Yup, it was as obvious as it looked after all!

With episode five, El Cazador de la Bruja finally sounds like a real Kajiura Yuki series: positively gorgeous! The music has not been at the fore quite in the way I expect of a Bee Train series, but it finally seems to be doing it. I have to admit that I am beginning to like many of the main cast now too; they are quirky enough to be interesting. The plot remains very, very basic at the moment, but it is obvious that they will hit us with some big twists later on. I just hope they are good twists and well timed, for it does look like Bee Train have something with real potential here after all.

Episode 19 of Ginga Tetsudou 999 was good for a bit of a chuckle: it was about time the Conductor got to show off a little! The world of `saints' was very typical Leijiverse, albeit not in the manner I had originally suspected. Entertaining viewing, but I have to admit that it was not the most engaging episode from the series.

With episodes 35-40 I have finally completed Watashi no Ashinaga Ojisan. The end of the series was mostly quite predictable, but quite nice. Judy's final speach was very nice, and her finally meeting Daddy Long-Legs was very well done --- though I still find her relatioship with Jervis more than a little disturbing. I also appreciated the recap snippets, as I was finally able to see just how much the characters have changed over the course of the series, showing that the animators skimped not on the details. Overall it was quite a good series, but nowhere near the same level as its sister series, Akage no Anne.

Episode two of Wellber no Monogatari has firmly fixed the series in the `must watch' category for me, with amusing characters, lovely visuals and an interesting plot. The action sequences are well choreographed too, though at times the `flashy' CG sequences look a bit dodgy, but that is almost an industry standard anyway! How the Princess failed to be noticed earlier when she was standing out so much is beyond me, but with her having quickly learned her position I suspect we could be in for some interesting character dynamic in the coming episodes.

Chapter 173 of Mahou Sensei Negima! was a nice wind-up for this sub-arc, with all the characters quickly reaching new levels of power in their respective skills. Some of these, such as Haruna using her ability to clone herself so as to make her doujinshi faster, were quite hillarious too. Still, with the way that Eva was acting at the end, I suspect we might yet be in for something even better before they head off in search of Nagi.