Another season brings another installment of what is now my regularhabit of taking a snapshot of my views of the early episodes that I'veseen (just like last time ).

Shows I've seen, more or less in the order seen:

• Sacred Seven : it's a Sunrise action series. It's acceptable. I'msure there's going to be a midseason surprise twist, because that'sSunrise's pattern.

  So far this has my favorite opening of the season,

Author :

If IS' military use is prohibited, what is that destroyer doing in theacademy's harbor?

If I take IS's background seriously I have to conclude that the whole'IS military use is prohibited' thing is propaganda, and not veryconvincing propaganda at that. IS are armed, IS pilots are taughtweapons and combat operation, competitions between IS pilots arecombat duels instead of any number of other plausible tests of ISpilot skill, IS piloting seems heavily militarized, and so on. I

Extracted from Aroduc's 2011 Summer Anime preview :

A series that seems to inspire one of two things in people, an intenselove [...], or the compelling urge to take a nap.

However fond I am of Natsume Yuujinchou , I haveto more or less agree with Aroduc here. NY is pretty much a bunch of heartwarming slice of life stories that just happens to be about the supernatural(or mostly about the supernatural). Given my usual tastes , I have no idea

Now that I've actually watched Shingu I've beengoing back and reading commentary on it that I skipped over before inorder to avoid spoilers, and of course I have some reactions to variousbits of it. There are spoilers here, along with possibly too many words.

First, somewhere I remember reading a comment that it's vaguely oddthat all of the aliens are either shapeshifters or more or less humanlooking. My answer is that we're seeing a self-selected subset of thealiens

Note: contents contain spoilers for Shingu .

Author ,in reply to my remark that I'm happy about Muryou'smysteries not being explained:

Oh, brother. I am pretty sure this was unintentional, based on thesmall exposition fragment in the end (with chibi Muryo in a Romantoga). [...]

That bit is actually an important part of what makes the Muryousituation work for me. If the show left it out and simply ignored themystery, we would be left not knowing

For my future reference if nothing else, based purely on watchingShingu on DVD:

Xine on Fedora 8 hasmuch better handling of DVDs than even a bleeding edge mplayer, butmplayer has better deinterlacing and keyboard controls for pausing andso on so I used mplayer. Mplayer did turn the subtitles to mush in a fewplaces so I went back and re-read them with xine. More modern versions ofXine may have better deinterlacing, which would probably make it almostcompletely superior.

Different players have somewhat different renditions of

After various urgings from peoplewhose opinions I respect, I got Shingu (on DVD) and recently watchedit (after a bit of struggling with Linux DVD players and especiallydeinterlacing).

(It amuses me that the shipping to Canada was almost as expensive as theDVD release itself.)

So here, have some reactions and notes:

• everyone who has praised this has done so for a good reason. It istotally worth your time (and your $20).

  I'm pretty sure that this will

Another season brings another set of snapshots, just like last time , except that this has been extended and slow enoughthat this a lot more than first episodes by now.

Shows I've seen, more or less in the order seen:

• Dog Days : It's a refreshing change when the summoned hero is bothcompetent and enthusiastic about his new situation. Apart from that,this is lightweight but cheerful and fun. Honestly, there's a lot tobe said for that.

• Sengoku Otome Momoiro Paradox :

I bike in all weather conditions. As a result, I have a whole lot ofbike gloves (and gloves that I use when I bike), and I'm often lookingfor better gloves. Because I feel like keeping track of this, here's mycurrent list with notes about when I use them.

In order of decreasing temperature ranges:

basic MEC fingerless bike gloves

These are my warm weather gloves, sayaround 20C and upwards. I used to use the MEC commuter cycling glovesbut