Using RTK, it is good to do a lot of kanji while you're in the groove. That's one reason for doing about 2000 upfront with RTK. Another reason is that as Aijin mentioned, even some rarer kanji still get used in fairly common words. It's hard to tell upfront what kanji you're going to need.
However if you don't have the patience to finish all of RTK first, I think doing RTK Lite (or other frequency based list) first, and then learning kanji by RTK method as you encounter them can also be a valid method. Doing RTK Lite would probably be enough to learn most of the primitives, and then you can apply that to other kanji in any order.
Edit: And yeah, knowing 80% most frequent words is still just the tip of the iceberg - and generally means little to no comprehension of native Japanese speech & writing.
However if you don't have the patience to finish all of RTK first, I think doing RTK Lite (or other frequency based list) first, and then learning kanji by RTK method as you encounter them can also be a valid method. Doing RTK Lite would probably be enough to learn most of the primitives, and then you can apply that to other kanji in any order.
Edit: And yeah, knowing 80% most frequent words is still just the tip of the iceberg - and generally means little to no comprehension of native Japanese speech & writing.
Edited: 2009-06-19, 2:45 pm