/Trying-to-Return-For-Real-Finally-no-more-reviews/15377?u=animecanuck )
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My advice is just go faster than usual and knock them out as quick as you can. Don’t linger on them, just blast through, then the queue is down and you can continue as normal. Obviously the ones you got right go forward and the ones you forgot go back, but this is better than starting from square one. Just don’t take on any new lessons until you feel ready.
If you can afford a lifetime account, get a lifetime account and use the “vacation mode” whenever you find life is getting in your way. Even if you’re in “vacation mode” for one or two days, it makes a difference.
If you cannot afford a lifetime account, the vacation mode still works but your time limited subscription will continue ticking away. Not everyone is happy about that.
To tackle such a large review pile, you could use the re-order script to help you feel as if you’re in control. With the re-order script, you can tackle the lowest levels first and specify vocabulary followed radicals followed by kanji (or whatever you prefer).
If you have never installed a userscript before, please read:
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This post made me LOL. Just came back after a four month hiatus and I have 1900 reviews. Just setting a goal of 1600 by the next day, 1400 the next and so on, so it should be a week and a half before I can catch back up. Luckily, I still remember quite a bit, but it’s still going to be a struggle. I would also employ self study techniques. For instance, I use Rfinley’s self study script to study a level a day in addition to battling my reviews down by 200 every day, so I’m reviewing and gaining my knowledge back quicker.
I feel your pain. I was at level 28 at the beginning of the year with a backlog of over 2k reviews. I realized that it wasn’t beneficial for me to try to slog through them (I was bombing the reviews that I did), so I reset back to zero (well…level one). Not having that terrible backlog on my shoulders has given me a boost… I’m already more than half way back to where I was and going through the lessons again, things make a little more sense.
Sure, ideally I wouldn’t activate the vacation mode at all and power through from level 1 to 60, regardless of speed. And I agree with you that going on vacation mode for several days does affect your ability to remember recently learned items. But sometimes vacation mode is just unavoidable.
When my review correct percentage starts to tank it’s the first symptom of a burnout. Rather than forcing myself, I’d rather put a bit of distance from WK for a day or two. I try never to stay away for more than 2 or 3 days, because then it really gets difficult. But if you lift weights you also need to let your muscle rest some days.
And just because I’m not doing WK for 2 days doesn’t mean I stop learning Japanese. I still continue reading, watching, learning grammar, talking, writing Japanese.