Thanks for bringing this up, I’ll mention it to the team.
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@garap We’re focusing on radicals for the foreseeable future, but if all goes well, kanji would be a good potential target further down the line!
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Hi, thanks for adding these but I think it would really help if these first showed up while you are learning it IN the lesson part as opposed to only showing up when you are click in “info” when you’re already deep into the review stage. I didn’t even realize these images existed because of where they were.
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So, was this feature abandoned? Or are illustrations still being created and implemented incrementally?
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@Van-san Sorry for the slow reply, the radical images should indeed show up in your lessons:
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We’re still creating them and adding them incrementally!
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Hey just wanna say these are really useful. Unfortunetly, I am on level 12 and therefore, only see the retroactively (but they are helpful to reinforce my memory). Hopefully yall overtake me! Do you have a schedule? Like one level per month or so?
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I’m so glad to hear that the art has been helpful! It’s a bit hard for us to give a specific timeline, as the team is continually working to improve other areas of WaniKani content as well. But please know that we’re doing the best we can — and yes, hopefully we’ll be able to catch up to your level soon 
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It look like there havent been many Illustrations added in the past few months (maybe none?). Has Wani Kani abandoned this project?
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They could just use AI to generate illustrations from radicals
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The day they try to pull off something like that is the day I leave WaniKani. I hope if they are going to do it, they do it soon, so I don’t pay too much money 
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Give it a shot and see how it turns out. 
The amazing human-made illustrations here are incredibly consistent in their quirky, minimalist style, fitted around irregular shapes, and clearly express an often bizarre idea!
I expect they are also built to be easily edited, and to display well across wildly different browsers and devices. They also legally belong to Tofugu!
These are all things that genAI, as remarkable as it can be, absolutely suck at.
You may as well ask…why not have AI generate all the material on WaniKani? It can write definitions and example sentences and pronunciations and maybe even come up with mnemonics.
But I think we can all see how that would make it a much less useful, accurate, unique, and enjoyable resource.
I love the existing illustrations. Adding more isn’t going to directly patch bugs, create a new in-demand feature, or increase subscriptions (by the time you run out of the illustrated ones you’re already into a paid level), so it isn’t going to be at the top of any production team’s punchlist.
Probably the best way to support more radical art is to post about your favorites, make note in here when new ones appear, and ask if we could ever buy, say, radical art merch to support the project directly. (*^_^*)
(I am an illustrator/designer, haha, I have this conversation a lot lately!)
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Precisely. I’d rather have no illustrations than AI illustrations. I was already unnerved by the move to digital and CGI but AI is the last straw.
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Regardless if they use AI (which I am not in support of) the amount of time it is taking… makes it seems like they have have abandoned the project all together. So Wanikani gods (I know your watching haha), can you provide an update?
If each is made bespoke, I would assume that they would be at the least be giving us one or two new radicals a week.
I really do find the images, for my brain, quite useful. Hence, my interest.
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A quick update for those who asked: our artist Aya has been adding the finishing touches to another round of images, which we’ll start uploading very soon. We’ll update the list at the top as they’re added. Watch this space!
And to give a little more context as to why these take so long: the content team puts a lot of time into writing and refining artwork prompts for Aya, who then creates sketches which she eventually converts into SVGs, which are then double-checked before being uploaded… so the process is painstaking, but hopefully the results are worth it. Really glad to see they’ve been helping those of you who commented here!
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Major props to Aya and the team — the attention and care put into the radical illustrations really shows to me. I work at a studio full of cartoonists (some who read Japanese) and I regularly pester them with my favorites. (Pig is so good)
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The creative content, starting with the whacky mnemonic stories, is for me core to the value of wanikani. The radical artwork I’ve seen so far is high quality – both simpler and better at accomplishing the job than any of the DIY paths I’ve tried for kanji. I’’m gad you are focused on quality first.
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If it’s possible to share, what does Ayas workflow look like? Like, what programs does she use for the SVGs? All artwork throughout the site looks very clean and great!
I just want to give the biggest thanks ever to the team doing the illustrations. This the first time a language learning app has actually captured me 
I’m very curious what the plans are for the api? I’m starting to use the api more and more but definitely missing out on the illustrations unfortunately, are they any plans to add them? It would be a major help 
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Thanks for continually adding new illustrations 
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