Hello all,
I know there are a few similar topics to this in our lovely community, but I wanted to share my experience and ask you all for some advice/feedback. I’ve been studying Japanese consistently for around 18months, and I’m working my way through level 19 on WK. Since the start of 2025, I have really struggled with Japanese. Making silly mistakes, getting vocab mixed up, constantly mixing up kanji, drowning in grammar, not getting any speaking practice as I don’t have friends learning the language and can’t afford tuition, etc.. I am currently coming towards the end of my masters degree and in March was working full time, which put me under a lot of extra pressure and I decided to take a break from Japanese as I was drowning in WK reviews. Naturally, after a 4 week break I came back and found reviews even harder, I can’t seem to get my count below 200 and I’m writing my dissertation so feel this must take a priority. I’m debating resetting my WK back to level 1 and going back to basics, learning at a slower pace and taking grammar and reading practice alongside this. I love anime, but I haven’t really watched any over the last 2-3 months due to the pressures around my job and studies, but I don’t want to give up when I love learning the language so much and I want to improve. If anyone has been through similar, I would love to hear your opinions, how to handle this going forwards and if you have any general advice. I would usually just sit down and bash through all my reviews in 2-3 hours, but I’m finding because I’m getting so many wrong (I’m only averaging around 60%), they just accumulate rapidly and within 48hrs I’m back to drowning. Honest advice is much appreciated bc I don’t want to give up on this when I love the language so much!
Thanks 
Well, I have experience with both doing a reset and digging through huge review piles without reset.
My advice is – do whatever would allow you to start moving again. It’s better to do a reset to level 1 and start doing reviews again than to just sit in front of ever-growing pile of reviews trying to muster the strength to tackle it (which was my mistake).
Also, you don’t have to reset all the way down to level 1 – you can go to the level you feel comfortable with. I’d recommend just going throug WK items and see which ones you remember easily and which ones you don’t. But if you don’t think there are such items – then resetting to level 1 is also a good option 
Diversifying your studies – is a very good idea. A lot of people, including myself, started reading simple Japanese sources like
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/
when we were around your level!
In any case, best of luck with your studies and with your dissertation too! 
Thank you so much for your advice, this is really helpful! I also didn’t realise you could choose a level to reset to, I just assumed you had to go back to level 1 so this is a huge relief for me and I will definitely explore this option. Thanks again 
You are saying that you’ve been learning Japanese for around 18 months (and I’m going to assume that it also means that you started WK 18 months ago). If it took you 18 months to get to level 19, do you really want to reset to lvl 1 and throw it all away?
Keep in mind that if you feel like a reset is necessary, you can always just reset to something like level 15. You don’t need to go all the way down to level 1.
If you are struggling with hundreds of reviews that have accumulated over the weeks, instead of sitting down and doing them all at once, just do a 100 (or however many you want) every day, while not adding new lessons. Then, eventually, the reviews are going to return to their reasonable state.
I never had such a problem, but If i did, I can’t imagine myself going through the beginning and relearning stuff like 一、二、木 and so on. I’m sure you remember more than you actually think.
Not to mention that you’re not even a lifetime member - if you reset to lvl 1, it means even more money spent on WK, especially if you are progressing at a slower pace.
This is just my opinion, and of course you are free to do what you want, but I personally believe that resetting (especially to level 1) is a mistake.
Anyway, have fun, good luck with your studies and your master thesis, and make the choice that will suit you the best, but think about it carefully so that you don’t regret it later 
You have a good point, but I’d also like to point out that resetting doesn’t actually mean throwing the previous hard work away – it’s more like reinforcing it. You’ve spent time on learning those items – now you spend time on reinforcing what you’ve learned. So, while it’s obviously best to avoid resets altogether, one shouldn’t be too afraid of them either. As I’ve said, I think that the important thing is to keep moving and resume moving whenever it stops. If it can be done without a reset – great, if not – then reset is a better option
Also, one should always keep in mind that different things work differently for different people and there’s no universal solution that would equally suit everyone 
MaruMori
Is my advice
Also jp accounts on bluesky
If you do reset, you can pace yourself by keeping your apprentice below x amount to avoid getting a build up of reviews down the road. My limit is max 100 apprentice items and max 100 in review per day. If my accuracy falls below 90% then I’ll skip lessons for a few days until it’s manageable again.
Check your Wkstats and see at which level you’re having the most difficulty. Maybe you only have to reset to like level 15. I wouldn’t go back to level 1 because it takes forever to queue up reviews from there. Also get lifetime so you can go at a slower pace.
