I started paying attention to the mnemonics only very late (post level 20 I should say), because the time comes when you stare at a Kanji that seemed perfectly obvious when you learned it first and when you leveled it through Enlightened and can’t for the life of you remember to ever even have seen it, let alone known its reading or meaning. At the point there simply is no connection any more between the Kanji itself and its reading/meaning, but there might be still a way to extract one of these from the little story the may piece itself together when you look at the radicals. 
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Sometimes I don’t even think that I remember the mnemonic story, and then one small detail triggers a whole cascade of memory.
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What I’m really struggling with at the moment (also level 2) is how the mnemonics use English pronounciations to remember the hiragana, but then you have to remember to write the actual hiragana, e.g. the mnemonics story tells me “me” for hiragana み and I know that, especially as I am a German speaker and always found it easier to correctly pronounce the hiragana as opposed to my English classmates, but when I’m trying to remember the vocabulary and think about the story and remember “oh the clue was ‘me’!” my hands go and type め instead of み arrrggghhh 
Hopefully, the more this annoys me, the more I will remember to pay more attention in the future 
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Yeah, I always have to keep reminding myself to read the mnemonics in an American accent. My textbook used the word “yacht” as a mnemonic for や, but in British English, “yacht” is pronounced “yot”. I had to keep remembering to go “yaaht” every time.
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did you write out just the kanji or the readings too?
One thing that has been helping me a bit is that in the notes I would put any mnemonic I think would be helpful and where the mnemonic would get me spelling the reading incorrectly, I would write it out in romanji.
I wrote out the kanji, the original reading presented in the lesson (which may be the on or kun) and the translation. That helped me with the pink kanji reviews. The purple vocab reviews usually use another meaning, but for me I didn’t write out any vocab. Might give that a go when I hit Level 30.
Seconding this! I’ve been doing the same thing as of lately since I was starting to struggle with remembering, so I’ve been just scrawling them down in a little notebook, and it’s done absolute bits for me.
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Add me to the list haha, everytime I do my lessons now I’ve started to write (well, type them in my case.) them down. Oh, and then I try to make a sentence using that specific word/kanji, usually something that makes me laugh, something to that degree. I really think it has helped in the short time I’ve done it. I recommend it to people out there that may be reading this, to just give it a shot and see if it helps.
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As a bastard who doesn’t like studying, I sometimes just skim through stuff without ever reading mnemonics or meaning discussion, just kanji/vocab and English meaning. You can say the first quiz don’t go well.
But habits do form as I went along and I have to focus if I really want to learn and not half-ass things. I had a 46-day level (level 9) and things have been going smoothly so far.
It’s even better if you recognise and work through your problem this early! Cheers!
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same here…
i should spare extra time for write it down or ill end up with reading only. if its come to writing , im dead 草
As a bonus you’ll have a little pretty kanji diary.
I’m pretty used to it now so it doesn’t take that much time. I write down lessons, mnemonics, and everything I get wrong in a review.
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level one and same… the Tofugu Hiragana and Katakana guides worked great for me, but written mnemonics don’t seem to stick as much. I wonder if there’s something like Wanikani out there but with pictures for kanjis?
Stick with it Morganite, I think it gets easier as your brain gets used to the idea of mnemonics? And maybe the secret is to create a really vivid picture in your mind! (I often use my own mnemonics if I automatically think of something that’s more obvious or personal to me). But I guess there’s also the idea that you could draw the mnemonics if something physically visual sticks best with you?
just an idea anyway. But I’ve been astounded at how much I’ve remembered with this WK method. I keep thinking ‘my brain isn’t going to take any more! there’s no more room!’ but I still seem to keep lurching through the levels. Good luck!
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If you think you have an easier time with pictures than just text, you could look at this thread:
@AmandaBear has drawn the mnemonics for all radicals and kanji of levels 1-4. You can also install the userscript linked in that thread to have the pictures integrated into the WaniKani site.
After level 4, you would still have to switch to the written mnemonics, but maybe at that point your brain has already gotten used to the mnemonics?
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