KANJI LOOK AND LEARN

My go-to recommendation to anyone between N5 and N3 (including workbook)

This book is a great way to learn Kanji (when you combine with the workbook exercises as well ofc) when you begin, and even to make up for words and phrases when you're already in but not too deep.

It includes a proper explanation into the structure of Kanji at the start, including some radicals to learn at first as well as the explanation into the on-yomi and kun-yomi, the different kinds of strokes and the the writing directions and etc (it sounds overexaggerated but this explanation actually helps a lot in memorizing Kanji and in writing it well imo. I had an opportunity to see people that don't necessarily learn these things when they first start and they had a hard time learning to write later on because of it).

Unlike a lot of Japanese learning books, Genki books in general don't focus on JLPT or any other exam level, but rather on how commonly used is a word or how well known a phrase is for use in conversation and etc. They do however combine this focus factor of theirs into JLPT levels just to take into consideration difficulty as well make it easier for the learner to identify and find things in line with their own learning journey.

This is more so true in this Kanji focused book+workbook combo. You can see from early on that they go through N5 Kanji with a combination of N4 and sometimes N3+ above, slowly into N2-N1 Kanji, but don't go through all of them, just commonly used ones. In this sense, you learn very commonly used N2/N1 Kanji very early into the material sometimes.

They also make the chapter content into kanji you can make logical connections between through the vocabulary you learn, which makes memorizing easier both for vocab as well as the learned kanji.

Like many of the beginner Kanji learning material, there are pictures to help learn and memorize the kanji and it's meaning, which is always fun and cute.