[bigbluesax]

I actually really strugle to retain anything I learned with anki and I was wondering if this affects anyone else.

A prominent example is when I was working through a deck of japanese hiragana and katakana, I was doing my cards at a moderate pace every day, and I just kept mixing them up, even when I was repeating them in short succession. After a few very frustrating weeks of this i ditched anki and started trying to write out the whole table from memory and checking for mistakes after, this strategy proved so successful I only needed three sessions for perfect recall.

I used anki a few other times with similar results. I know the idea of learning styles is disputed, but this app just doesn't appear to work for me.

[keiferski]

It sounds like you didn’t learn the information sufficiently enough before making them into cards. Anki isn’t good for teaching you new things, it’s good for remembering stuff that you already know - or are at least familiar with.

[Kelamir]

As the other responder said, don't use Anki for memorization, only for reviewing what you already remember. I recommend using mnemonics for memorizing words. For katakana hiragana, refer to https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/