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Oh, I'm mirin them troll skills of yours.

lol. You are clever, you know how to find the answer though. I just realize that I post twice, it suppose only one..o.O

A sarcastic person has a superiority complex that can be cured only by the honesty of humility
Do you have opinion about the quote above? :p

What is that no man ever saw which never was but always will be?

That palm tree thing really does add a layer to that episode. Maybe jealous kid wasn't as paranoid as he thought?

Watched the first episode. It was really solid. There were two things I really liked, and I'm probably gonna keep watching.

1. There were so few lines of dialogue, like 4 total, but they established the main character's background (shell-shocked/beaten-down boxer who's now disfigured for life for pissing off a mob boss) right quick. Visuals (and the fuzz in that boxing flashback) were crazy effective. I think it hit a great balance between not spoon feeding and still having the answers there.

2. There's still plenty of mystery there, but it's not like it was just throwing stuff at me. I at least got that the girl in the fox mask was working with some kind of resistance movement. Resisting what is the big question, obviously.

It sounds intriguing, for sure, but I'm not 100% sure I'd like it based on your description. I kind of like my artistic meanings to be wrapped around more tangible and immediate things like characters/setting; it's a little easier to stick around for depth when I have something tangible on the surface. For example, in Haibane, I liked Reki's past more than anything having to do with Kuu, and I liked the Infornography episode of lain more than the ending. Let me rephrase the question, I guess; does it get right down to business and start showing off its good points in the first 2 episodes?

Paranoia Agent is something I've seen a couple episodes in a group setting. I remember the one with the popular elementary school class rep getting hopelessly jealous over the cool nice fat kid was hilarious and a little close to home. Are all the episodes poetic justice/human nature stingers of that type?

Kaiba is one of those select shows that I liked a lot the first time, then liked a totally different way when I watched it a year later (I totally did not realize what the scene with the robot gradually falling apart in the last episode was going for the first time, then it hit me like a ton of bricks the second time). The really great shows are the ones that are good in like 50 different ways, some obvious, some not.

I kinda love to have arguments about opinion-based things, just within civil boundaries and understanding that people have both seen the show and you can't change what another person felt about it by talking about it later. I don't get being bitter at how other people feel about shows (maybe years of sticking up for Futakoi Alternative's artistic merit to this day cured me of that). It's cathartic and helpful for me to just hear people's reasons clearly and get my own out there when I can do it in the right environment.

Texnholyze is the one Yoshitoshi Abe related work I haven't seen. Is it solid stuff? I've heard it's good, but not on the level of Lain or Haibane.

Yeah, Sakurasou really stood out to me, both for the diverse cast and skilled sound direction (something I've been paying more attention to recently). That and JJBA made the past 6 months a very fun time.

I've watched the first 2 epsiodes of Aku no Hana, and don't have any plans to continue. I stand by three positions:

1) Aku no Hana’s character designs are, in a vacuum, perfectly fine. I say that because I count Kaiba, Redline, Noein, Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji, and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure all among my 50 favorite anime; I’ve seen good directors handle nontraditional character designs and visual styles to great effect. I applaud risk taking because of these shows, but the main reasons the character designs work in those shows is less that they're different and more that they're a) very good at showing emotions and b) augmented by skilled camerawork/direction that shows directors are hard at work building a coherant atmosphere to prop up their risky choices.

2) While the show has many of the components of those I mentioned above, (solid soudtrack, detailed background art, solid script) it's lacking in the most critical area. The direction is alternatively lazy and heavy-handed, with little clear focus on actually telling a story or conveying emotions. Aku no Hana’s direction does not show the same level of thought as other nontraditional artstyle shows, taking advantage neither of dynamic camerawork or fixed-angle takes. Honestly, all I see is a guy who doesn't know what he's doing tossing the camera around without purpose.

I personally think the director, Hiroshi Nagahama, gets way too much credit for directing one (admittedly amazing) TV anime, as Mushishi was an adaptation of a Kodansha Manga Award winner that came with the lion’s share of director’s work (storyboarding, camera angles) already done, and with other people handling the excellent sound quality. Yuu Kou produced similar (if slightly weaker) results from KMA winner Giant Killing, but nobody’s arguing that he’s a genius. I find the direction in AnH to be something that a freshman film school student could make significant improvements on, so there was not a lot for me in the show after the shock value of nontraditional character designs wore off.

3) This is getting meta, but my other major opinion on the show is that I've yet to see a forum really discussing the difference of opinions on the show, and I've looked around a bit. Most of it seems to be people yelling past each other and reaffirming their own beliefs. I'm kind of disappointed in the critically-minded anime community for not taking complaints about it a little more seriously. Instead, I see a whole lot of clustering around it because it's different and not so much on the technical aspects of the show, which are debatable despite my impression of them. Said aspects, are, imo, a far more productive subject than trading insults/circlejerking like most people on both sides have been doing.

CHOMP CHOMP

A lot of series I just haven't finished because of real-life free time constraints and other shows competing for my attention. Now and Then, Here and There was one of them: I watched 5 episodes and got into it, then got distracted by Escaflowne and Gallery Fake. It's definitely not a bad show; it's very well put together. It has the Escaflowne-style prologue where you get more or less a full episode of the main character's everyday life to draw a strong contrast with the rest of the show, which is dystopian steampunk take on the crumbling of a corrupt military dictatorship. Also it's got good direction/camera angles that give you a sense of how broken most of the characters are. The flaws the show does have are mainly post-Eva edginess, and the fact that it's paced fairly slow for what is essentially a war drama. Plus the voice-acting really isn't very good, and the mc is fairly uninteresting for the amount of screentime he gets. It's not not a good show so much as it's not a good one to marathon.

The slow-pacing could be seen as atmospheric, but in my case it ultimately made it easy to get distracted by things like a crooked art dealer conning a mobster out of 20 million dollars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSRTOOetztY#t=1m35s

Cross Game man. Such a nice show.

You can totally watch the new Lupin out of context, and I recommend it if you have the time. It's fantastically clever both in writing and animation.

The big thing for both of my spring faves thus far is that they both have protagonists in their 30s, a pleasant trait that's a tad rare in modern anime.

Apollon is a really interesting show. If I were teaching a class on anime, I would use episode 1 of that to show how different parts of production are important to the final product. There's a clear divide between parts where the script (somewhat poorly handled), art style (slightly above average), direction (god-tier), and soundtrack(god-tier) come into play. The end product is definitely an enjoyable one, but it's most fascinating to me as a case study.

Wish I had free time to pursue more sequels of things I've seen, but this season is keeping me fairly busy between Lupin and Space Bros.