Learn Japanese! - Kanji 4+

This app is great, but tiny errors are annoying (updated)

Updated: please read edit

The app is top notch, but little, bugs will annoy. It's still worth it, but beware of trusting it too much. An example I came across today is the kanji 界 which it gives the association "kingdom" but other dictionaries (I checked 3) give the association "world", "area", or "boundary" kingdom is only listed as one of the definitions associated with biology As in an animal kingdom. So I'm not sure if that is the right meaning to assign that kanji as it seems like a special case and not the usual meaning. In addition to that, while doing the writing practice for a different kanji in the same lesson(室), one of the strokes was just completely missing. I'm only on jlpt 4, but it makes me wonder how correct these really are, and how many more errors there will be going forward. I'm not planning on taking any tests yet, but someone who is should be wary using this tool to do so, and I have seen other user reviews reflect the same sentiment.

EDIT: Thanks to the quick response from the developer I'm updating this review to five stars. Seemed my app was outdated. I'm not sure why because I had automatic updates on, but if anyone is having similar issues try re-downloading. My issues are resolved now. Thanks!

Developer Response ,

These issues were fixed several years ago. It sounds like something in the update process failed and your app hasn’t been getting updates.

Sorry for the trouble but I recommend reinstalling the app. Your progress has been backed up to the server and will download after you install the app again.

Effective way to learn kanji that’s worth the money!

I normally don’t write reviews or even buy phone apps, but I’m so impressed at the effectiveness of this kanji app. I’ve tried other kanji apps and found them to be way too complicated to use that I wasn’t motivated to study with them every day.

This app really just gets to the point with reading, writing, and understanding the meaning of a word, and I can quickly use this to review words I’ve gone over in the app. It’s a very simple interface, but this flashcard style of learning works way better than anything else I’ve ever used. The way the words are grouped is very effective for learning too, with lessons in chunks of 4 words. The improvement in my Japanese comprehension has been night and day since starting this app, and I can’t wait to finish all the lessons in this app. This is such a daily staple to my daily routine now and I look forward to reviewing and learning new lessons every day.

With any small app, there are slight bugs with pronunciation in some words and there are features I think could improve the app. However, the developer is very responsive to messages, so I’m glad I invested in this app knowing it’ll be well-maintained. Thank you!

Great but sometimes infuriating

I love this app and I’m putting lots of hours into it but sometimes it’s infuriating because it will tell me I’m drawing a kanji incorrectly even though I think I’m doing it correctly. Ok sure, I realize I’m probably doing something wrong but it won’t tell me what that is. For example, this morning the app kept telling me that I was drawing 引 (to pull) incorrectly. Every time I would finish the first radical (弓) it would mark me wrong. I still have no idea what I was doing incorrectly. Sometimes I feel like the app is an impatient helicopter parent standing over me waiting for me to make the slightest mistake and then it just snatches the paper out of my hands saying “just let me do it”.
A few recommendations for the developer:
1. Provide some kind of feedback so I can tell what I’m doing wrong. I realize this would be difficult to implement.
2. Provide a “undo” button on the kanji drawing window. Sometimes I’ll accidentally touch the screen and put a mark there that I know will make the whole character get marked incorrect. I’d love to be able to erase that stroke and fix the kanji before I get marked wrong.
3. I would also love a “repeat” button so that, while I’m doing a review I can rewrite a character as many times as I’d like before I move on to the next one.