Learn Japanese! - Kanji Hack 1.5.20 + Redeem Codes

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 Seemed my app was outdated.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!

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!

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.

This is a great app. Reasonable price. Good looking design. I am still using it right now to learn more kanji. But there are few things I think they can improve in this app. I will give my honest opinion on what I feel about this app. First, there is no way to multiple select in custom review (If there is one, I’m unable to find or use that feature on iPad Pro). Each time I want to review all the kanji I’ve learned so far, I have to click each of them. Which is very frustrating. I think the developer should add a feature where I can choose all kanji, red only, yellow only, green only, specific N level only, for the custom review. Second, I would love to have the option where I can choose the thickness of my writing. It is still ok if they don’t add this feature but I find it would be better if the developer add the option to change the writing thickness. Third, I think it would be nice to have a feature when you make a mistake on writing, it would delete the wrong stroke and give you about 2 to 3 chances before showing the hint. That is pretty much it. Overall this is a great app but it can be better.

What an amazing app! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more productive way to learn Kanji. I absolutely love the progression in this. Most of the time these apps throw a bunch of random popular Kanji but this one starts you off with the most basic ones and introduces Kanji that use the ones you previously learned right after. It makes tackling those really complicated Kanji a lot more manageable since now there’s context to each one. I also love that the words make you draw out the Kanji. My only real complaints are with the multiple choice questions. Most of the time the answers are dead giveaways. For example if the question was how to read 見る, only one of the options given will have る in the answer. This makes the quizzes a lot less effective. Some Kanji are also broken? Off the top of my head the one for child, 子, was invisible when used by itself. There were a few others as well. In a way it made me memorize those better since I had to lol. Aside from that, I have nothing but praise for the app. I’ve been using it extensively over the last month and see myself continuing to use it for a long time.

I am currently a college student minoring in Japanese. This app has been a phenomenal tool to get ahead in my studies and expand my vocabulary. For the money, I believe the app is absolutely worth it.

There is perhaps one area that bothers me with the app and that’s that there are a couple minor oversights that should hopefully be fixed soon, as most seem to be. One example is that the verb “to furnish wish” with the reading of 「そなえる」has two different kanji, 備える and 具える, which are impossible to differentiate which the app is asking for when it has just shown the hiragana and the meaning, so you have to guess when drawing it, meaning you will often get it ‘wrong’ and have to review it several times over and over again.

Beyond this, the app is great and supported by the developer. Since getting the app several kanji have become less sensitive to erroneously marking a kanji as wrong and several key quality of life changes have been implemented. A high quality experience all around.

I bought this because the layout was super simple and it was very easy to use. The only problem is that whoever made this does NOT know proper stroke order with kanji. I would say 3/10 kanji have wrong stroke order.....which to me says that even if I get every question/stroke order right, I would only get a 70% at best when taking an actual test that has correct stroke orders on it. I graduated with a degree in Japanese Studies, and have been living in Japan for 6+ years now, and I can tell you this app was clearly not doubled-checked by a Japanese person of any kind it seems. I have brought it to many of my Japanese friends and coworkers and they have said the same thing.

The app was most likely created by someone who is British, or from that neck of the woods. I say that because the words used when labeling kanji are obviously from someone who uses those “proper” words. That wasn’t a problem at all to be honest (in fact it was very interesting to hear the British version of those words), but it shows to me that they were more focused on fancy words instead of an app that helps me with the stroke order of kanji. Which if you ever talk to a Japanese professor, they will tell you stroke order is essential! I feel like I got duped into buying an app that has amazing potential, but falls flat. Needs at least another year of restructuring! Do not recommend!

This app is useful overall, but it has some flaws that must be fixed. The big issue is that the app is too sensitive. It often marks you wrong even when you’re right. It’s endlessly frustrating to correctly write a kanji only to have to redo it over and over. It would also be nice if after a few attempts it would give guidance about where you’re going wrong.
This app is also not very good with Apple Pencil. Sometimes the pencil bounces slightly on the screen and the app registers that small touch as a stroke for the kanji leading it to mark the answer wrong. It needs to be less sensitive to small bounces so it doesn’t incorrectly mark something wrong (and so people with shaky hands can use the app). The same thing happens when answering the multiple choice questions, it registers a bounce as an answer the proceeds to the next screen and registers the second touch as the answer for that question.
It would also be good if it had a setting for Apple pencil so the user could rest their palm on the screen and write more naturally. As it is, it registers my palm as a stroke so I can’t rest my palm on the screen and write naturally.

I’ll get the negative part over quickly - the app is buggy at times, sometimes crashes, sometimes doesn’t seem to register strokes correctly. However I firmly feel that this app is the best I’ve found so far for learning kanji and I don’t regret paying to unlock all the lessons, especially as it is updated very frequently and the developer seems very responsive to feedback. If I find I’m having a frustrating problem to the point it makes me not want to using the app for a while, I simply send my feedback and more likely than not there will be an update within a day that when installed fixes the problem. It may not be perfect but I honestly can’t imaging learning the volume of kanji I have so far without this app. I’m taking the JLPT N5 in December and I have no fear when it comes to any kanji on the test because of how well this app has taught me. In summary, it’s worth paying for all the lessons, and don’t get too frustrated if you encounter bugs because they’ll likely be patched out soon!

Overall very helpful to build up recognition of Kanji. Even if you just want to learn to read Kanji and are less concerned with handwriting the muscle memory of the exercises really helps with recognition. My gripes are honestly very small. It has a few small bugs or maybe just odd behaviors. * When I do my daily review it asks me what “何本” means every. Single. Time. Nothing else does this. It’s honestly sorta amusing to me but I’m not sure why it does it and I’m worried it’s going to start doing it with others. * It’s started using a different font about half way through my review. I actually like the new font a bit more but I can’t understand why it changes. It also could benefit from a de-bounce when answering cards. I occasionally answer one card and then get the next card wrong because my finger hasn’t completely picked up from the screen in time.