Japanese Language Plan

I've been immersed in Japanese art for the past three years and it's time to go further. Anime, manga, light novels, etc. are going to be part of my life for a long time to come, so it makes sense to spend some work and complete the following goals: 

            1. Watch anime raw

            2. Read manga raw

            3. Read light novels

            4. Read visual novels raw

I doubt my kanji will ever be good enough to read Japanese novels (Kokoro, Sea of Fertility, etc) untranslated, but if it ever is, consider that goal No.5. 

There, I have my four goals, which can be reduced to one: consume Japanese art without translation. Subordinate goals immediately come to mind:

            1. Learn hiragana

            2. Learn katakana

            3. Learn vocabulary

            4. Learn grammar

            5. Learn kanji

Hiragana and katakana will have to come first. Namasensei will help out with those. Once I can read and write both scripts, I'll increase vocabulary learning. 

The most common thousand words will let me understand a lot. I'll shoot for a base vocabulary of 3,000 words, in order of most common. There are lots of apps for that. I've started with Memrise, and will supplement/replace it with shared Anki lists, especially those aimed at the N5-N1 levels of the JPLT.

I'll use Tae Kim for the beginning grammar, and then Genki 1 and 2.

Kanji is just going to be hard. I don't have a plan for that yet. Genki has a kanji introduction so I'll figure out the rest after I finish both volumes. Since LNs, manga, and VNs all use kanji, I'll need to know around three thousand to read them largely unaided. Ugh - that is a serious wall, but I won't have to even think about it for six months.