Ah, I missed that part... I knew you were further than starting Core (because of your posts on the JLPT threads), but I didn't pay attention to who the OP was from, just the more recent posts.
Well, as far as VNs go, pretty much as long as it's on PC, it can be hooked. The reason I stress ITH, is because it's far more effective and simpler to use than its predecessor AGTH (which requires running the game while associating it with AGTH and specifying the necessary hooks; which requires a lot of fiddling unless someone else has already done that for you).
I'm still working on listening, myself. A lot of people recommend subs2srs, but I haven't really used it myself (been meaning to; made a couple of decks, but I don't do Anki in a sound friendly environment). For me, all of my listening skills comes from VNs and just listening to other stuff. The voice actors for VNs read the script as it is. Voice acting is a bit different from normal Japanese, but it's close enough to the same thing to help.
In the end, my only advice for listening is 'listen more'.
And yeah, focus on the challenging stuff. My rule of thumb is: if I can read it and understand it, it doesn't need to be SRS'd. Especially if it's a word you'll probably see a lot (some authors just like certain words).
I've noticed that I forget certain words that I've studied too; the only advice I have is to look it up when something like that nags you. It took me forever to remember what 含む meant, for instance, but I eventually got it through reading (thankfully, it's a fairly common word).
I forgot who I heard this from (on this site), but Anki is a tool that increases your familiarity with words, making it easier to remember them, but you won't really learn a lot of them until you use them (by reading, for instance).
If you have too many definitions on one card when you use Rikaisama's save feature (or similar), just wait until it bothers you to delete it. I find it much easier to only edit cards that bother me, like if there's a wall of definitions and only one of them really applies to the sentence.
For the most part, though, it's not terribly cluttered.
I think I answered some more of your more recent questions/topics this time.
Well, as far as VNs go, pretty much as long as it's on PC, it can be hooked. The reason I stress ITH, is because it's far more effective and simpler to use than its predecessor AGTH (which requires running the game while associating it with AGTH and specifying the necessary hooks; which requires a lot of fiddling unless someone else has already done that for you).
I'm still working on listening, myself. A lot of people recommend subs2srs, but I haven't really used it myself (been meaning to; made a couple of decks, but I don't do Anki in a sound friendly environment). For me, all of my listening skills comes from VNs and just listening to other stuff. The voice actors for VNs read the script as it is. Voice acting is a bit different from normal Japanese, but it's close enough to the same thing to help.
In the end, my only advice for listening is 'listen more'.
And yeah, focus on the challenging stuff. My rule of thumb is: if I can read it and understand it, it doesn't need to be SRS'd. Especially if it's a word you'll probably see a lot (some authors just like certain words).
I've noticed that I forget certain words that I've studied too; the only advice I have is to look it up when something like that nags you. It took me forever to remember what 含む meant, for instance, but I eventually got it through reading (thankfully, it's a fairly common word).
I forgot who I heard this from (on this site), but Anki is a tool that increases your familiarity with words, making it easier to remember them, but you won't really learn a lot of them until you use them (by reading, for instance).
If you have too many definitions on one card when you use Rikaisama's save feature (or similar), just wait until it bothers you to delete it. I find it much easier to only edit cards that bother me, like if there's a wall of definitions and only one of them really applies to the sentence.
For the most part, though, it's not terribly cluttered.
I think I answered some more of your more recent questions/topics this time.