Urgent review

[Ger]

I think WaniKani is great for Kanji. I studied Japanese for long time trying to avoid Kanji. Of course that is not great way to study. I knew maybe elementary school grade 1 kanji and I have some basic vocabulary I tried the free levels and thought this might be the best way for me to study Kanji.
I bought myself a present last year of lifetime membership (sale price). I am a slow learner but I know so many Kanji now it is so helpful, I feel happy.
I wish you good luck in your endeavors. I think using many different tools are important.

[DIO-Berry]

Since money is a big factor and you’re already N4, I’d recommend a free resource instead. Since I haven’t seen it mentioned yet, I’m going to recommend renshuu.org It has free and premium features, but the free ones are really quite good. While WK is better for learning kanji, with Renshuu, you can jump in at the level you’re already at, like you can skip straight to N4/N3 kanji. They have crowdsourced mnemonics, like 月 Among Us is on the Moon. There’s also grammar, handwriting, counter, production practice and so much more. It’s recommended to use a textbook/grammar book along Renshuu, but I don’t think it’s really necessary.

[WaniTsunami]

There’s a million ways to skin a cat learn a language. While I love WK, there are plenty of resources, browser extensions, etc. out there you can learn Kanji for free from.

[AnimeCanuck]

While I personally love WK, there are some things about it that don’t work for me:

• mnemonics - in general, these don’t work for me, though a few of the earlier ones have helped, and I have also made a few much shorter, simpler ones myself for a couple of things. Mostly, brute force memory is all that really works, and sometimes I’m lucky enough that a Japanese reading of a word fits in to a popular song’s melody in the exact same location as the English meaning… (I’ve done that for a few things, but very few…)
• I find that a lot of the time, WK’s reading mnemonics use weird pronunciations or words that I don’t believe sound like that Japanese at all, anyways. (I’m Canadian but live very close to the States, grew up on regular American TV… I don’t generally think of myself as having an accent.)

That said, it’s great! I love it! I have Lifetime and I’m glad I did because I set it aside for a few years, and came back. And they’re still improving the website, years later!

But since you are N4 or N4-ish, and understand anime and manga almost natively, it sounds like… (or at least well enough on your own?), you might want to search some of the old “too slow” posts. Before the great forum migration, back in the beginning, other Japanese learners would come and try out WK and complain: “WK is too slow”. Someone else earlier mentioned you might feel like the first 10 months are a waste as you wait for the content to catch up to your level. This could happen. However, I do know there are some N2 level kanji and/or vocabulary that you get within the first 16 levels (I reset), because WK teaches you in the order that is easier, based on the building of the radicals and the complexity (for the most part) of the kanji, rather than teaching you the most common first. If you do search these older posts, perhaps you’ll find some of those reviewers of yesteryear closer to your situation and/or Japanese aptitude level, and their opinions might be more relevant/helpful to you.

Either way, wishing you the best with your continued Japanese study!

がんばります。