Walls are only in your mind. Keep doing reviews. Time to level up doesn’t matter. Each failed review is a stepping stone on the way to the summit of Mt WK.
Don’t let your dreams be dreams. Just do it!
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I bought a house, moved in with my parents, got married, etc. the wall definitely came from outside wanikani. When I came back I had to tame a mountain of reviews, but every day I went at it and now I’m back at equilibrium. It’s not the fastest pace but it’s progress and the only way to progress is to put in the time
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I’m stuck in level 24 for no good reason. Part of me just doesn’t care anymore about SRS and mnemonics. Reading and grammar are my focus now. Plus, I’ve got the pending holiday sadness coming in early this year.
When I get out of this funk, I will go back to my earlier strategy of taking breaks every 3-4 levels.
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Finally tore down this wall.
It seems speedrunning eventually catches up and bites your behind.
Maybe ill just chill from now on 
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you’re gonna encounter problems especially as an advanced learner.
i’ve been having unknown kanji in the mix as early as at lvl 12, and i’ve already been a fluent speaker for years. things went from bad to worse in the 20s. i only ever made it to lvl 31 here and just returned from a long break.
in the end, just let the srs do it’s magic. wk might be a bit too easy tbh, because it lets you burn things you will forget in the future - not quite sure yet how to deal with that when the time comes for me, again.
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The 50s are all fast levels (3.5 days), so it makes sense to see diminishing benefits.
(edit: probably not, they have just as many Kanji, just less common ones)
(not my graph obviously, it’s jprspereira’s)
There are lots of factors at work here. Many people have a lot of prior knowledge. Some may have good memory.
But i think what’s most important is how you study. I take a long time during lessons to make the item memorable, internalizing mnemonic, meanings and readings, thinking how it could be used in sentences, sometimes creating multiple mnemonics myself. I’ve found a lot of better mnemonics for many items. If you don’t do that, you will spend this time reviewing the item multiple times instead, which isn’t necessarily worse, it saves you creating mnemonics etc. In the end, everyone will have in some way or other spent a certain amount of time to do the learning. How much time that is is not too important to me but of course it’s interesting where people encounter ‘walls’, as you say.
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I agree with all those points. The 7 day level ups are mad, I always seem to get a few wrong and at best it’s like 8/9 days. But of course it’s not all about speed!
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He doesn’t 
I also do this. I personally think if you just learn the kanji and no words it is kind of useless, since you can’t actually use them! Also reading words is what really matters, not that you recognize every single kanji individually out of context.
Here is a good post from the god Tae Kim on the subject of “learning” kanji.
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I always get stuck in random higher levels for months. Very annoying. I would also need to give up all my other hobbies to concentrate enough on grammar. My basic Japanese was convincing when I was in Japan, but I still can’t read most of the stuff.
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Hit my wall around Level 19/20. Fingers crossed I’m over the worst of it because it’s been hard going these last few weeks.
Coming to WK with pretty good speaking skills an base vocab, I haven’t hit a wall yet. However, the vocab is getting noticeably slower and since there are so many words with exactly same english translation it takes some time to check whether there are nuance or contextual differences. I don’t always bother to check if I’m in a hurry… 
Still, I have kept a stable phase for now. I expect it to slow down a bit around 30’s.
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It used to be that I would hit a wall any time I traveled (even just little overnight trips to another prefecture or staying at a friend’s place in a different city), because I would never use vacation mode, thinking I would at least keep up with reviews. I’m here to tell you that never worked.
Now I hit the wall any time I start a new level and see 80+ lessons on my dashboard hahhhhhh
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Besides right now? Once I hit level 30 the kanji just got way harder and more obscure. That began my wall. I’ve delayed so much studying this year (ironic because I moved to Japan this year), but hopefully I’ll climb this wall.
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No wall, yet! But I see the difficulty increasing. Doing KaniWani and BunPro next to WaniKani. I’ve just started using the selfstudy script to get some extra study in for things I can’t seem to remember. I also adopted the habit of making up extra mnemonics for stuff I forget.
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In my case I already had a good basic knowledge as well as I recognized (but did not read) around 1000+ kanji. First 15 levels were a breeze and I just needed to be aware of timing my reviews and lessons. Now the vocab is definitely harder (or there are more unfamiliar vocab) and I assume it will progress that way. However, I still have no problem with memorizing my radicals+kanji, so leveling at 7 day speed is not problem at the moment.
I also study kanji outside Wanikani, so I get quite a lot of practice, even if the kanji order is not the same. Reading books helps as well, since I encouter the kanji fr more often than by just doing the reviews.
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Weird enough, my “wall” was at the very start. I wasn’t used to the idea of different kanji readings and my vocabulary knowledge was almost nonexistent. Level 3 happened to be my worst one.
During the first few levels, no matter how hard I tried to level up in 6d20h, even if I checked WaniKani almost every hour or woke up in the middle of the night, I would always get a bunch of readings wrong at some point, or mistake the meaning of similar looking kanji, and stay on the level for longer. That also made me get a lot of vocab wrong and get way too many reviews.
Thankfully, I found two things that helped me a lot: Writing down the kanji, so I don’t get similar looking kanji mixed anymore. And I forced myself to start reading more native material, mostly novels, for at least 2 hours everyday no matter how painful it might be. After a few weeks, things got so much easier. I can finally level up at max speed, and vocabulary doesn’t overwhelm me anymore. It’s almost funny how I always find a bunch of the new vocabulary right in the next thing I read, so I never forget those. I started reading light novels around level 8 but only at 14 I managed to level up at max speed:
I’m still expecting to struggle a lot at higher levels, but hopefully I’ll start reading harder native material by then… I’ll keep doing my best.
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Are there actually people who skip the vocab, seems mind-boggling to ignore that!
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Out of curiosity, how does your daily schedule allow for that? I tried, but decided that sleep and stable daily routine worked much better for me
Most likely there are, but I don’t think they benefit from it in the long term. But I wouldn’t assume that 7 day speed automatically means skipping vocab. Most people here with speedy leveling do not skip vocab to my knowledge.
That said, reordering lessons and reviews is much used to keep up with leveling, if in a pinch.
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Level 8. It has taken me almost a year to complete.
In the meantime, I have taken Japanese group classes with a native speaker, and one to one lessons with an English tutor who teaches Japanese. My spoken Japanese has improved immeasurably but it’s best to do both at the same time imo.
I’m kicking myself for not being disciplined with the reviews. Understanding kanji early on is incredibly advantageous. Keep up the good work. Put the effort in now and you won’t have the same regrets.
頑張ってください。
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