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.

Summer 2016 Final Thoughts

Seems weird to call this the end of summer when we’ve just now started October, but better late than never! Sure, neither of us have watched Re:Zero or Jojo’s, arguably the two most-talked about series this season, but that didn’t stop Yata from playing with his food (shows) or Haru from finally getting some words in about something – and it might not be what you’d expect. Whittled down to less than 10 entries, we’re wrapping up summer with quality over quantity, but that’s life sometimes. What show took Yata’s seasonal crown? What show did Haru manage to write about? And what’s next up on the FGJ agenda? Read on to find out below!

Summer 2016 Mid-Season Thoughts

Hey everybody, Yata here. We’re halfway through the summer season, and since circumstances have left me going this one alone (a.k.a. Haru’s emptying his wallet at AnimeFest), instead of running through each show alphabetically the way we’ve always done, I’m gonna try something different.

That’s right, I’m ranking this mother lode of a season.

I’ll be keeping my thoughts as brief as I can with a summation of what each show I’m still watching is doing right, wrong, and how likely I think it will improve or fall apart from here accompanied by our standard out-of-10 score and an episode count status update. Hopefully you can dig this format, and if not, oh well, things will likely go right back to the old one next time. The season is mostly staying strong and there’s a lot to cover, so let’s get started!

Summer 2016 First Impressions

The conversation went something like this: “Man, I’m fucking exhausted. Work’s killing me this week, but at least I somehow got through all these promising-looking premiers. What about you, bro?”

“…oh, we were supposed to publish the article this week? I’ll uh…I’ll see what I can do.”
Things have not been smooth lately in the lives of your critic buddies Yata and Harubro.

It might be the worst timing too, because although it may not look like it at first glance, this summer’s lineup has gotten off to one of the best overall starts in years. A combination of the shitty shows being so obviously shit they weren’t even worth a speculative watch and about half the good shows being way above average has left us with a stacked watchlist to try and stay up to date with and catch up on respectively. Yata’s here for the majority of this article and Haru’s done what he can to still include his thoughts on personal season highlight ReLIFE as well as Konobi. Aside from those two, there are still 13 other (mostly fantastic) shows to cover, so let’s get these first impressions rolling, eh?