== Checking in on the Summer 2017 anime season 'midway' through

It's time once again for a much of the way through update on [[my earlier
impressions of this season Summer2017Brief]]. By this point both my
views and my expectations have solidified, although I'm still hoping for
a surprise or two.

Still excellent:

* *Made in Abyss*: I recently characterized this as [[a quest without
  active opposition (so far)
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/904199856696299521]], where the
  obstacle in the way of Riko and Reg is the Abyss itself, with its
  creatures and its very nature. The show is doing extremely well at
  portraying this and making things feel real, and it's been a very
  enjoyable ride despite the fact that we keep being told that Riko
  is never coming back from the journey she's making.

  With that said, I have no idea where the show is going and how
  it's going to come to a satisfying ending point. But the ride is so
  interesting that I don't care.

Very good, surprisingly:

* *Princess Principal*: The show has remained fully committed to its
  core nature and as a result has delivered a whole series of episodes
  with pretty solid impacts (and a few that were just fun), even if
  they're nothing novel in terms of plots. I've been particularly taken
  with the writing, which is often (although not always) willing to let
  things be indirect and count on us to get it.

  This has turned out much better than I would have expected from the
  premise.

Good:

* *Senki Zesshou Symphogear AXZ*: It's more *Symphogear* and it's
  being very itself by leaning into its over the top stuff and
  building on bits and pieces of past seasons in a way that makes
  its world feel real and lived-in. It's absurd, of course, but
  *Symphogear* has always been an absurd show.

* *My Hero Academia*: The show continues to move along pretty well,
  mostly avoiding the pacing pitfalls of the first season and the
  tournament pitfalls of the first part of this season. *MHA* isn't
  great but I do like watching it. It has charm.

Popcorn watching:

* *Knight's & Magic*: This remains more or less pure-hearted fun, although
  [[in the long shadow of Gundam
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/904540399255130112]] it's hard to
  have the cheerful reaction to a war between two groups of humans that
  I think the show wants me to have, especially when it kills plenty of
  people on screen. For now I'm ignoring the cognitive dissonance and
  enjoying it anyway.

* *Fate/Apocrypha*: This has mostly delivered on a stream of reasonably
  spectacular fights with only a few diversions into annoying attempts
  at philosophy and character development and so on (all of which *Fate*
  is generally terrible at). Unfortunately, while I enjoy Astolfo and
  Mordred goofing around, my actual investment in any of the characters
  is almost nil so all of the action mostly feels empty and pointless.

Dropped:

* *A Centaur's Life*: I wound up feeling that the only thing the show
  had going for it was its gimmick, and with the show's bland and so-so
  production, that wasn't enough to keep me watching. I have some
  theories about why this material worked much better in manga form than
  animated, but that's for another entry.

* *The Reflection*: After watching a number of episodes [[I realized
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/899059884888657920]] that I was
  only interested in it as a peculiar and interesting artifact, not as
  something to actually watch. I wasn't particularly invested in either
  the characters or the plot and [[the writing could be painful
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/899060270781300737]].

I've got enough shows that I want to watch that I've felt no particular
need to seek out more or dig into my backlog (the latter is kind of a
pity, since I have some good stuff I want to get to someday). More shows
and more good to excellent shows would be nice, but I'm okay with what I
have.