If the anicamera (the virtual camera that 'films' anime) was a real camera, I'dtalk about the focal lengths of its lenses and there would be anynumber of them in subtle gradations beloved by photographers. Butsince the anicamera is entirely unconstrained by physical reality it doesn't really have focal lengths. Instead animehas pretty much just a few different general perspectives that it uses,although it often varies the framing from scene to scene.

(Some scenes may be framed narrowly to include only the

This isn't quite 'midway' except by a somewhat stretched sense of time(even by my standards of delayed watching), but now that my watchlisthas settled out I feel like writing it up to go along with my initialimpressions . The big surprise for me this season hasbeen how many shows I've wound up following. In contrast to spring , where I thought I was going to follow a bunch but didn't in the end , this has been theseason where I thought many shows

On the one hand, AO did not have a bad ending. It gave us good answersto our questions, it was well made, it had a bunch of quite nice actionsequences (easily up to or exceeding the standards of the show todate, which have not been low), it gave Ao himself several good scenesto show various aspects of his growth, and it wrapped things up in asatisfactory way.

The problem is that in the process of doing this, the show took theentire cast of

This all started with The Cart Driver's top 30 anime list ; I wound up both thinkingabout what my own top 30 list would look like and raising my eyebrowsthat they only included one Miyazaki movie (my untempered first reactionwas that basically all Miyazaki movies would make my list). In the end,while I like all of Miyazaki's movies that I've seen and think thatthey're all very good I'll admit that I like some more than others. I'

I have divided views on SAO. On the one hand, I don't think it's verygood. On the other hand, I keep watching it anyways. There's at leasttwo aspects to this.

The frustrating thing about SAO is that a great many of the small-scaledetails are nice, it's just that the large scale plot and characters arestupid, cliched in a bad way, and irritation-inducing. I like to foolmyself that this is the sign of a

As before it's time I got around to takingan honest look back at the Summer 2012 season, to go with my earlyimpressions and my midway update .

Shows that I actively watched (and finished where applicable), indescending order:

• Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita : My favorite show of the summer, which I've written a chunk about .

• Eureka Seven AO : My second most enjoyable show of the summer, onlya little bit behind Jinrui . I don't have an overall opinion

Before I start talking about some of the thingsthat the anicamera takes from real cameras I want toexpand on a point that SeHNNG made at Altair & Vega ,namely that the anicamera is unconstrained by physical reality.Specifically it is unconstrained by reality when it 'photographs'a scene, whereas when you film or photograph a scene how you do so isoften imposed on you by physical constraints. There is a continuumof these constraints; the anicamera is at the unconstrained end andgenerally still photographers are at the most constrained

If you've watched anime for long you've probably seen a scene withlens flare in it, either in the form of streaks of light or as sharpdiamonds. Lens flare is commonly used in beach scenes and othersituations where the animators want to communicate that the sun isvery bright; they'll pan a shot up to include the sun and as thesun enters the picture, throw in the flare. Generally the singlecallout in a single shot is the only time you'll see lens flare

I was planning to make this a carefully written coherent entry, but that'snot happening. So this is going to be more or less point form notes beforemore of my thoughts slip out of my mind.

I was previously somewhat ambivalent on Jinrui . Itake that back because in retrospect there were only two episodesthat I felt were beating me over the head and I've become convinced that those episodes were necessary. I now feelthat Jinrui was the most interesting show of the Summer 2012