Fall 2019 First Impressions

October has brought a nor’easter to Yata’s corner of the country and tornadoes to Haru’s neck of the woods, but neither could keep us from the better stuff this month had to offer: a whole new slate of anime to check out. It’s the final season of the year and the decade as well, so we each approached this crop of shows with some contemplation and a secret desire to free up some other time. That turned out to be more difficult than expected, however. It may not be quite as loaded as this winter was, but these fall shows aren’t slouching. Which ones have we thinned out? Which ones are our early favorites? Find out below on this update from For Great Justice!

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Summer 2019 Final Thoughts

Summer 2019 was one of the most stuffed anime seasons for the shounen genre in ages. Here at For Great Justice, we…mostly didn’t follow it. But hey, if you want some commentary on awkward high school girls, gay dorks in a band, and The Resistance…I N     S P A C E, then we’ve got you thoroughly covered. You know the drill; 2 writers, 13 shows, 1 article. Let’s wrap up this surprisingly diverse season in style!

Summer 2019 Mid-Season Thoughts

It’s week seven of the season, and you know what that means: FGJ update time. All in all, summer is looking like a solid recovery from the doldrums of last season, but we still have a few surprises in store for you: a couple drops, some wishy-washier opinions, and even a…well, you’ll see at the end. We promise it’ll be worth it. As for the rest, you know the drill. Let’s run these seasonals down.

Summer 2019 First Impressions

Right off the heels of one of the weakest overall seasons in recent memory, anime is back and summer is bringing the heat! By the end of this past spring, I think we here at FGJ had finished a combined like…6 shows? In comparison, we’re covering triple that in this loaded round of first impressions. But how many are we sticking with—and which ones? Some obvious choices and some oddball surprises alike made the cut. Let’s run ’em down!

Spring 2019 Final Thoughts

For better or worse this past season will go down as one of the overall weakest since we started FGJ, but there were still a handful of shows Yata and Haru watched to completion and even (*gasp*) enjoyed. Which ones made the cut? Which ones flopped? Is anyone really prepared for next season yet or are we all deluding ourselves? The answers to those first two questions below on this seasonal final thoughts installment of For Great Justice.

Spring 2019 Mid-Season Thoughts

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s an extremely underwhelming mid-season update in terms of quantity. This time around, Yata’s the only one participating and he’s only watching…four seasonals. As such, this rundown will be brief, but it’s better than nothing. Find out what some of this spring’s most renowned titles and an outlier or two have been up to on this short and sweet For Great Justice update.

Spring 2019 First Impressions

Thunderstorms are blowing through and allergies are ramping up, which can only mean one thing: spring is here, and with it, a whole new slate of anime to check out! This time around, notable premiering titles include Sarazanmai, Carole & Tuesday, and…

[checks the charts]   oh.               wow.

Okay, no beating around the bush, there’s not a whole lot else to watch this season, but that didn’t stop the two of us here at For Great Justice from giving most things a chance anyway and picking up a few surprises. Which other series struck our fancy? Which will be relegated to the Seasonal Anime Broiler? And is Sarazanmai really worth the hype? (spoiler: yes). Find out below on this batch of first impressions!

Winter 2019 Final Thoughts

Another season down, another season to go. This upcoming spring looks a bit less stacked in comparison, but it’s not time to focus on that just yet. No, here Yata and Haru are back to wrap up their takes on the best this past winter had to offer…and a few other shows. Which ones were our favorites despite the stiff competition? Which ones ultimately let us down? How do they all stack up? Find out below in our winter 2019 final thoughts.

Yata’s Top 25 OPs of 2018

I’m two months late with this one, but I wasn’t gonna abandon this annual tradition entirely. I don’t know about the rest of you, but 2018 felt like a relatively weak year for OPs, though there were still some remarkable standouts and a plethora of solid enough contenders fighting to round out this top 25. If you’ve been following For Great Justice for a while, you’re likely already familiar with my OP and ED-grading criteria, but if haven’t (or if you need a refresher), these are my general rules:

• The OP must have debuted in 2018. It can be from a show that premiered before 2018 or will continue airing after 2018, but the OP in question had to debut this past year.
• I don’t need to have seen a show in order for its OP to be eligible on the list, but I recognize I’m inherently biased towards those I have seen since I’m able to parse additional context from them. OPs of long-running shounen adaptations tend to be absent here for that reason, so if you’re eagerly awaiting openings from say, One Piece, Black Clover, Boruto, or Gintama, you’ll probably be disappointed. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
• My rankings are somewhat arbitrarily based on music composition, audio production, lyrics and delivery, visual production, audiovisual sync, visual creativity…and pretty much any other metric you could think of. Some of these aspects are weighted higher than others based on what I feel the OP in question is trying to accomplish.

Despite all that, none of these metrics are ever given numbers during the ranking process, and the craft-related pros and cons ultimately still fall second to my personal enjoyment. After all, objectivity is bullshit and these ratings are just my personal opinion. You are certainly entitled to disagree.

Winter 2019 Mid-Season Thoughts

It’s the dead of a…surprisingly mild winter for each of us, but there is still time to get trapped indoors and watch anime, and what a bountiful selection of shows we have to choose from! Between the two of us there’s only one drop below—everything else we’ve been watching ranges from “good enough” to a potential highlight of the year. Which series are Yata and Haru digging most halfway through our first season of 2019? Find out below!