If you're going for the Anki method, keep in mind the reviews you're getting. If you're getting more reviews than you can handle, drastically lower the amount of new cards you get each day, or even pause them completely. There's no shame in doing that. I was spending over 90min per day on that deck also until I got decent at both kanji themselves, as well as writing and reviewing it quickly. Here, too, I would like to state that this was less than optimal. My deck had the "meaning" on the front, everything else on the back of the card. Instead, I recommend this WaniKani deck
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/610839770 that has a more realistic approach to learning kanji. It has you guessing the kanji from the examples of words (it has a lot of extra info to help you guess, but you can hide it in spoilers or remove it completely). Some cards are a bit lacking in examples, but you're learning words and kanji together this way. I think this is how they do it on tests in schools in Japan. See for yourself if writing helps you remember better. Working through text books is perhaps an alternative, by repeating the exercises in them often enough retain the knowledge. However, the more rare characters don't appear that much, which is why flash cards are so good here.
Getting a decent vocabulary will take time, but the basics can be covered by the 6k Anki deck. If you really hate Anki, just do the 2k one. Like with grammar, you want the meaty parts fast so that you can focus on immersion. I suppose names fall into this category as well. Don't worry too much about being able to read them, but you might eventually study this if you wish. Character introductions will typically have furigana, and so will places.
There's a thread for learning on both /jp/ and /int/. They have links to resources. I don't have much experience with the latter, but don't recommend getting sucked into the threads. Get what you need from them and leave to study.
