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Wow! Just...WOW! After a disappointing (to me, at least) Season 2, Attack on Titan roars back into my heart with the speed of a Levi-attack in ODM gear!

The Season 3 opening is a visual pastiche of melancholy, a bittersweet reflection, set to a surprisingly upbeat tune, and we see just how far our heroes have come, while also giving us glimpses into the background/psyche/makeup of other characters, like Erwin, Levi, and Christa/Historia.

Minor Spoiler: during the opening credits, there's a scene where a happy child/Eren runs and bumps into a stoic soldier/Eren. Soldier/Eren doesn't react, as child/Eren dances joyfully around soldier/Eren, laughing and waving to get ... his attention. It's fairly "meta," but it really sets to tone for the season.

In addition to the Shiganshina Trio, we get more screen-time and exposition with Erwin, Levi and Hange, and it feels like ALL the characters, like Connie, Sasha, and Jean, are being a part of a real team, even as the story unfolds and grows more complex and twisted.

Production values remain high; art, motion, music, and with vastly improved story-telling technique over Season 2, Season 3 sets a very high bar.

Attack on Titan S2 was a disappointment.

First, after years of waiting, we get only 12 episodes.

Secondly, the 12 episodes are told in a wildly achronological order, making it difficult to tell what's actually happening, what's a flashback, etc.

Third, significant portions of the twelve episodes are devoted to needless noodling over the romantic interests of secondary (even tertiary!) characters, with extended flashbacks/exposition, detailing in often painfully exquisite minutia their melodrama.

Fourth, main characters like Eren, Armin, and Mikasa, Levi and Erwin, get a much reduced amount of screen time due to #3. In fairness, Section Commander Hanji, one of the more interesting and endearing characters in the ... series, gets more screen time in one episode than she did in the entirety of S1.

On the plus side, the artwork is gorgeous, and the sound score impressively orchestral. The dub, however, is mediocre; too many voices are annoyingly high-pitched squeaks and squeals, like Alvin & The Chipmunks on helium, screaming at the top of their lungs. Or they're practically whispering/muttering, making it next to impossible to hear and understand them.

Go with the original Japanese with subtitles; it's not much better in this regard, but take what you can get.

Overall, there's a good story in here somewhere; and it sure is pretty to watch and listen to from a musical score standpoint.

However, the execution, or "telling," of this story is a disjointed mess, with so many side-story/B-arc & C-arc character distractions, so many rewinds and flashbacks in order to deliver exposition on what's happening "right now," that by the time the "mess" finally gets back to the main story, you may no longer give a damn.

I had to watch this several times, as the audio is in Japanese, with English subtitles. SO after multiple viewings, I was able to better appreciate the artwork as I wasn't quite so busy reading what the characters were actually saying.

Wow! One word really does say it all. But you might need more convincing, so I'll try harder.

The story: fantastic, and fantastical. Either our Earth in the future, or a parallel timeline Earth, or a "Lost Colony" of humans on a distant Earth-like world, I don't know, but the "Giants," called Titans appeared several centuries ago and began eating humans. Societies collapsed, refugees fled, until ... the last of humanity is holed up in a giant city-state protected by a concentric series of 50-meter tall walls.

Technology has either stagnated or collapsed to late 18th century levels; muzzle-loading firearms and cannons are the most advanced recognizable weaponry, with the singular exception of the VME: the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment. Part slingshot, part bungee cord, this allows humanity to fly about from any handy vertical surface and fight back against the Titans, though it's utility is greatly diminished in "open field" terrain.

The story follows three main protagonists, with a close supporting cast. The three main characters are young friends, children really, at the beginning of Season 1; by the end, they've graduated Basic Training and joined the elite Survey Corps, one of three "Regiments" holding the line against the Titans on humanity's behalf, and the only Regiment that fights the Titans outside the city's walls.

The "supporting cast" is as rich and diverse as the main characters, with several "breakout" characters, such as Captain Levi Ackerman, Zoe Hange, and Commander Erwin Smith.

