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The latest anime season finished up a little over a week ago, and I’ve been remiss in saying what I thought about it. Overall, I didn’t watch as much stuff, …though the number of episodes may have stayed about the same.

Sword Art Online II — This season was billed as a set of shorter stories, and it didn’t disappoint. As expected, the first story finished up with episode 14, and then the next one was a recap of the previous season. *sigh* Though it was told from the perspective of the new character, which gave it some interest. After that, there was a very nice story arc featuring a return to much of the earlier cast with a quest in Alfheim that leads to questions about how ‘real’ a virtual world is. This theme also underlies the second and final story that was very well done. Overall this is as good as SAO has been since the original story.

Log Horizon II — It’s been a little odd having both “stuck in a MMO” series going this season. But Log Horizon also had a very strong season, with a nice worldbuilding story that also explored Shiroe and Akastsuki at the same time. The worldbuilding just gets better the more you see. Better yet, it’s still going, with some plot threads that need returning to, while SAO II is done.

Yowapeda — It started as such a nice sports/geek series. But as it continues, it keeps dragging itself out more and more, and and is falling right into teenage shonen tropes. I still watch it in the hopes that the current tournament plot will end someday, but I can’t recommend it.

When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace — I’ve only seen about 2/3d’s of this, since Smudge hasn’t been liking it as much (but she laughs anyway). And, it is all in the humor; there are parts of a larger plot in there, but the characters have been purposefully kept out of it.

Over on watching older things, Smudge has gotten me into Fairy Tail. It is in the same brand of long-form shonen fight anime that I generally have no patience for, but this one is holding me. Part of it is that the humor works. Part of it is that the testosterone level is lower than in the others of its type (sure, Natsu charges forward into fights a bunch, but that’s because he likes to fight, not because he’s an overagressive posturing twit… most of the time). Part of it is that it has kept a decent, if slightly slow, pace. I liked the beginning of One Piece, and then it slowed down, and I tossed it. Fairy Tail, after 50 episodes, is still going through distinct story lines without dragging them out to two or three times its deserved length.