As for Inukami, ah, I actually have it in my collection. I approve. Unwittingly introduced Doug Weeks to it, which is to say it corrupted him significantly.
Can’t say I was surprised with Seto, as like Lucky Star it’s a hit or miss show. Or just call me crazy, since it reminded me too much of Urutsei Yatsura to resist.

Now, as for overexposure of Spice and Wolf… The source material for the show itself is pretty strong (it being from a light novel), though the economic aspect might turn off some people… The problem I’m seeing right now is that (much like some people complain about Okawari) the execution isn’t going in directions one would expect. There’s Chloe for one, who doesn’t even appear in the books or the comic version. As for the nudity, it’s actually part of the first two books (or so I’ve been told — don’t have a copy yet, and my light novel budget is nonexistent this month), but disappears afterwards when the story plunges into the trading aspect.

Oh, and the production values aren’t anything to crow about. Yikes.

Spice and Wolf’s problems go a long way beyond the superficial. Given the response it’s been getting I decided to give it another go, see if maybe I was being unfair. I wasn’t. 1) I dislike the generic male protagonist. 2) I really, really dislike Horo. 3) I don’t like the animation. 4) Given that I don’t give two shits about the two lead characters, I also don’t give a rat’s ass about the plot. I can see that it’s not terrible and I guess I can see why some people would like it, but if it was running in a better season no one would give it much attention at all. I liken it a lot to the first season of Zero no Tsukaima, which was extremely average but because it was in a drought period in terms of good anime, everyone acted like it was far better than it actually is.

Okawari is not a bad show. I didn’t say it was a bad show. I said it was slightly below average (mediocre), especially relative to the first season. I’m not about to restate everything I said in the entry, but the new team simply don’t have the same level of comedic timing and they miss a lot of opportunities that the previous team would have capitalised on. Add to that the fact that the new designs aren’t as good, the animation is fucking horrible (look at the way they walk in the OP for god’s sake) and that they add in strange fisheye lens effects, distracting extreme closeups, and so on… even that black-faces thing is nonsensical, especially given that the faces are actually there. Why are they doing that? It’s not funny, it’s not artistic, it’s fucking creepy. I get the strong impression that this team has watched too much stuff that actually does these sorts of things right (i.e. everything Akiyuki Shinbo has done from Pani Poni Dash onwards) and tried to copy it. And failed. I’m still going to watch the show, but it is demonstrably inferior to the first season and I doubt anyone is going to argue otherwise.

Also, I go into stuff with a completely open mind as much as possible. It’s not a high brow / low brow thing, it’s just that while I have a reasonable tolerance for stupid crap, I won’t waste my time and bandwidth on shitty tripe like the bulk of this season if I could just as easily be catching up on vastly superior shows from previous years. And for the record, I dropped Seto no Hanayome halfway in because I didn’t find it very amusing, due to the fact that humor is a very cultural and personal thing, and I’m not American. However I enjoyed Inukami immensely. Go figure.

P.S. I’ve been hanging out with Haesslich online for years now - he was one of the major forum contributors and better members of the QC team on EFO back when I ran it, before Joedoebell took over and then ceded it back to The Count.

Granted, it also has its faults. Haesslich (a common poster among blogs) mentioned the blacked-out faces (interestingly, they’re actually fully drawn, THEN splashed with a shade of black — turn up the contrast enough, and you’ll see this), while I point at an anime-only character (Fuyuki, the new next-door neighbor) as a major weakness. Everything else is forgiveable.

Then again, I never go into a show with any preconceptions or expectations. So, I can enjoy so-called high-brow shows like Mushishi and Seirei no Moribito, or the low-brow humor present in Seto no Hanayome or Inukami.

Maybe Negs has placed his standards so high it’s hard to please him anymore? Mayhaps. It’s something that happens to anyone who’s watched anime more than ‘casually’.

I couldn’t agree more on H2O and Rosario + Vampire though. I only got through one episode of H2O and a little bit into the second episode of Rosario + Vampire before I wanted to jump in front of a bus.

And Minami-ke ~Okawari~? I thought Minami-ke was supposed to be funny, but I’m yet to laugh.

And it’s Major season 4!!