The artwork and soundtrack are similarly amazing; one of my earlier complaints was having to focus too much on the subtitles to watch the "bigger picture" and truly appreciate the often stunning beauty that went into making this series. But I didn't mind re-watching it several times until I knew the overall story well enough to appreciate the artwork and soundtrack all on their own.

Season 1 ended on a bit of a cliffhanger (naturally!), and I can't wait for Season 2, due out sometime early in 2017.

Watch this. Watch it several times, as it is plot and visual dense material; I'm still finding little bits of hidden gems I missed the first, second, and even third go-around in this outstanding series.

I picked this out of the Netflix lineup on a whim. The title, as well as the descriptive capsule Netflix provided, weren't very promising, yet it was still highly rated, so I figured, "What the hell; I'll check it out."

I almost immediately regretted it, and almost didn't make it through the first episode; it was like watching an episode of "Three's Company" being performed by the "Three Stooges."

The characters are initially two-dimensional stereotypes. The early episode plots seem rather pedestrian.

And yet, somewhere in there things shift fairly subtly. The characters, while superficially two-dimensional, start to show hidden depths of character. The plots, seemingly without purpose ... or reason, somehow begin to have subtle relevance to the hidden depths of the characters.

In its own way, Ouran High School Host Club works on multiple levels. It presents as a straightforward pandering to certain anime stereotypes. On another, it deliciously skewers and playfully mocks those self same stereotypes.

And on yet another, it almost completely deconstructs those stereotypes, showing us a group of young friends, seemingly "On Top Of The World" and quite at ease with their wealth and privilege, who set out to playfully "Host" at their high school.

Yet each has their own emotional problems and hangups that are, somehow, seemingly relatable, as seen through the eyes of "everyday commoner girl" and audience surrogate Haruhi Fujioka.

By the end of the series, I was no longer seeing ANY of the characters as mere stereotypes, and was instead rooting for them as individuals as they each in turn confronted and overcame personal and familial obstacles, and watched fondly as they learned that instead of being mere cordial acquaintances, they were all fire-forged friends, closer in many cases than family.

Give it a shot, and stick with it through the earlier episodes. The payoff is worth it.

Cowboy Bebop is, essentially, an American-style "Western." Set in Space. To an awesome and varied soundtrack, as our anti-heroes bebop around the solar system, from the moon of Saturn to the clouds of Venus, collecting bounties on various criminals, trying to avoid their various troubled and mysterious pasts.

But...

There's a lot of tropes and stereotypes played with masterfully, ironically, humorously, and, strangely enough, straightly, throughout the series, blending East-Meets-West in a delectable fusion not unlike it's outstanding soundtrack.

Blues; Jazz; Rock; Western; Classical; the list goes on-and-on, each "style" represented and counterpointed by its particular episode.

Science Fiction. Comedy. Drama. Action/Adventure. Cowboy Bebop has something for everyone. And, ... unlike most series that tries to be "everything for everyone," Cowboy Bebop somehow manages to succeed.

Watching Cowboy Bebop is only half the experience; listening is as much a part of the pleasure. Like putting on your headphones and cuing up your favorite playlist of various styles of music, and letting each piece pull your emotions this-way-and-then-that, until at the end, you're satisfied and yet strangely melancholy; you've laughed, you've cried, you've reminisced fondly in turn.

That's Cowboy Bebop.

A common bit of wisom is that the journey is more important than the destination.

With Black Butler, you can have it both ways.

We find out early on how it is most likely to end, and by episode 24, we get the expected payoff, but not before we're treated to one heckuva ride to get there.

The ending, while bittersweet and melancholy, is wholly expected; this did NOT spoil the series for me, as I was interested in the "artistry" the storyteller invested in this tale, start-to-finish, and some of the more annoying aspects early on (why I gave it only a seven for enjoyment became ... clearer as the series progressed towards its conclusion.

Don't ask me about what happens after episode 24; for me, the series ended there.