It's time for the traditional look back at my early impressions ofthis season . I've delayed this long enough that it'snot really 'midway' any more, at least in time. Partly this is becauseI've been only watching shows slowly myself for various reasons.

This is in order:

• Sasami-san@Ganbaranai : This is the clear hit of the season for me.It's nothing like I was expecting at the start and as far as I'mconcerned this

This is much like last year's best N , namely what Iconsider to be the best or the most enjoyable N anime that I saw incalendar 2012 (regardless of when they were made or released). This ismuch more delayed than usual for various reasons, including that nothingthat finished in calendar 2012 really set me on fire the way shows havein past years. I was also trying to make up my mind about how to handlethe strong crop of fall 20

For reasons that don't fit in the margins of this entry, I've beenlooking at and doing brief tests with a bunch of Linux RAW processingprograms lately. Rather than have all of this fall out of my mind ina bit, here's my views written down.

(If you're coming here through a web search you should pay attentionto the publication date of this entry. The information here willprobably be out of date in six months and will definitely be out of datein

When I was watching Initial D , one of the things I was neverable to make up my mind about was whether Takumi's story wasfundamentally egalitarian or fundamentally conservative. Explainingthis is going to require both some words and some minor spoilers(nothing more than you'd get by reading the Wikipedia page , though).

Initial D is certainly very egalitarian on the surface. Takumi is a(street racing) outsider in an unimpressive car and he beats a wholeseries of established street racers driving much better cars

Author has recently been watching Initial D with enthusiasm andreading his reactions has been giving me flashbacks to the days when one of the anime clubs here showed us the firstthree stages. Several bits and pieces from the series have stuck withme over the years since then. The most distinctly memorable one is amoment very early on in the first season and probably when I fell forthe series, partly because it was surprisingly subtle for an anime.

(Based on the list of Initial D episodes , it's probably

As before it's time for my impressions of the newseason's crop of shows, or at least the ones that I've bothered to trywatching. I can't really call this 'early' any more since I've been kindof slow and unenthused about this and in fact a number of shows in theseason. As a result I'm probably grading more harshly than usual.

(I'm not current on most of these shows; for some I've only seen

When I watched the widely praised A Letter to Momo earlier thisyear (well, earlier in 2012), I had a rather different experiencethan what seems to be the usual one; I found the film pleasant enoughin an anodyne way but kindof uninspiring. I mulled over this for a while, worrying that I wasjust being a grumpy sourpuss old fart in my reaction just because Momo didn't set me on fire (and perhaps wasn't from Ghibli). Then bycoincidence and

This season is atypical (or at least feels so) in that almost allof the series that I'm following are continuing into the new year(even if one of them, Girls und Panzer , has simply been postponed toMarch). This is going to make for an unusual retrospective but alsogives me no reason (or excuse) to delay writing this. So, as before this is an attempt at an honest look backat the shows of the Fall 2012 season (as much as

I've always felt that there was something different between Girl undPanzer and Saki , which it's reasonably frequently compared to.Recently I realized how the two are different in a way that makes theformer a genuine sports anime while the latter is not. I know, thatsounds inflammatory; given that Saki involves people playing a sport,how is it not a sports anime and if it's not, what is it?

My answer is that Saki is actually a shonen fighting anime in theguise of