I started using Wanikani almost a year ago and i did it very consistently until University came in the way in July, so I had to take a break. Right now I’m staring at 1300 reviews, after resetting to 22 from 25, and almost half of them is enlightened. The normal way of catching up (i.e. without cheating) seems a bit slow, and doing enlightened items first also seems like postponing debt into the future if I don’t get them correctly (by them dropping to guru). Is there a better way to catch up than both of those ways without being overwhelmed now or later?
What I did in a similar situation is to use the Reorder Ultimate script to do the review in order of level. I did 50 review per day because this is the workload I was comfortable with. When I reached items in a level where I hit a wall in terms of accuracy I reset at that level.
8 Likes
Hi @candus1 san
Welcome back 
I agree with Prouleau san. One thing to keep in mind is, the pace with which you approach clear up is the pace with which all the items will return in the future. It might be advisable to take it slow and steady and do them in chunks of 50-100 per day. It may seem slow, but in the long run this is probably the best way 
Think of this slow frustrating period as Luffy trying to learn Haki or Naruto trying to learn Rasengan 
Good luck my friend 
7 Likes
Hi guys!
I am in a similar situation. I came back after a while to find myself with around 1000 reviews. I reset from level 28 to level 25 and now I still have 730 reviews. In order to catch up, I would like to set a certain amount of reviews to do in every session. I think there is an app for that, but I don’t remember the name or what to do to install an app. Can anybody help me?
1 Like
I’m using tsurukume to try and catch up, while soring by wanikani level, but it’s on iOS only. For android there’s Flaming Durtles.
i have returned twice from 1500 review piles. my strategy both times was to sort by SRS-levels (though any kind of sorting would work, as long as you keep it the same). sorting is important, because otherwise the SRS breaks when you have too many items.
then i’d do about 100 reviews a day.
after a while i got a very skewed review pile, with tons of enlightened items waiting for burns, and very few apprentice items. to balance this i started adding a few lessons each day (like, 5 new lessons), that kept my review pile more balanced. that made that i was only reviewing 25-30 of the 1000+ enlightened items waiting for review, so it took a long time to get the pile back to zero. but it also made me feel like i was actually making a bit of progress again, which i found helpful.
note that adding new lessons probably doesn’t work if you’re sorting reviews by WK level, but only if you’re sorting by SRS level.
4 Likes
I just caught up on 1600 reviews… It can be really daunting but I think we all know what needs to be done. Just slowly but surely have to tackle the reviews (don’t even think about lessons) as much as you can day by day. I aimed for 100/day, some days I did a few hundred. So glad to be back on track. Gonna try my best to not let it get that bad again.
2 Likes
I was able to make it! I had 1700 reviews after resetting from 25 to level 20, but I think resetting was a mistake.
My strategy to catch up was to just do 100-200 reviews per day, and set the order to WK Level order. It took me around 2 months to catch up and start leveling up. Since then I leveled up to 26 again, but I think if I didn’t reset I would’ve reached the 26 content much faster. Still, I’m happy to be able progress again and I’m planning now to finish WK this year. 
7 Likes
GG!
and best of luck for the future!
…i’ve just returned from my 3rd 1500+ review pile (was ill most of winter). really hoping i don’t have to do this again 
3 Likes
I started making my way down from 1200 last week, I’m at 600 now 
This thread is giving me more motivation though! I didn’t know about the tip to sort by WK level so I just changed the setting now. Should I reset to a lower level if I don’t remember many from the higher level?
1 Like
I wouldn’t recommend resetting at all, just continue at your pace and even if you can’t remember some things, the SRS will make sure you learn them, especially since you’re sorting by WK level 
Once you’re up to date, I’d recommend also putting the order back to random.
1 Like
I can’t fathom how someone would get over 1000 reviews. This suggests that the person is doing far too many lessons too quickly. How are you even retaining any of that information if you are constantly bombarding yourself with new Kanji at that rate? It would feel like a full-time job!
Ok thanks for your advice, that’s what I’ll be doing then. After switching to sort by WK level, I’m finding it much easier to do the reviews. I managed to whittle reviews down to 400 but according to the upcoming reviews map, I’ll be back to 600 by tomorrow evening 
2 Likes
It happens when you stop doing the reviews, and it’s not something exclusive to WK, it’s something that happens with any SRS. Once you stop doing the reviews daily, they start accumulating. When you’re in later levels and you stop doing them for a couple of months, suddenly you have a mountain of thousands of reviews to climb.
2 Likes
Just keep at it, review count at this point doesn’t matter, what matters is consistency and how many apprentice you’re guruing 
1 Like
Yeah I didn’t do reviews for a long long time… funny enough I stopped them when I moved to Japan
1 Like
I just came back after a year and a half away and realised I had forgotten most EVERYTHING so I seriously decided to reset all the way back down to level 1 from where I had been at 20. I just felt this was the best way to make sure things really got re-ingrained into my memory from the ground level up so here I go. Wish me luck!
2 Likes
Good luck!
1 Like
you get ill. you have a family emergency. you get invited on a spontaneous roadtrip to paris. your baby is born. perfect skiing weather for a week. you got snowed in and didn’t have internet access. you fall in love.
basically, life happens. and sometimes you don’t have time or you’re just to busy to set yourself to vacation mode. 1000 reviews happen fast!
2 Likes
1000 reviews means that you have been trying to learn 1000 kanji at once. That seems extreme to me.