As before I'm collecting here all of mytweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that Isaw them).

• Akiba's Trip episode 1: That was decent, even sometimes good,which is well above what I expected. It has spark for an action genreshow. →

• Schoolgirl Strikers episode 1: That was a perfectly okay butuninspiring. It could fill the Brave Witches popcorn watch nichethis season. →

• Blue Exorcist Kyoto Saga ep 1: I don't

The protagonist of Yomigaeru Sora is Uchida Kazuhiro, who joined the JSDF to fly fighter jets but halfwaythrough flight school got transferred to the much less prestigious and farmore blue collar job of search & rescue helicopter pilot. Since Uchida isboth an adult and a JSDF officer, he doesn't do any sort of anime sulkingabout this shift, but the show leaves you in no doubt about his feelingsabout his new status in life; he is not happy with either his job or thepath his life has taken

Long Riders! is a show that didn't even make my initialimpressions this season , partlybecause early reviews didn't make it sound very good (especially Nick Creamer 's). But thensome people on anitwitter followed it and posted screen shots andpersuaded me that while the show has many flaws, it also really lovesbicycling. And, well, I'm a cyclist even if previous shows aboutcycling have failed for me . So I got sucked into not so muchwatching Long Riders! as

(There are spoilers here.)

In commentary about Sound! Euphonium 2's episode 12, a number ofpeople have noted that KyoAni took the unusual step (for the show) ofnot showing Kitauji High School's performance at the Nationals. Insteadof seeing any of their performance, we cut straight from going on stagejust before the commercial break to the after performance wind-downafter the commercial break. Nick Creamer's episode writeup at ANN is typical, and he says:

And then it

This goes with my views on the Pure Illusion worlds of the first eightepisodes . Pulled over from Twitter:

@cks_anime :Pure Illusion in Flip Flappers episode 9 isn't obviously based onanything (to me), but my theory is that we're seeing inside Yayaka'shead.
It's certainly striking to me how the Pure Illusion world has a bunchof visual similarities to the locker room [that Yayaka is in] at thestart of the episode.

[...]

As an anime watcher, I typically seek out drama, by which I mean showswhere something is happening and going on; often this means action ofsome sort, although not always. The further a show goes from drama theless likely I am to like it. I also tend to look favorably on shows thattry to tell big stories with their drama, even if they don't entirelysucceed ( Concrete Revolutio is one example this year).

Flying Witch doesn'tfall into this pattern. It has

Only a couple of characters in Thunderbolt Fantasy got actual characterarcs, but I maintain that this is not a weakness in the show. Instead,in my opinion, it's due to differences in what sort of character everyonewas. To simplify, dramatic characters change over the course of thestory, while iconic characters reveal and/or affirm their essentialnature.

As is relatively standard for wuxia, most of the protagonists in Thunderbolt Fantasy are presented as iconic characters. Over thecourse of the story they wind up

One of the best shows that I watched this yeartechnically isn't anime. Thunderbolt Fantasy is a Taiwanesehigh-fantasy wuxia puppet showfrom a renowned Taiwanese puppet company; it slides into anime becauseit's co-produced by some Japanese anime companies, written by GenUrobuchi , has a soundtrackby Hiroyuki Sawano ,and so on. Basically it's anime not because of looks but because of oneside of its lineage.

It would have been easy for Thunderbolt Fantasy to be pretty bad.Wuxia is

(There are spoilers.)

When Concrete Revolutio finished in the spring, I had somewhat mixedviews of it . My views have only become moremixed and uncertain since then, and I can illustrate some of my qualmswith the show by talking about one particular striking moment that hascome to symbolize the show's core flaws for me.

Throughout the show, Kikko Hoshino has been not so much the protagonist(that's firmly established as Jiro Hitoyoshi) as our viewpointcharacter. She is one of the most