Yata’s 2017 Anime Year in Review / Top 10

Another year’s here, another year’s in the rear-view mirror. Even though my 2017 personally ended up less stressful than the previous few years, I still wouldn’t argue the notion that this past year was overwhelming, pessimistic, and frustrating.

…well, except for anime. I ended up watching more anime this year than I had in long time, and a lot of it was fantastic! From airing titles alone, I completed roughly 40 series and attempted around 30 more. Add to that a handful of superb movies and for me this year was anime’s best in recent memory in terms of both quantity and quality.

Whether you have a casual interest in anime or you breathe this stuff like oxygen, someone seasoned in ani-culture or someone completely oblivious to it, my goal with this spoiler-free 2017 Anime Year in Review is to give you a concise guide to everything I checked out from the past year and supply you with just enough background for you to determine whether or not you might dig each title. Obviously my opinions are subjective to my own personal preferences, and keep in mind that this is the one time each year where I really double down on the stuff I loved and hated. If you liked something I despised or vice versa, do not view any of what follows as a personal attack. It’s just my quick, probably oversimplified thoughts.

So here’s how we’ll do this. Instead of ranking every single show, half of which I didn’t even finish, we’ll leave the detailed, numerical spots to the top 10 and sort everything else by tiers of similar quality. Starting with shows I dropped after just an episode or two, we’ll work our way up from the most atrocious offerings to the most tolerable. After that comes the completed titles, using the same “worst to best” approach. I’ll also highlight some anime films that came out/I saw this year before rounding this off with more in-depth thoughts for my top 10.

Sound like a plan? I’m ready if you are. It’s not everything under the sun, but here’s what my 2017 in anime was like. Enjoy the walk down memory lane.

Fall 2017 Final Thoughts

Oh, quit yer cryin’! Yeah, 2017 was great, and this fall was stacked in particular, but all good things must come to an end. With the new year practically on our doorstep, we can’t wait forever to wrap up our final thoughts on this season’s offerings. Which shows stuck the landing? Which ones did we awkwardly watch faceplant over and over? And – could it be? Is there a 10/10 lurking below? We’re sure you’re looking ahead to 2018 by now, but the fall needs closure, and Yata and Haru are here to give it to ya.

Yata’s Top 25 OPs of 2017

Happy holidays, everybody! Yata here, with what seems to be an annual tradition at this point. That’s right – it just wouldn’t feel like the end of the year if I didn’t frantically write up a bajillion blurbs about anime openings, and I don’t intend to break the streak now. If you’ve been around FGJ for a while, you probably know the drill by now. If not, allow me to quickly summarize my criteria for you:

• The OP must have debuted in 2017. It can be from a show that premiered before 2017 or will continue airing after 2017, but the OP in question has to be from this 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 understand additional context from them. OPs of long-running shounen adaptations tend to be absent here for that reason, and though they fare a bit better this year, if you’re eagerly awaiting entries from say, One Piece or Gintama, you’ll probably be disappointed. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
• My ratings are arbitrarily based on music composition, audio production, lyrics, visual production, audiovisual sync, visual prowess…and pretty much any other metric you could think of. And despite all that, the pros and cons still fall second to my personal enjoyment. After all, objectivity is bullshit and these ratings are ultimately just my personal opinion. You are certainly entitled to disagree and/or think I’m a maniac.
• And last but not least, I’ve always considered an entry field of 25 large enough to not think twice about including multiple OPs from the same show, but this year, the competition was abundant and I wanted to highlight a maximum number of different productions, so I’ll be limiting each show to one OP.

Fall 2017 Mid-Season Thoughts

The holiday season is imminent and we’re trudging through the end-of-the-year work rush, but it’ll take a little more than that to stop Yata & Haru from scribbling together some updated thoughts on (most of) this fall season’s hit series. Which ones are exceeding our expectations? How are the numerous sequels of the season faring? And most importantly, which shows are we letting go of now that we’ve given them a fair chance? The answers may surprise you – read on!

Yata’s Top 10 EDs of 2017

There’s just never enough time to go around, is there? The end of the year is slowly approaching, and I’ve already got loads of finals, holiday commitments, and other writing to juggle. Another list on top of all that seemed unthinkable. Hell, those annual Top 25 OPs lists I do take about two months of listening, writing, reshuffling, and editing before I even come close to a finished product, and that’s usually on top of all those other matters. Before now, though I’ve always been curious about doing an ED list too, I felt there was neither the demand nor the supply for one, since let’s face it, ending themes always get the short end of the stick. While a deserving OP is easy to rewatch, even during one-sitting marathons, EDs are usually less memorable, less addictive, and ultimately less talked about than their introductory counterparts.

