Via Author I wound up reading Jonathan Tappan's Is RWBY Anime? . Both Author andTappan come down firmly on the side of 'no'. For myself, I don't knowwhat to feel about the whole issue so I'm going to ramble on with someof my thoughts. I'm going to focus on manga, not because I know moreabout manga but because I know more about American and Western comicsthan I do about modern American animation.

On the one hand labels like '

In Is RWBY Anime? Jonathan Tappan says:

Once (as recently as the 1960s) American animators dominated the worldand even Japanese animators sought to emulate them. Now America is ananimation backwater and Japan dominates the world. So it’s naturalfor people like Monty Oum to try to imitate anime and even call theirown work “anime”. It’s natural but it’s a mistake.

If America is ever to regain a respectable place in the world ofanimation, American animators

There is all sorts of gold in this somethingawful forum threadon the Fate-verse ( via @monoids ). I particularlylike the directly linked entry (which made me break out in helplesslaughter):

The Fate franchise is like Paris. It seems pretty and fun, and thenyou dig a little and the whole thing is built on a giant sprawlingmaze of dead people.

Then another golden quote :

[Fate] Mages might not all be psychopaths but I can say withoutreservation that they are all assholes.

It's time for the semi-traditional midway update to my earlyimpressions . The overall summary is that thisis an excellent season with multiple stunning shows.

Things I'm (still) watching, in order:

• Uchouten Kazoku : What Eccentric Family truly excels at is its storytelling (which is not the same thing as plot or action). UK doesn't have the most original or attractive sounding plotbut none of that matters; what it excels in is in a sense itsexecution, of how the

Thomas Zoth (note spoilers disclaimer):

And Joe? Always so cool with his smoking and drinking and apparentdisinterest in his attractive young co-workers? He’s actuallysuicidal. His self-destructive impulses were, somewhat surprisingly,self-destructive.

My view of Joeis less grim and dark than this one. What I think is that Joe is livingin a dream.

In real life Joe is a Toudai graduate who hassomehow wound up in what is basically a relatively unimportant andcertainly unimpressive civil service

It started on Twitter, where a conversation caused me to have arealization that's obvious in retrospect:

@cwage :so, B-cycle is awesome, but it occurred to me recently that itbasically promotes people riding bikes in the city without a helmet.discuss.
[...]
@cwage :let me rephrase my earlier tweet: Nashville is not (yet) a bikefriendly city. not enough infrastructure. not nearly enough bicyclistdensity
@cwage :thus, automobiles lack awareness, and B

For no particular reason I feel like running down all of the bits of mybike that I've had to replace due to wear since 2006. Please note thatI bike a lot . People who bike less will replace less stuff.

• brake pads: repeatedly. They wear out.

• the entire drivetrain (with the exception of the front derailer, it'sstill original): repeatedly. Chains (and gears) wear too.

• tires, both front and rear (repeatedly). See the sidebar

One of the criticisms I've seen leveled at Railgun S is that Mikotopasses up involving her friends. Evirus says :

For example, Mikoto spends most of the first cour of Railgun S sneaking around rather than enlisting the help of her roommate, theteleporter.

I can't say that Evirus is wrong because it's up to the show itselfto convince its audience that events make sense and clearly the showhasn't sold Evirus on this. But what I can say is that the show didsell

As before this is my (slow, delayed) impressionsof the summer's crop of new shows, or at least those that I've watchedso far. I will skip trying to explain why these 'early impressions'are in fact rather late.

Things I am enthused about (so far):

• Uchouten Kazoku (aka Eccentric Family ): If this was a western workI'd call it urban fantasy (of the old fashioned Charles de Lint sort,not the new variety with vampire romance)