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Specific brilliance? Very close to none, in my opinion. The most useful thing he did with RTK1 is present the douyo Kanji in a fairly systematic way, while leaving lots of space to make your own notes. And these days, learning has been digitized to such a degree that many people won't even bother buying a book that does little more than add some suggestions for memory aides. Since those can be found on the internet for free.

Memory aides are hardly an invention of Heisig. And the often extremely far-fetched stories he comes up with for the first +/- 500 Kanji in RTK1 aren't all that memorable to begin with. Just looking at the average entry on the SRS part of this website makes clear that people generally only turn to Heisig's far-fetched type of story when there is absolutely no easier mnemonic that will get the job done.

And many of the names Heisig gives to primitives based on superficial visual similarities can be more of a hindrance than a help, at least in my experience. Too often, he picked names of everyday objects that have fairly limited uses. Take primitives like "pup tent", "acorn", "awl", "bonsai", "bushel basket", "cabbage", "celery", "cereal" or "cornstalk". How many meaningfully different stories can be based on these often agricultural words? You can basically either grow these foodstuffs or eat them. Why not go for a word that describes a more general function or object, so that it lends itself to many more possible mnemonics or stories?

For example, I replaced the "cornstalk" with an "equals sign" = that has been pinned to something. And that works for a key word like "dedicate", since one form of dedicating something like a new building is to stick a sign on it that says something like "The John Smith Building". And it works for the "rod", which can be an instrument dedicated (with an inscription) to keeping order. So the "equals sign that has been pinned to something" can take the form of a dedication plaque or an inscription on a pen or a rod. Whereas somehow linking a cornstalk to the concept of dedicating something (or being dedicated) will be forced, unnatural and therefore unmemorable. In my opinion, of course.

The example of "dedicate" brings up something else that I have found to be very un-brilliant about the Heisig method: insisting on the single keyword approach to such an extent that it's often not even clear if something is a noun or a verb, or which of multiple synonyms in English is meant.

Well, sorry if I come across as bitter in response to such an enthusiastic post about Heisig. It's just that the weaknesses I found in his approach took me a lot of time to work around, so that it felt more like a "Make your own course" than a "Complete course" as the subtitle of RTK1 claims.

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To be fair, I *did* mention the systematic ordering of the Kanji as one of the strengths of Heisig. And I used it to my advantage to come up with better primitive key words, since seeing many examples in a row that use a specific primitive makes it easier to find a word that will fit many or all of them. (Of course, whenever a primitive was also a Kanji in itself I respected Heisig's translation, otherwise things would become a mess).

And I'm sincerely happy for you that his method worked so well in your case. But I'm not sure that you sticking to *all* of his key words was necessary, especially since you remark that this often made it tough to come up with a useful story. Your example of the "Children of the Corn" movies is a case in point, since that reference only works if you've actually seen one or more of them. (I never have, so even though I did remember seeing that title at the video rental many years ago, I couldn't use it for a story. But it did cross my mind.)

My own adaptation of Heisig worked quite well for me and I also recognize many Kanji in my grammar book. So I'm not someone who's complaining because Heisig didn't work for me and then gave up: I put in the extra effort and made it into something that *does* work for me. Well, barring a few hundred Kanji the stories/associations for which still don't work well enough. But I keep chipping away at those as well...

I don't think the individual features can be considered "brilliant". Even the most helpful features (grouping the Kanji by common, named elements; giving the Kanji unique English keywords; using imaginative memory to remember the components of Kanji; ignoring readings; learning 2-3000 Kanji up front) are ideas pretty much anyone with half a brain and the willingness to use it could think of trying.

But the way it all comes together is brilliant. Yes, many people can recognize good ideas and start using them. But very few people can connect them into a system that, frankly, would be hard to improve upon to any significant degree.

This is, of course, in my opinion. I'm sure plenty of people think their changes to the system are improvements. I don't. None of the changes people on this board have suggested or made to the way they use RtK have not been improvements.

P.S. Please note that I don't consider the names of primitives or the stories part of the system. Of course those can and should all be improved, and updated to suit the times and the people who use the system today.

My experience so far (almost through) is, that many Kanji stick the first time around. I may fail them some time in a future review, in which case I just relearn them, and then they're mine.
I do various methods. Sometimes I go ultra-strict mode and write everything down by hand and fail when I can't do it, sometimes I just rush through all reviews using "hard" or "fail" to keep timers short while also learning a bunch of new Kanji the same day.
At some point the ones that didn't really stick or didn't stick at all pop up again, and by keeping timers short on those I'm not sure how good I really know them, this is a way I found viable.
By having all those I remembered perfectly well a few times in longer timers, I already had a load off my back.

Heisig, however, has nothing to do with how I use his book. It's my way to ANKI things around. The learning itself tho is inspired by him, and I found both, the concept of having keywords and the right order of new Kanji to be the selling points.

I too think that it's not important which keywords you actually use, as long as they don't conflict with other ones or confuse you. My biggest problem has always been the "compound primitives" that consist of several smaller primitives and make up a bigger one, like for example "just so" or "double back".

You split up the many things you have to remember about Kanji and you learn them in an order that facilitates learning.

By getting them all out of the way first up, you can dive into learning to read Japanese with less stress. Traditionally you'd have to learn, the Kanji, the compound, the reading of the compound, the on-yomi and kun-yomi, the meaning of the Kanji, the meaning of the compound and the writing all at once for every word. It is ridiculous. Instead, once you have learned the meaning and writing of the Kanji, you need only learn the reading of the Kanji or compound that you encounter and the Kanji are already familiar to you. Instead of being faced with a sea of intimidating characters and being overwhelmed the alienness of it all, you can look at a page and recognize all your old friends.

It's the perfect method for adult L2 learners. We already have the concepts, so we needn't learn more complex Kanji for simple concepts, we can learn simple Kanji in order which relate to any concepts. Building up your Kanji knowledge like this is also delightful. I can start to recognize new Kanji by their component parts. Kanji and Chinese characters now look pleasing to me and I can pick out their parts whereas before they were insane jumbles of incomprehensible scribble. The logic comes alive now.

Oh and the stories make the process way less tedious. You're using your imagination and engaging more of your brain while studying. Kanji remind you of some funny story. I can 'read' the meaning in a way sometimes by reading off the meanings of the parts and being reminded of a story or image or both and remembering the meaning. Eventually this scaffolding falls away and I merely remember the meaning but it is amazingly efficient and more enjoyable.

The fact that you prioritize writing over recognition.
The problem for a lot of Kanji learners is that they learn how to recognize hundreds of Kanji but their mind goes completely blank when they have to write them cold. With the Heisig system there will be little prompts in your head to help you when face the blank page.
That's one thing that makes the system brilliant.