Some news first. I MAY be attending two cons in quick succession towards the end of May - Anime Central (Chicago/Rosemont) and Anime North (Toronto). If anyone's going to these, let me know - I'd love to meet some friendly faces.

Okay, on to the anime. First off, I decided to drop Special A and Tower of Druaga. The former had a second episode which was almost literally painful to watch. I feel rather guilty giving up on the latter (again, because of Gonzo's give-it-directly-to-the-gaijin marketing approach), but in the end it's just consistently failed to impress me. It's a bit like they cooked up a pork chop bought on discount two days after the expiration date, and then tried to make it into a proper meal by throwing all sorts of extra stuff onto it. Sure it's pretty and occasionally funny, but at a more fundamental level I just don't think there's much there. Also, I haven't yet dropped Vampire Knight - amazingly so, because it's infuriating. They had an entire episode (2) where nothing happened. Seriously, I listed the plot points afterwards to make sure I hadn't missed something - every one of them either didn't matter in the slightest or had already been dealt with in the first episode. Ep 3 ends with a nice moment for what it's worth, but it's a nice moment that pacing-wise should probably have happened at the end of the premiere. I'll let them have their rather hokey pseudo-sexual tension if they insist, but I wish they'd just get on with the story already. This show is going to make me suffer, I know it already.

As far as new series, I picked up:

Golgo 13. I've ranted a bit about how awesome this show is on the boards. Really: if you love high absurdity and PERFECT MACHINES OF SNIPE, you should be watching this. The second episode actually manages to out-epic Death Note's best, if only because it makes no pretense of showing itself off about it.
Macross Frontier. This is one of a very few shows that I just cannot imagine any dyed-in-the-wool anime fan not liking. The big stars are the 3D animators (this is the first time it actually looks pretty good!) and Yoko Kanno, but really, no matter who you are there's something here for you to enjoy.
Daughter of Twenty Faces (Nijuumensou no Musume). I'm taking a chance on this one. Imagine if Dickens had grown up on a steady diet of Harry Potter and Lupin III - this is something like what he would have come up with. I'm not sure if it'll work out, but the first episode had such charm to it that I can't in good conscience not keep going with it.

Finally, other shows. Junjo Romantica was rather disappointing (it's just not all that great - and here after Okane Ga Nai I thought I'd been newly minted as a yaoi fan). Kaiba was rather awesome and stylistically it's the best thing so far this year, but it still left me oddly cold. Real Drive also looks very decent, but it too failed to light my fire. In a crowded season, I can only watch so much...

Okay, that's about it updates-wise. BONUS: turns out there's an all-new Nine Inch Nails single out. Who knew?