This app is quite good for learning kanji, but there are a few frustrating flaws with the interface that prevent the app from truly shining. The Good: -Excellent variety of kanji and vocabulary for practice-Very satisfying writing mechanic - the kanji look beautiful when you draw them. Very smooth and sleek; perhaps the best I've ever seen. -The kanji rating mechanic is helpful when it works. I know my stroke order now!The Bad-The interface feels very sloppy, and many functions are counterintuitive. For example, when you change a set, you can't simply hit the back button, as it will take you back to the main menu. To make things worse, if you hit back and navigate your way back to the lesson, the app doesn't remember the preferences you set. Instead, you have to hit the "play" button on the bottom. This took me a while to figure out, and I honestly thought that the app was broken in the meantime.-Once you've been shown how to draw a kanji, it immediately disappears and you have no option to practice it until it comes back around, at which point you've likely forgotten one of the stroke orders (which will give you a wrong answer). -Some kanji are completely broken, and it is impossible to get a high enough score on them to succeed. 水 in particular is impossible to get correct, even if you follow the paths and stroke orders perfectly. I think this app has tremendous potential, but it's interface flaws hold it back. With a better interface, this would easily be a five star app.

I'm a student of Japanese taking evening classes and have been looking for an application that has everything I need in one place. This application has it all and the great part is, it's only 3 bucks. I almost didn't buy because of a couple of bad reviews, but after using the application I can only imagine these people didn't even bother to use the application. I use this application along with my class textbook to create my own lists for studying and then drill the vocab for that week using the flash cards and drill the kanji using the writing (which is great, since it checks your drawing and gives you a grade!). The dictionary is great too, as you can get sample sentences for any of the words you're looking at which really helps with grammar, and at any point you can add it to one of your decks too. I agree with the one reviewer that it did take a while to get to grips with all the features of the application, but it was definitely worth the time. Fully recommended for anyone who is taking a Japanese class like myself.

Absolutely love the dictionary. Very complete. Also, I love being able to make flash cards of the vocabulary words, and deciding if they need to be spelled out or if they can just be flipped for the answer. The other students in my class have decided to purchase this app as well. It just makes studying so incredibly convenient.The only thing I would add would be to the flash card game, the option to automatically remove cards that you get correct 3 times in a row, like an Elimination game. You can pick and choose which cards you flash now, and you can stop the game and check your percentage of how many you got right, but it would be nice if the app did that automatically, so that you could focus more on the cards you do not know rather than keep repeating the cards you do.Have an entire stack of flashcards that the other students want, but I am not sure if it is possible to share cards. Would be a nice feature. Otherwise, this app is worth much, much more than what it costs.

I've studied Japanese seriously for 8 years out of the past 15. In college, while living there, occasionally when the mood struck me...and although I can speak well, I'm still functionally illiterate. Anyone who knows Japanese knows that, without kanji, you really can't get the vocabulary necessary to really advance. So when I speak, it flows well, but I'm trapped into sounding like an uneducated high school student. All this would have been different if I had had this app on an ipad so many years ago. I'm sure I'd be watching kurosawa films in the original and chuckling at the refined wordplay. Ok..probably not. What's amazing is that there is really no reason reason for me to study kanji right now - don't live there, job, career, relationship, travel. But here I am tracing out kanji and covering gaps that have plagued me for a long time. Keeps the brain fresh. Suddenly, I'm enthusiastic about studying Kanji. Yeah..reread that one again. While the help and explanation of features is still a work in progress, the developer responded to my question with a detailed answer within hours. and lastly...2.99 for the ipad app. Ridiculous how much other language ipad apps - all languages, not just Japanese. I think this is only the second app I've been motivated to write about. I love studying kanji..anything or anyone that can make that happen deserves some recognition. I'm looking forward to this only getting better.