It's time for the traditional look back at my early impressions of this season. I've delayed this long enough that it's not really 'midway' any more, at least in time. Partly this is because I've been only watching shows slowly myself for various reasons.

This is in order:

• Sasami-san@Ganbaranai: This is the clear hit of the season for me. It's nothing like I was expecting at the start and as far as I'm concerned this is a good thing. (I like good surprises.)

  (Episode 8 has an unfortunate drastic drop in animation quality but episode 9 recovered.)

• Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sou Desu yo: This is full throttle, no excuses popcorn entertainment. I'm watching this to cheer as villains get beaten up and amusing things happen, and it's delivering those with no pretenses of any depth.

• Yama no Susume: This needs more focus on the characters doing interesting things instead of mountaineering gear. I feel a degree of affection for it and I like it when I bother to watch, but I don't feel any particular push to watch more most of the time.

• Hakkenden Touhou Hakken Ibun: While I'm still watching this I feel ambivalent about it. Some aspects are nice (especially some of the secondary characters) but other bits of it are alternately annoyingly predictable or just stuff that I'm not interested in. I've recently been watching this only in bursts of several episodes at once; I may well not watch any more.

  (I just looked this up and it's apparently only scheduled for 13 episodes, which means that there's no chance of it having a real conclusion. I think my motivation to watch more just took a major nosedive.)

• Vividred Operation: The longer this runs, the more soulless it feels and the less interested I feel in watching more; it very much lacks some sort of vital spark of life. If I was smart I would drop this and use my time for other things; as it stands I still haven't bothered to watch the latest episode. Part of the problem is that the show still hasn't made me really care about any of the characters (cf).

Dropped:

• Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman: In the end I just felt unmotivated to watch the third episode. I think that part of the problem is that the setup just feels too much like a kid's cartoon.

  (I may well be missing something good here, but lack of motivation is lack of motivation.)

• Senran Kagura: I dropped this almost immediately after my initial impressions post as too empty and boring, among other things, and then managed to forget about it so much that I left it out of the first version of this entry.

De facto suspended:

• Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo (#15): In the end I lost most of my interest and motivation for this when it turned into a love triangle. Actually, I think I'm going to admit things and call this dropped outright.

• Robotics;Notes (#12): Too slow and not focusing on things that interested me. In theory I might try to marathon a bunch of episodes at once to see if I like it better that way.

In (other) series carried over from last season, Shin Sekai Yori, Zetsuen no Tempest, and Psycho-Pass are all still being excellent. They rank ahead of everything from this season except perhaps Sasami-san. If it was not for them, this season would be basically a desert for me.

(I'm not convinced that that would have been a bad thing; if the season had been a total bust I might have dug into Chihayafuru and/or AKB0048, or even some other old shows that I have vaguely queued up.)

Updated: I forgot Senran Kagura. Now fixed.