As before this is my early impressions of thespring's crop of new shows, or at least the small number of them thatI've bothered to watch. This time around I've been unusually selectiveabout the shows that I've tried out, so I've rejected any number ofthings sight unseen based purely on premise descriptions and so on.This may have caused me to miss gems but I haven't really seen anysign of that so far.

(In particular there's

When I wrote my entry on Linux RAW processors I said that Rawtherapee was a betterchoice than darktable . I have to take thatback because it turns out my quick tests weren't a good representationof using either program for real.

I formed my initial views after test-processing just a couple ofphotos with each program. Now that I've used both to process batchesof photos for real (and in one case I've run the same batch throughboth), I've had to change

It turns out that I have more to say about Shin Sekai Yori than I've already written . Today is some thingsabout Squealer (aka Yakomaru).

(There are spoilers here for SSY's final arc.)

In some of the commentary I've read it's popular to say that Squealerdeserved to die for what he did (but not necessarily die in the waythat he did). My strong opinion is that to say this is to misread ShinSekai Yori 's message. To

My overall summary of Shin Sekai Yori is that it's an ambitious showof an ambitious story that succeeded at delivering on both (althoughas an ambitious show and story there are bits that people feel didn'twork). As a whole the show is a powerful, affecting work with a wideemotional range and a lot of things to think about. My personal view isthat the show is very well directed and animated and that its periodicexperiments don't take away from that, but I'm

It's time (and past time) for another look back at another season,following up on my early impressions and my midwayviews . In fact this is kind of a retrospective on twoseasons, since so many of the Fall 2012 shows continued into this season; as such I'm splitting into two parts, onefor a handful of this season's shows and the other for the big fourheavyweights from last season.

For this season, in order:

• Sasami-san@Ganbaranai

Almost from the start Psycho-Pass was clearly a show where the endingwas pretty crucial and a bad ending would be a real problem for the showas a whole. Did Psycho-Pass come through in the end? My view is yes,although there are people who disagree. On the whole I consider thelast episode a good ending although not a great one; to put it one wayit was a well done and periodically exciting presentation of the lastact of a play that we had all seen coming.

(There are spoilers here.)

The Sibyl System is at the heart of Psycho-Pass and so I think thathow people view it will be at the heart of how they react to the endingof the show. Because of this I want to write up my thoughts.

There is no question that the Sibyl System is flawed; the show goesout of its way to show us that in the first episode. Nor is there anyquestion that it's tacitly oppressive; again, the show makes that clear

The historian Ex Urbe wrote a fascinating series of articlesabout Machiavelli and why he is such an important person in history. I found them eye-opening and very interesting; I commend them to your attention if things likemedieval attitudes on morality and the birth of modern political science(and ethics) sounds at all interesting.

They are:

• Machiavelli I – S.P.Q.F.
• Machiavelli I (addendum): thoughts on this style of presenting history
• Machiavelli II: The Three Branches of Ethics
• Machilavelli III:

(Warning: there are indirect spoilers here for the endings of both Katanagatari and Haibane Renmei .)

Author wrote (a while back) :

Possibly the fear of spoilers is why nobody wrote how Togame pulledan almost exact Reki reveal. [...] Now the reveal being the same, thesubsequent resolution was different. Reki was tested and passed, butTogame did not have that chance. Kuro is certain that she would fail("I am glad"). I am not so sure. She pondered