Back in 2006 I used Heisig's RTK1 (free PDF of the first 100 or so characters), with paper flashcards to learn to "learn" all 2000+ kanji in the book in about 7 months. It was really hard, and I was very proud of myself. It's helped me tremendously with my Japanese and Chinese. That being said, while I think for most westerners the mnemonic method is the way to go, I don't think learning the whole book is the right thing to do for most people. Learners who would benefit the most from learning all 2000 at once are: 1) those who plan to study very intensively, meaning several hours a day for 2 or more years 2) those who already have a strong background in the language As others have stated, this method only teaches you to recognize a character, and to write it if you are given an english keyword. This doesn't mean the method is useless, it just means that you need to know some vocabulary and do some reading to give it value. If you have very little vocabulary, then either you will need to use an SRS, or something to review, to stay on top of this knowledge, or you will forget it.