== Looking back at the Summer 2012 anime season

[[As before Spring2012Retrospective]] it's time I got around to taking
an honest look back at the Summer 2012 season, to go with [[my early
impressions Summer2012Brief]] and [[my midway update Summer2012Midway]].

Shows that I actively watched (and finished where applicable), in
descending order:

* *Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita*: My favorite show of the summer, which
  [[I've written a chunk about JinruiNotes]].

* *Eureka Seven AO*: My second most enjoyable show of the summer, only
  a little bit behind *Jinrui*. I don't have an overall opinion on the
  series yet since we're still waiting for the last two episodes.

  (I wrote some stuff about it [[at the end of here JinruiNotes]].)

* *Moyashimon Returns*: I take back my grumpyness from [[my midway
  update]]. The best way I can put it is that the final plotline
  of *Returns* shows the series growing up and maturing, shifting from
  a bunch of ultimately lightweight stuff to something more nuanced. I
  liked this tone shift but I understand not everyone did. Also, [[I
  enjoyed a seiyuu overlap
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/243571028327026688]].

  (It's not just that *Returns* got serious, although it did in a way.
  It's that things became more complex and nuanced and felt more real
  as a result. There were no easy answers or one-dimensional characters.)

* *Campione!*: I'm sure people are going to laugh at me, but I quite
  enjoyed this all through. Part of this I can attribute simply to
  its execution, but I argue that it's less recycled and cliched
  than it might look on the surface. I mentioned Erica Blandelli
  in [[my midway update]] and another example ([[per a tweet
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/243094469195476993]]) is that
  victory in fights was about gaining knowledge and solving mysteries,
  not more power. All of this made it fun to watch, for all that it
  doesn't particularly aspire to be deep.

  (This sort of calls for an entire entry that I'll probably never
  have the time and energy to write.)

* *Sword Art Online*: [[My views SAOViews]] turned out not to fit
  in a paragraph, so I put them in [[an entry of their own SAOViews]].
  Short version: I don't think it can really be called good but it was
  clearly watchable because I did and do. I attribute this more to good
  production values than anything else.

* *Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon II*: I wound up watching this all the
  way through, purely for the absurd spectacle. The advantage of *Horizon*
  as compared to, say, *Aquarion EVOL* is that the non-spectacle bits
  made so little sense and I cared so little about them that it was easy
  to tune them out. Also, there weren't that many of them since *Horizon*
  packed most of its exposition into the first season.

  If I'm a smart person, I will not watch any future seasons this gets.

* *Dog Days'*: as I expected, nothing really happened in this season; [[it
  never went anywhere DogDaysS2Problem]]. The show wasn't boring exactly
  and it was idly enjoyable throughout, but I did wind up kind of
  feeling that watching it was wasted time. Light entertainment is not
  quite what I want out of my limited time. In retrospect I stuck with
  this mostly out of nostalgia for the first season (and the inability
  to let that nostalgia go).

  The thought of another season doesn't fill me with enthusiasm.

* *Oda Nobuna no Yabou*: In the end most of this was merely ordinarily
  entertaining and the show's complete inability to let Nobuna do
  anything got rather irritating. In retrospect I should have skipped
  it, but I got captured by my initial enthusiasm and it was never quite
  bad enough to push me to stop watching it.

  (It's not that this was bad; it was acceptably entertaining. It's
  just that I'm trying to do better than merely 'acceptably entertaining'
  these days.)

Watching slowly:

* *Joshiraku*: my views haven't changed: it's entertaining and amusing
  but I don't find it funny enough to watch very fast.

Declared as misses:

* *Hagure Yuusha no Estetica*: I dropped this right after I wrote [[my
  midway update]], as I mused about in the update. I have no regrets,
  especially since apparently its ending is basically 'continued in the
  light novels'.

Overall there were four shows that I unapologetically enjoyed, one show
that I found compulsively watchable but seriously flawed (SAO), one
show that a smarter person might not have bothered with, and two shows
that I probably should have dropped. Oh, and in retrospect I stuck with
*Hagure* much longer than I should have; I could have bailed out in the
second episode when it made its taste for excessive fanservice clear.

(In general I was, as usual, far too optimistic and willing to stick
with shows.)

This season makes me happy in one specific way, after [[last season
Spring2012Retrospective]]: my favorite show wasn't an action show.  On the
flipside, most of the rest are (I count *Dog Days'* as an action show,
despite how little real action it had; it was more of an adventure show,
but that's close enough).

(I could be happy that my third most favorite show is also not an action
show, but not really; there's a big gap between my feelings for *AO* and
my feelings for *Return*. *Return* was nice, *AO* was very good to great.)