Introduction
Hello everybody. I recently created a small python script to download your latest mistakes as Anki cards. Well, I’ve decided to expand that project into a webpage thats easier to use (no more running code) and offers more features even though I did not yet implement the original functionality of viewing your latest mistakes (it is now implemented)!
The project is now part of my personal website (currently not populated) and can be reached here. I uploaded all the code to GitHub so you can check it out if you want. The project is intended as a way to improve your WaniKani study by allowing you to download WaniKani content as Anki cards.
Features
Firstly you can simply view content from your recent mistakes, any level, or any srs-stage (e.g. your apprentice items). The view can be filtered by type (radical, kanji, vocabulary) and provides clickable cards linking to their corresponding WaniKani site.
Secondly you can download 3 types of decks from your selected content: Basic (the same as WaniKani), Reversed (instead of 木 → ‘tree’ you go ‘tree’ → 木), Writing (practice handwriting radicals and kanjis). The Anki cards contain all immediately useful information like meanings, readings, mnemonics, but also link back to the WaniKani site for further info.
Basic and Reversed cards
Basic and Reversed cards are basically the same, they just switch around the order of their informations a bit. Basic cards are intended to allow you to crack down on your recent mistakes or study srs-stages e.g. apprentice or burned items. Reversed cards are intended to allow you to improve your active vocabulary (as WaniKani only does passive, i.e. reading not speaking).
Writing cards
Writing cards are intended to allow you to study handwriting radicals and kanji of your current WaniKani level. They feature a customizable animation on the typical square grid used for writing practice. Note these cards need an internet connection as they grab their animation data online!
Known Issues
As with most things, this project is not perfect. Please feel free to tell me if you encounter any bad bugs. I will try my best to fix them (maybe). For now there are only two issues known (which are so minor that I don’t want to deal with them):
-
A very small amount of items on WaniKani do not use an actual character but rather a custom graphic. Those items will only display a ‘?’ as their character. Similarly some writing cards might display an empty animation as the database that provides them might not know that item.
-
The interface state on writing cards is visually not saved between Anki cards, even though the actual settings stay saved. This has to do with how Anki renders cards and doesn’t really matter too much to be honest.
Final Thoughts
I already started to practice writing / reverse study the first few levels as well as grinding my recent mistakes and at least I am happy with how everything turned out. Hopefully some of you guys will find this project useful as well! Thats all, thank you for reading my post!