I am trying to learn the individual kanji because without it I don't seem to recognize the more complex shapes, and mix up similar ones. I tried to do flashcards and still had this problem. I started doing flashcards but also drawing them and recalling the mnemonics for the components and meaning, and this fixed the problem of recognizing the kanji for me.
The next problem is that when the interval gets longer I have forgotten the mnemonics, how to draw it and the meaning, in that order, respectively in how early I forget each thing. After 1.5+ month some of the kanji get forgotten. How am I supposed to remember all 2100ish if I start forgetting a significant amount of them after a while.
All I can think of is that I will have to refresh the older ones in my memory when I forget them and start the flashcard sequence over again with that kanji. Then that will probably take 3+ years to learn them like that and I would probably have to keep reviewing them some how to keep them in memory or read a significant amount regularly probably.
EDIT
I know 5000+ words already. But I learnt most of them in furigana so ignored the kanji. Only this year I've been learning words without furigana and seeing the kanji. Doing this I have noticed I forget how to read many words after a while, and do not recognize the shape of the word anymore despite remembering the reading and meaning.
by lieinking1