Teeth Cry Salty: Thoughts on The Dragon Dentist

TW/DISCLAIMERS: This piece is mostly centered around The Dragon Dentist’s discourse on death and refers to suicide. Some of the image links contain war imagery as well. Use your best judgment if you think either of these things will affect you.

Obviously this also contains spoilers for The Dragon Dentist, so if you haven’t seen it yet, consider spending your next 90 minutes doing that, then coming back to this. And of course, this is my (Yatahaze’s) own personal reflection on the series and not necessarily reflective of everyone else here at For Great Justice.

Spring 2017 Mid-Season Thoughts

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to For Great Justice! The world may be continuing to go to shit, but the Anime Gods have been benevolent this year, and as we approach the halfway point of the spring season, Yata and Haru strapped down to make their positions clear on some of the season’s biggest shows. Which sequels have held up their hype? Which new entries appear to be the cream of the crop? And the most important question of all: is alcohol poisoning actually preferable to watching Eromanga-Sensei? The answers to all these questions and more lie below. Let’s jump on in.

Spring 2017 First Impressions

Greetings, everybody, and welcome to our first impressions on the Spring 2017 anime season, which we somehow managed to finish in between Easter obligations, seasonal allergy fits, and nearly dying in Mad Max-tier traffic. Coming into the season, we noted that there looked to be a swath of potentially decent speculative picks but very few new standouts, especially compared to the somewhat stacked set of sequels. That prediction was more or less accurate, and between Yata, Catche, and Haru, we managed to check out 21 shows, just under half of the total airing this season. What did we love? What did we trash on? And which underdogs scraped by first impressions week this time? Read on to find out!

Finally, A Happy Ending: Thoughts from Your Name.

DISCLAIMER: This piece contains major spoilers to Your Name. and potential minor spoilers to two of Shinkai’s earlier films, 5 Centimeters Per Second and The Garden of Words. If you’ve not yet seen Your Name., you should frankly leave now. I don’t want that kind of blood on my hands. Regarding the other two works, continue at your own risk, though I don’t think I discuss anything that can’t be inferred from their synopses and opening minutes.

Also this piece is my (Yatahaze’s) own personal reflection and not necessarily indicative of all of us at For Great Justice, though we did all enjoy the film, so take that as you will.

Winter 2017 Final Thoughts

Welcome back, everybody! Spring’s already encroaching on the end of the winter season, but when it comes to jotting down some thoughts about anime, we’re better late than never. It also couldn’t be helped that Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid didn’t wrap up until a couple hours ago, so while we’re kinda down to the wire here with the seasonal overlap, what would be the point if we didn’t include all that we enjoyed? And what a surprising season it was, with several speculative picks taking off strongly, a couple solid sequels under its belt (2017 truly does look to be sequel heaven), and even our first 10/10 rating in about 2 years. What took that crowned spot? Where did everything else we watched stack up? And most importantly, what’s already contending for the most ridiculous surprise of the year? Kick back and read on as Yatahaze, Catche, and Harubruh run down their winter 2017 final thoughts.

Yata’s Top 25 OPs of 2012

Gotta give you a bit of backstory before we begin: Haru, L-K, and I founded For Great Justice in the late summer of 2014, but we had actually met each other online and started conversing about two and a half years prior. At the time, Haru and I in particular seemed to hit it off with similar taste, each of us just getting into the whole “watch a ton of shows as they air” trend, and the rest is more or less our site’s modest history. For that reason, 2012 (and its spring season in particular) has continued to hold a deep place in my heart, and lately I started getting nostalgic about those good ol’ days.

Then the epiphany hit me: that was five years ago.

My first thought was “Where the fuck did that time go?” My second was something to the effect of “You know, this would give me a reason to crank out another OPs list,” and that’s precisely what I’m gonna be doing here. If you’re familiar with my previous OP lists, the criteria and rules haven’t changed. If you aren’t, allow me to explain:

These ratings are by and large my own personal opinion (of which you are entitled to yours) and based on arbitrary factors including but not limited to melody, song composition, audio production, visual production, audiovisual sync, originality, relevance to the show (when I’m able to judge that), and my own miscellaneous personal enjoyment. Having seen a show isn’t a prerequisite for its OP to appear here, but OPs for shows I have seen are much more likely to be included and placed higher than those I haven’t, especially in this nostalgia-driven installment. The exact numerical rankings are pretty much irrelevant outside the top 10. OPs to shows which started airing before or finished airing after 2012 are eligible, but only if the OP itself first aired during that year.

Since 2012 marked the start of my anime-watching habits, this will also likely be my last retrospective Top OPs list going forward, so fasten those seat belts, plug in some headphones, and accompany me on this totally self-gratifying trip down memory lane.

Winter 2017 Mid-Season Thoughts

Well, I was right in predicting we’d get a new update article out in February. Guess I just underestimated how long it would take. But hey, for the first time in a while now, Yata, Catche, and even Haru were all able to dump together some thoughts on what they’ve stuck with this winter 2017 anime season. Some of the highlights are clear, some are…not quite what you’d expect, and there’s a fair bit of gray area in between. What shows have been doing great justice for who, and of course, the juicier question: what’s getting dropped? Read on to find out!

Winter 2017 First Impressions

Hey everybody, welcome back to For Great Justice. Coming off a strong fall 2016 season, there seemed to be one thought front and center as the anime community approached the start of the new year:

“Ugh, this looks bleak.”

And while for the sake of getting some kicks, we’re bound to agree with that to an extent, there are also some gems in the rough this season worth keeping an eye on. The rest of the world may be entering a scary, unforeseen era which has partially inspired an ongoing scandal within the anime-osphere too, but here at For Great Justice, things remain the same as ever. Below, Yata writes far too much, Haru watches stuff but isn’t able to jot anything down in time, L-K is still floating in the aether somewhere probably, and newcomer Catche makes his return. This first impressions round-up is a bit slimmer than usual, but the world’s mitigating circumstances and a generally below-average season seem like worthy explanations. What’s worth watching? Read on and find out!

Catche’s Fall 2016 Final Thoughts and Top 10 for the Year

So, 2016 has ended, and with its ending we have a chance to look back and examine all of the anime that came out this year. Now, 2016 actually ended a couple weeks ago, so I’ve decided to make it up to all you faithful readers out there by analyzing this year in the best possible way: By sorting my favorites into an numbered list, as well as having a quick look back at the Fall season.

“Why only the Fall season?” I hear you ask. Well, because I only wrote for this blog during that season.

So, without further ado…

Yata’s 2016 Anime Year in Review / Top 10

So here’s the thing. Usually, my posts on here are directed towards people who already know what I’m talking about, those self-proclaimed “otaku” and anime junkies who keep up to date with the latest productions and headlines and just want to hear my opinions on them, no walkthrough necessary.

But writing with them in mind limits my audience, and for this 2016 recap, I want to be a little more inclusive. This article is for hardcore fans and anime newbies alike; those in the know can compare their year in anime to mine, while the casual watcher will be given an overview of everything I’ve seen from 2016 – one that, if I’m successful enough with this, will hopefully act as a guide to what I thought was and wasn’t worth watching.

I managed to finish just over 30 shows this year and give a shot to just shy of another 30 more. At a minimum, everything I watched at least one episode of has a name-drop below. Only the top 10 are properly ranked; the rest are categorized in groups sorted by how far I got through them (early drops, late drops, or completed/up to date), as well as what kind of impression they left on me. This will be a bit lengthy, so let’s just get right into it, starting at the very bottom with the immediately-dropped abominations and ending with the cream of the crop.