Yes Aikido and karate can complement each other well but are not necessary when you have one of them.
There are no good or bad arts, only good or bad practitioners. Akikdo can work very well, but ti does take a little longer than other arts to get to the point where you are skilled enough to pull it off.
Both are jokes, but at least karate could potentially help you enough to strike your way out of a situation. Aikido is a waste of everyone's time. Nothing about it is realistic. The wristlocks and throws work on a complying opponent but trying them in a real fight will have you ending up on the ground before you even realize your counter attack didn't work.
Combine karate with a grappling art such as judo or brazilian jiu-jitsu to have a striking style and a grappling style that works. That's your best bet.
I'm of the opinion for what you wrote that you have not seen much of what Karate has in it. sure there are about 50 different styles of Karate. But all for them have both soft and hard applications in them. Throws, joint locks, chokes, ....etc. are all in there. Problem is not many instructors teach all of the styles they do. Even more disturbing is that many instructors never were taught all of their style. They can't teach what they don't know. Another problem with this is that students do not spend enough time in class learning and correcting. They certainly can't handle learning a whole style when they are struggling to do what they are taught.
The ignorant mantra chanted by the ignorant public is that they need to study multiple arts because traditional arts are missing some things. Not true. but I will say that most schools for the reasons I mentioned above do not teach everything in their style. That is a problem of the times and students, not the styles themselves.
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First of all Karate is from Okinawa and Okinawan Karate styles and Japanese Karate styles are very different.
Everything that you will learn in Aikido is in your Karate Kata and if you are patient enough and stick around you will all learn it provided you have a good teacher. I know, because I started out in Karate but ran out of teachers who knew how to teach the joint locks without muscling the techniques which was way too hard for me, so I took up Aiki. Yes, it compliments my Karate very well, but as with all styles Aiki can be taught many different ways and since there are also many different Karate styles you really have to be sure that the Aiki the way it is taught does go with your Karate style. So my suggestion is stick with the Karate and learn your Kata really well. Then when and if you have to expand you will know how to fit it in and what to fit in. It will not help you if you pick an Aiki school that's all about fuzzy bunnies and fluffy clouds, and peace, love and happiness and has no martial value. Your Kata can tell you pretty well if an Aikido school has martial value but first you have to learn your Karate.
Aikido is a very useful martial art. I say you go for it.
Both are from Japanese origen... wich is cool, i just recieved my black belt in karate after 15 years of sweating my ***... they may start giving lessons the other days i'm not training, so, could Aikido be a good complementary martial arts? Karate by itself is very complete, but lacks "Less agressive" methods, wich so far have only get me troubles when you defend yourself against a violent threaths (especially unarmed drunk brawlers), last year i pulled my knive agaist a cokehead knife wielding kid, no troubles for me!, kicked a guy a drunk crazy (pissed at me for no reason ._. ) guy in the nuts and everyone called the police... soo... i'm thinking, would aikido be less, emm brutal? but still efective?