I’d advise postponing the reset until after you finish your master’s. In the meantime, you can activate vacation mode. When you have more time and feel less stressed, it will be much easier to get a clear view of whether or not a reset is warranted.
You’re still early in your Japanese learning. I know there are savants who make it seem like they got fluent in two years, but everyone’s journey is different. If you’ve purchased lifetime access, I think resetting is a solid option. Time flies, and starting fresh can reinforce what you’ve already learned while reminding you what a manageable pace with WaniKani feels like.
Putting a pause on new lessons until you get your review count under control is also smart. If you’re only hitting 60%, it likely means you didn’t fully internalize the material, possibly because you were moving too fast (I’ve definitely been there). Slowing down with lessons can feel dull, but it pays off long-term.
You have good options:
- Take a break from lessons and just clear reviews
- Go back a few levels
- Or do a full reset and start with a clean slate
Like I said, you’re still early in what will probably be a lifelong process, and you have more time than you think. What matters most is sticking with it in a way that feels positive, enjoyable, and sustainable. That’s what keeps the enthusiasm to learn alive.
Good luck and ganbatte.
I would NOT reset, but I would put it in vacation mode until the thesis is over. The motivation will come back, and you want it to be fun, not a chore.
Then I would still not reset, but systematically remind myself of each kanji through the level pages, then just power through the reviews and take my lumps on the ones I forgot. but that’s a matter of opinion. When I did my reset, I was really disappointed that I remembered more than I thought or learned it back again really quickly, but I had put myself into “why is WaniKani so slow!” land again with no way to speed it up.
I recently had to take a big break from WaniKani while finishing up my masters degree and was at level 21. I reset down to level 18 once I was finished with my degree because the pile was huge and I was making ridiculous mistakes over and over again without being able to reinforce the right answer because I had the rest of the pile to do. The reset has been amazing and I am climbing so quickly - I can do my lessons very fast because /most/ of what was reset is still familiar and now I can spend extra time going over the items I knew were troublesome. I don’t recommend going back to level 1
I might reset with the notion that I could come back to same level and overtake it, not because it’s too hard. It won’t be something after short break, but after a very long one.
If it’s just that I can’t remember new items, I might reset 2-3 levels to remove new ones.
But full reset might need to take into consideration of what you want make out of WaniKani. What you think WaniKani is. Just reviewing old items might not worth it. (Hint: gradual Kanji)
In the first place, I decided to dive into WaniKani because I feel I can manage time for at least a year, so I decided on the time to start. (but to stop or pause is hard…)
When I have too many reviews and lessons to do, I usually do a 10% approach. I will do 10% of the total amount per day. If 10% is still too much, do 5%.
Thanks everyone for your tips. I decided to reset to level 16, thanks to everyone who told me you can choose which level to reset to. I checked my wkstats and found this was where a lot of issues were starting and I needed to go back and give it some attention. This reduced my reviews and made the pile much more manageable. I also agree with many of you that I’ve probably been moving too fast on wanikani. My apprentice pile is only in the 30s after the reset, so I decided to start by setting daily lessons to 5 and seeing how that goes. This should help with managing reviews going forwards and not getting too bogged down in new content. I’m quite a slow learner and my short-term memory is worse than my long-term, so hopefully this helps me tackle new content without piling the pressure on myself. Thanks everyone for the advice
Personally, I think resetting is almost never the right answer. It’s ok to get some things wrong and have low accuracy while you recover and repeating things you already have down is a waste.
That said, if you quit Japanese for a long time and had burned items that you had completely forgotten, that might be a good situation in which to reset. And resetting down one or two levels isn’t going to make a huge difference one way or the other.
Sometimes the time spent learning how you learn is the best lesson of all. It sounds like you came across an obstacle, was given an opportunity to give up, and decided it was important to you and made adjustments so you can continue forward. Great work! Just keep evaluating your learning progress as you go and if you find something isn’t working, feel free to make changes to try to improve it - and we’ll always be here for advice.
I was in the same boat; took too long of a break and couldn’t remember anything. When I couldn’t remember a word, it was because I couldn’t remember at least one of its kanji, and I couldn’t remember the kanji because I’d forgotten at least one of the radicals. So, every time I got something wrong, I went back to basics and re-studied everything that was fuzzy.
Then I realized I was re-studying so many things from the ground up that I had essentially reset WK anyway, just in a really inefficient way that made it harder to study. So, I reset it for real and don’t regret it; you’ll blow through anything you truly knew, so it won’t take you as long to recover your level.
But, if you aren’t getting as many things wrong as I was or the things you’re forgetting are mostly from recent levels, then it’s a waste to reset every level instead of just cramming the one.