laceblade

Ongoing
Free! - I'm behind on this, but I'm still watching. It's pretty heinous & fun. I do wish that as many people watching this show watched K-ON! - maybe they did, I guess I wasn't into K-ON! while it was actually airing, so I wouldn't even know :3

Silver Spoon - I'm really digging this show, I get excited every time a new episode appears in my crunchyroll queue. This show makes me laugh! I'll watch anything created by Hiromu Arakawa. Also I should correct earlier posts - the protagonist is in high school, not college.

Teen Wolf - Wow, show, I had intended to be casual about you. I went to "Teen Wolf night"s at were_duck's to watch currently airing s3 episodes despite not seeing seasons 1 or 2. "It'll just be a hanging out thing, I like the people who go, but I won't get into the show," I said.
READERS, I WAS WRONG.
I watched...all of season 2 last weekend, lolol. And am now basically caught up.
I wish that I liked Allison more than I actually do. I feel like I should like her more, because it's mostly the narrative's removal of her agency (AT EVERY POSSIBLE MOMENT) that infuriate me, particularly in season 2.
I love Stiles, I <3 Lydia, and really just everyone.
It's disappointing that there are so many boring expository narrative dumps going on right now in season 3, and their budget drop from seasons 1/2 to 3 is almost painfully noticeable.
The lighting also seems to be done by the same people who did Glee season 3 (aka: it's terrible).


Finished
Orange is the New Black - I watched this whole thing in like, less than a week. I'm glad I did - just about my entire Tumblr dash is talking about it.
I really loved this show. In addition to being hilarious, it uses its platform to make lots & lots of statements about the criminal justice system as well as the way women are treated in society - all women.

The show deconstructs its white privileged protagonist. More on that in this autostraddle post.
I also really enjoyed this post about Piper's bisexuality at a new website talking about queer women in TV shows, started by two BNFs from Glee fandom.

I think my favorite thing that happens in the show (even though it's awful when it happens) is when Larry (Piper's husband) goes on NPR to tell the host all of the stories about these "crazy prison women" that he's heard from his wife, framing it as being about HIM and it being about their long distance relationship/etc.
And as he talks about each prisoner, the camera lingers on them - triumphant fists, smirks, hands over mouths in horror, tears of shame - depending on how he portrays them in his stories - appropriate from Piper, who told him the stories in the first place.
The show is pointing out how much representation matters, the effects it has on people depending how they're represented in the stories that get told about them.
It can hurt, it can be uplifting. It can be both.
Anyway, this show was fantastic, and it only gets better as it goes on & Piper's heaping privilege gets dismantled right up until the very last scene.
Highly recommended.


Dropped
Servant x Service - Sometimes there are little gems of insight, like the characters saying that a lot of people working in the civil service didn't have any particular "dream job," & just end up there because they don't know what else to do (G P O Y). BUT, the sexual harassment & large-boob-jokes used for hilarity/etc. have made it unwatchable for me.

Traveling Daru - This was a really cute ~10-minute short.
Daru is a toy who gets left behind by his child-owner in an airport b/c the kid's mom won't stop to pick him up while rushing to make their plane.
SO, Daru travels the world trying to find her. It's basically an excuse for animating lots of gorgeous backgrounds. Worth the 10 minutes, anyway.


Free! - This is a new/currently airing series that everyone & their mom is talking about.
Basically this is a show about boys who love swimming. Similar to Chihayafuru, the main characters formed a bond around this sport when they were young, & are now reunited in high school.
This is the same studio that made K-ON!, etc.
They had originally released some artwork about the characters without intending to do a series. Fans on Tumblr/etc. exploded with fanart & backstories, & because people liked it so much, they made a show.
The dudes have rippling muscles, etc. It is a fanservice show - that's the whole point.
Reading the mantearsflowingfree Tumblr is kind of hilarious. They mock men on the Internet who are complaining that this series is not explicitly aimed toward them, but rather toward female viewers.

Anyway, I genuinely like the show!
Unlike K-ON!, members of the opposite sex exist & have speaking roles. (In K-ON!, I think the only ones around are Mugi's butler & the guitar shop guy - two men in service roles who exist to serve the protags :D)


Servant x Service - This is a new/currently airing series about civil servants in Hokkaido. As I am ALSO a government employee & traveled most extensively in Hokkaido on both trips to Japan, I was really intrigued by this!
Unfortunately, it's sort of a running gag type show where every character is super annoying. There are also a few fanservicey jokes made about the large-busted protagonist.
I wouldn't recommend this to people, although I'll be watching for at least a little while to see if it gets any better.


Chihayafuru 2 - Feels just like season 1. I like the new boy-crazy girl who joins the karuta club just b/c she likes Taichi. She reminds me of Hachiko from NANA.
Don't really care about the new dude.
I ship Kana/Hanano for totes.
There was a quote in episode 4 or so explaining the series' title. Obviously "Chihaya" is the name of the protagonist, but "Chihayafuru" is also the beginning of one of the karuta cards.
lavendersleeves wrote this quote down here:

"Chihayafuru" is a poetic phrase that makes about as much sense in Japanese as it does in English. The translators translated this meaning as "impassionate," which seems apt in that "Impassionate" means either "full of passion" or "without passion." But in the last episode, a character gives a lovely interpretation of the word that I found somewhat inspiring:

"Chihayafuru" is like a perfectly spinning top, turning so fast and perfectly that it appears not to be moving at all. But it deflects everything that tries to touch it without losing balance, without losing calm.
The word is used to describe gods, not humans--it is probably a state that humans cannot achieve. It seems to me to be a state of such focus that one can be lightning-alert and yet perfectly calm. An offensive defense. Or maybe such inner peace that nothing can upset it.

SUPER INSPIRING. Even though "it is probably a state that humans cannot achieve," it seems like something to strive for, every day.


Little Witch Academia - This was a 25-minute short by a new studio. It's a school for witches!
It's hard to summarize the plot without giving shit away (only 25 min!), but this style is basically my mental image of Harry Potter. It was gr9, and they've apparently funded a second installment via Kickstarter. I'll be watching it!
The animation studio has uploaded this to YouTube, so you can watch it here.