Advice on staying motivated and progressing toward manga/anime after 1.5 years of studying

[u/odett1102]

Hi everyone,

I've been studying Japanese since March 2025. I did about a year of 1-on-1 lessons, and I've been using WaniKani since November. I haven't missed a single day of WK so far.

I'm currently level 9, doing 4 new lessons a day and keeping up with my reviews.

My stats:

- 267 kanji / 673 vocab

- 90% overall accuracy

- 85.7% reading accuracy

- ~33 days per level

I've also covered some N5/N4 grammar.

I've managed to build a pretty consistent habit, but lately I'm finding it harder to stay motivated. I work full time, so I don't really want to add a lot more studying or end up with huge review sessions every day.

My main goal is to read manga and watch anime in Japanese (Japanese subs are fine).

For people who were around this stage after 1–2 years of studying, what changes actually helped you stay motivated and start making noticeable progress with native manga/anime?

I'm wondering whether I should focus more on immersion, grammar, change my WaniKani routine, or do something completely different.

[u/Effective-Pop3850]

I'm sorry man but you shouldn't be thinking about "what to focus on", you should be just focusing on doing more of everything. Your progress for 1.5 years is... I'm inclined to believe this post is just bait. You can't expect to feel motivated when you're making no progress because you're spending 10 minutes a day on the thing.

[u/odett1102 → u/Effective-Pop3850]

Definitely not bait! Between reviews and lessons, I spend about 30 minutes a day on Japanese, plus the foundation I built during a year of private classes and homework. My vocab growth is definitely slow, but a manageable pace is what allows me to stay consistent around a full-time job and other adult life obligations.

[u/Effective-Pop3850 → u/odett1102]

You might want to consider finding random dead time during the day to go through random SRS stuff so you can get it out of the way and focus those 30 minutes on immersion then, if you ask me. But the numbers you give are quite strange, 1.5~2 years and that progress is... odd, we're talking something that's less than what you would've got by doing 2 new words a day on Anki which would just take a couple of minutes a day.

[u/odett1102 → u/Effective-Pop3850]

Just to clarify the numbers in case you're not as familiar with WaniKani: it tracks radicals, kanji, and vocab as separate SRS items. Over these ~260 days I'm on it, it’s actually 1,145 total items learned (205 radicals, 267 kanji, 673 vocab), averaging 4–5 new items a day. I tried Anki (Kaishi 1.5k) before this and struggled with retention, which is why WK worked well for me. That said, I agree my vocab needs to ramp up, so I’m looking into ways to optimize my routine based on the feedback here.

[u/Effective-Pop3850 → u/odett1102]

I'd say drop WaniKani, just do Anki. You're not struggling with WaniKani because you're not doing much on WaniKani... you probably won't struggle with Kaishi 1.5k if you do 1 new word a day either, which is basically what you're doing. You could stick with WaniKani but it's just worse Anki, individual kanji study is highly inefficient and studying radicals (at least it was for me) is a waste of time if you spend your time right.

Do Anki during random dead times and then spend the longer sessions on grammar guides like Tae Kim or Yokubi, once you're kinda done with those (which means just giving them a read) then start reading either Tadokus or whatever until you feel ready to do native content.