It's time for a slow-moving midway update on my early impressions . This update has been delayed in part because I didn't want to admit something, and that was partly because of the tacit pressure of conformity .

Excellent:

• ACCA - 13-Territory Inspection Department : This has continually been the most interesting show I've been watching this season. It wasn't always clear where it was going (and it's still not), but it had such a sense of style, atmosphere, and character that that didn't matter. And while I wasn't really looking, in its quiet, atmospheric way the show has covered a huge amount of plot territory, especially in the past few episodes. I can't wait to see where it goes next.

• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid : This is still a comedy but it's a lot more than that too; at its heart it's about family. I don't like all of it, but enough of every episode lands that it's great. It has a real mastery of quiet moments, background things, and little gestures.

In ongoing shows, March comes in like a Lion has continued to be quietly great. There are less fireworks now than there used to be, but more development and progression. Shimada has been a great addition to the cast.

Not for me:

• Little Witch Academia : In the end, this is basically a kids show (that's made by Trigger, and is airing at midnight because apparently the TV anime model is fundamentally broken ). There's nothing wrong with LWA being a kid's show, but kids shows generally don't really appeal to me and LWA has not been the exception.

  This is kind of what I was worried about before LWA started airing , although not exactly it. In the end it was less the cliched stuff and more the general style that didn't work for me. I have a bunch of issues with what happened in the episodes I watched, but in the end all of them come from looking at a kids show with the eyes of an adult.

Dropped:

• Blue Exorcist - Kyoto Saga : In the end, the slow pacing killed it for me . This has the leisurely execution of a show that knows it's adapting a manga arc and is thus ultimately not particularly going anywhere. I like the characters, but no.

• Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2 : Episode 4 was all about Darkness and I hate what the show does with Darkness, so I bounced off it and then realized I wasn't particularly interested in the show as a whole. The show had one core joke and mostly wore it out in the first season; the things it did in the first three episodes of the second season weren't enough to keep me (and some of them I disliked).

I have continued to not watch Saga of Tanya the Evil , and what I've heard about recent developments have convinced me that this is the right decision (partly because I'm on Tanya's side in one small aspect of the show , although everything else I've heard about her makes me think I'd dislike her).

In the past I've felt antsy when I was down to this few shows I was watching. This season I have no such issues so far, and I think that that's partly because the three remaining shows are all really good ones. They each leave me happily contented when I watch an episode and I eagerly anticipate the next one when it gets close.