These two volumes of PRACTICAL KANJI aim to teach you a total of 700 intermediate-level kanji. To do this, they offer a range of material to present the kanji and help you to study them.
The chapters are all organized along the same pattern. Each chapter starts with a page-long reading text based around some aspect of Japanese culture—including film, literature, sports, and religion—or Japanese life—such as disaster prevention and politics. Like the キクタン series, this book comes with a transparent red sheet, which can be placed over the reading text to magically remove the furigana for kanji you should already know or will be studying in that chapter (these are all written in red). This means that you can first read the text with furigana, then place the card over the text to test your ability to recall the readings.
The new kanji from the text is then presented in typical textbook style, with basic information such as stroke order, readings, and vocabulary. There are then a whole host of exercises to help you memorize these kanji, starting with extensive reading exercises with accompanying audio, and moving onto writing and listening practice.
There are also review sections after every two to three chapters, which include paragraphs to read where the kanji studied no longer has accompanying furigana. This section also has audio, making it suitable for language shadowing.
The reading texts are modern and varied, the exercises are well structured, and the audio is a nice extra. This series provides a more interactive alternative to the traditional kanji dictionary.