But as I sat down in mid-October to run through my preliminary list of 2017 openings, I came to a surprising realization; this year has been uncharacteristically fantastic for ending themes. I could name several shows whose closing montages were just as well-regarded as their OPs, if not more so, and I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to do some of them great justice. After floating the idea and getting some warm feedback, I decided that if I were to ever do an endings list, this would be the year to try it out, and if I had any chance of completing it, I’d have to crank it out early. And thus, here we are.

Fall 2017 First Impressions

Hey there, everyone, and welcome back to For Great Justice! You know what time it is – that time every season where we watch everything that catches our interest over the course of two weeks then try not to develop carpal tunnel writing about them. Which was especially brutal this time, ’cause in a year already stuffed with several new great hit titles and a handful of superb sequels, this fall doubled down on both for one of the most packed seasons we’ve had in a while. There are a lot of series worth highlighting and we’re pretty eager to tell you about them, so let’s just jump straight into it. Here are Yata & Haru’s fall 2017 season first impressions.

Summer 2017 Final Thoughts

Welcome back, everybody! I think it’s fair to say it’s been a rough week or so in the anime community. Between Kemono Friends director Tatsuki’s unceremonious firing by Kadokawa, the news that One Punch Man 2 would be done by a different team at a different studio, and Hollywood once again deciding to adapt a certain little recently successful anime film in Americanized live-action, a lot of us were looking to find a headline deserving of our big Toblerones.

But we have good news too, fellas; the summer season came to a close this week, and while there were a fair number of late stumbles to cover, there were also some resounding successes. Which series stuck the landing? Which let us down when it mattered most? Yata & Haru are here to run down everything they finished, so find out what juicy takes of theirs await you below in FGJ’s summer 2017 anime season final thoughts!

Summer 2017 Mid-Season Thoughts

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to a somewhat special mid-season update from For Great Justice. It’s not only time to run down what we’ve thought about many of the summer’s most popular shows since first impressions, it’s also mid-August, which means it’s time to celebrate the site’s third birthday! From the bottom of our hearts, whether you’re stumbling upon us now for the first time or go back as far as our clunky early days, thank you for your continued support and readership. It means so much.

Not gonna lie, all of us are a bit antsy lately, so this may be a quicker than usual batch. Yata and Catche are gearing up to head back to college in a week and Haru has been busy alley-crawling at Anime-Fest the last few days, so we’ve all got a bit on our plates, but that’s rarely stopped us from getting something out there before, and it sure isn’t going to now. What titles held up from earlier in the season? Which have let us down? And where are we drawing the drop line? Find out all this and more below!

Summer 2017 First Impressions

It’s too hot.
Antarctica is peeling apart.
Don Jr. inherited more than just a name and spare Franklins to wipe his ass with.

And yet here we are complaining about anime, because if the world’s gonna end one way or another, we might as well appreciate some rapidly moving pictures in the meantime. There’s just one problem: this season’s not produced quite as many worthwhile ones as the last handful have. For Yata, that means a ton of bubble entries with few clear standouts. For Haru and Catche, that means virtually no standouts whatsoever and a lot of trash. But it’s not our job to remark about the industry as a whole right now. If you’re here, there’s a good chance that what you’re really looking for are our thoughts about each new production on its own merit, and we’re happy to provide! Which titles appear to be at least somewhat watchable? Which ones do we recommend never speaking of again? And can American democracy be salvaged? The answers to at least those first two questions lay in our summer 2017 season first impressions below. Jump on in!

Spring 2017 Final Thoughts

Well, we’re a day behind deadline, but it’s been a hectic seasonal transition here at For Great Justice. Catche had to persevere through a laptop falling apart on him, Haru is drowning in A-Kon merch with no oxygen tank (expect an article on that later this week), and Yata is desperately trying to ignore the fact that there exist people in this world who have already seen the first episode of Violet Evergarden. But we’re not here today to talk to you about shows still around the bend, nor is it yet time to cover what new offerings this summer has started to give us. No, today we’re offering our opinions on the hits and misses of the past three months. Which sequels remained strong? Which titles flew under most people’s radar but deserve more recognition? And was completing Eromanga-Sensei worth it, like, at all? The answers to these questions and more in our spring final thoughts below: