Unable to get android sdk to work

I am a complete amateur when it comes to this, I downloaded the command line sdk package from Android, and I cannot for the life of me get it to run. When I click sdkmanager, it flashes open then disappears. I've un-installed it multiple times, restarted my laptop, checked for answers as far back as 2013 and still nothing has worked. I changed the environment path to %user%\adb-fastboot\platform-tools to no avail. There's no x86 files in the resolution from 2013. What am I doing wrong and how can I fix it to get sdk manager to run?