SeHNNG recently wrote about the anicamera ,the imaginary camera that 'films' anime. As it happens I have aninterest in this area, so today's topic is the interesting issue of outof focus blur in anime.

(Well, interesting to me, partly because I'm an amateur photographer.)

Most anime scenes have everything in focus (what photographers wouldcall infinite depth of field). This is the natural look of painted anddrawn art and what we think of as the conventional way things are

(There are some semi-spoilers for Jinrui here, but this isdeliberately mostly opaque if you haven't actually seen the show.)

I'll put my conclusion first and then write on aboutmy justifications later. Based in large part on Vance's comment at A&V ,my assumed chronological order of episodes is: the school portion of11-12, 10, the epilogue of 12, 7-8, 5-6, 1-2, 9, and

One of the periodically recurring tropes in anime is humanity being indecline; not through a loud apocalypse or for any visible reason, butpeople are just quietly diminishing. This season's Jinrui wa SuitaiShimashita puts this in the series premise (the title of the show means'Humanity Has Declined') but there are plenty of others, such as Sorano Woto and the classic Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou . In theversion of the trope that I'm thinking of, the cause of the declineis never stated (

I feel like writing something here and while I have any number of entryideas circling through my head I can't manage to get enough spare time,energy, and enthusiasm to write them. A midseason review of Summer2012 , however, I can bang together pretty easily soyou get it.

(The short summary is that I have added two new shows, Joshiraku and Nobuna , and effectively dropped two of my initial ones , one because it's bad and one because it's not

I tweeted :

The problem with this season of Dog Days is that we're just hangingaround; unlike the first season, we're not going anywhere.

I feel like expanding on this a bit more than fits in 140 characters.

Right from the start of the first season there were things activelyhappening and the characters had a problem to deal with. The majorreason (or at least excuse) that Princess Millefiori had for summoningCinque at the start of the show was that Biscotti was in a

As before , now that the Spring 2012 seasonis over it's once again time for me to take honest look back to gowith my early impressions . This is an especiallyrelevant exercise to me this time around due to the strength of thespring season.

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

• Eureka Seven AO : This is the real surprise of the season for me.The show's excellent execution has compulsively pulled me alongand turned it into my highest priority show

As before , here are my impressions of anotherseason's first few episodes, or at least of the shows that I havebothered to watch. This time around I'm using a different format, partlybecause I hope to be much harsher about what I will continue watching.

(The order within each section is roughly how good or interesting Ithink each show is.)

Hits:

• Moyashimon Returns : I really liked the original Moyashimon andI'm glad to see that this continues the wackiness of before,

One of the reasons that I wound up watching Fate/Zero onlysporadically and without any particularly burning enthusiasm is thatI found basically all of the characters to be, in Author's phrasing ,jerkfaces. Out of the entire collection of Masters and Servants andsecondary characters, the only one I actually found likable wasWaver (and even then he's only truly likable after he's matured ). Even the much-admired Iskandar is not all that nicewhen you get down to it, for all that

This is what you could call 'extensively delayed'. Since the Winter 2012season is well over by now, it's more than past time for another one ofmy retrospectives to go with my early impressions and my followup on what I was probably going to actually watch .

(If I was clever I'd claim that I'm doing this so late in order to waitfor Moretsu Pirates to finish so I could have a proper view on it, butthe truth is that I just