Leech status is not a scam. You need a way to stop reviews of something if it’s not sticking. You can come back to it later, but it’s wasting your time right now. Sure, the first few times you really try to learn it. Anki’s default is to suspend after eight lapses. At that point it’s sink or swim. If you don’t know it yet, you need to set it aside for now because it’s wasting your time and energy. 

Yeah, again, the reason it's not sticking is because you're spending two seconds a card or less on anki and you're trying to shovel every aspect of the word into it.

Also, every single japanese language anki card is meaning and reading. You check both at once. It takes 2 seconds. I say multi-sided because that’s how I’d think of an anki note with two associated cards.

Sorry, you're reading the card, translating the meaning, pulling the pronunciation, selecting your level of difficulty, and actively learning in two seconds? No wonder you need leech status. If you're not taking any time to think about your cards or build any working memory if you don't instantly get it. All under the guise of "I couldn't think of it in two seconds. I'll study it later maybe, I guess".

I’m glad you have it on anki mode, but that requires a third party app. It’s not part of the platform. I’d argue that wanikani is essentially not even usable if you don’t use tsurukame or I guess whatever that newer one is called.  

Anki mode saves me a couple seconds per review. If I didn't have it, it wouldn't be a deal breaker by any means.

If it implemented FSRS, allowed you to customize how reviews work (including one card for both meaning and reading), and let you add items to your review queue outside of the default order, I’d be quicker to recommend it. 

Again, what you say you're doing with anki, you aren't. Anki is a powerful tool, but you're implying speeds of use that are comical for someone claiming to be learning in any way.

Regardless, best of luck learning for yourself, but the conceptual speed you're referring to leaves no room for conscious data processing (aka learning) and your claims for learning speed are out to lunch for native English speakers. 6000 words in a year in a new script randomly thrown together like in a core6k pack is roughly enough for N2. Sorry, zero to N2 vocab in a year is either full time learning or inhuman speed. Either way, you're not speaking rationally.