These are less going to be a weekly thing and more a whenever I feel like it thing, but I'm going to try and space them out by at least a week.

I haven't been religiously following anime for a while, I tend to just catch a few shows a year that my friends recommend or that I hear about otherwise. I started paying attention to seasons a little while back, but even then I rarely found anything that caught my interest, and while I've tried to get into stuff during the past two (winter 2013 and spring 2014) seasons I've still never watched more than half of a series.

Then Summer 2014 happened and it's like I can't keep up.

I'll try to avoid spoilers in the body of this journal, but the comments (since they don't show up on my profile) are fair game.

Aldnoah.Zero

Mecha anime about martians who are actually humans and want to rule earth because of reasons.

I will say that this is my least favorite of the shows that I'm actually watching, and it seems destined to be the overrated anime of the year/season. The first episode was weak up until the very end, but it kicked off a really engaging arc for the next two episodes, then kind of started to stall out. It definitely has the makings of a great show, but it suffers from having an awful protagonist, not focusing on the interesting characters around the protagonist, and falling into cycles of repetition without actually feeling like it's building up to anything (Inaho pulls improbable physics out of his plot armor while Slaine/humanity get bait and switched and Marito can't get in the robot, repeat ad nauseum).

Terror in Resonance

Bishonen terrorists vs. eccentric old police dudes.

This is the show I was most excited for, and the main reason I even looked into anime in general this season. It's directed by Watanabe, the dude behind the likes of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Both Terror in Resonance and Aldnoah Zero have airs of being much more significant than they actually are. Both have serious characters in silly scenarios, and Terror definitely has some pacing and plotting issues. But I rate this above Aldnoah because it feels like it's actually developing into something. Events aren't just repeated in slightly different scenery, everything that happens is done to provide more context for the characters, and even 7 episodes in I still have no idea where it's actually going.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

Comedic deconstruction of the manga industry that deconstructs gender that deconstructs the manga industry that deconstructs gender that deconstructs...

It took a few episodes for this show to really click with me, but once it gets rolling it's extremely delightful. The cast is all involved in some way with the titular character's manga artist career, both directly and as muses. The latter is where most of the comedy comes from, as Nozaki interprets his friends into his work in unexpected but typically hilarious ways. These interpretations feed back into how his friends behave and the whole this is some bizarre self-perpetuating cycle. It gives this show both a more fresh feel than your typical high school comedy anime, and also a bit more significance since, behind the humor, it is actually saying something.

Tokyo Ghoul

Psychological horror/action/character drama.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. I decided I would watch this after seeing the trailer because it appeals to my horror kinks. But it wasn't supposed to be good. It was supposed to be a lame seinen show trying to be edgy and grimdark with some kind of vampire/zombie angle. It's actually a magnificently paced character story with strong horror overtones and is far and away my favorite anime of the season, if not the past several years. It also has the best OP so there's that.

Shows I still plan to watch

Barakamon: I keep seeing this on lists and it seems relevant to my interests
Shirogane no Ishi Argevollen: I have it on good authority that this may actually be the mecha anime to watch this season, but it has opted for a slow build so it's taken this long to really see where it's going.

And I guess this can just be a general anime discussion journal. Or anything really. And no I'm not going to watch SAO II no matter how much you ask me.