Astro suddenly decided to update and there were a few moments...

I got about halfway through episode eight [of Lucky☆Star] when I caught myself checking my watch and wondering if this was an hour-long show or something. I turned it off at that point - I realized that it really wasn’t that good of a show and I was wasting a lot of time just for the 30 or so seconds of really funny stuff in each episode.

I managed to clear the hurdle and it seems to be getting livelier and not tilted so much towards the inbred otaku humor anymore. This actually intrigues me a bit. The ep.11 seems like an entirely different show at times. Can a show drop the old fanbase and replace it in the middle of a run?

I tried out a Manabi Straight and Master of Epic, but neither grabbed my interest enough to watch more than the first episode. Someday I’ll give Manabi a chance since it comes so highly recommended, but not now.

I thought the first episode of Manabi barely made the job done for me, because I cringed looking at Manabi's antics. I am of an opinion that "it gets better later" is not an excuse at all. On second watching it turned out that I missed a lot of great moments about it (for example, the effect of her song). Don't know whose fault that was.

[] Sola has kept me glued to the screen. There is only one episode left to go, and I still have no idea how it will end. Up to this point it has been outstanding, and each episode has gotten better in many ways. The animation quality has actually improved with every episode, and there are times where it is absolutely stunning.

I’ve really enjoyed it, but I don’t really feel like trying to spread the word that much anymore. I imagine that the type of people who would like this show are watching it already anyway.

I turned away from Sola because a couple of people mentioned that Sola was "like Kanon and Air". But if Astro can take it, it most assuredly wasn't. Those dumb anime bloggers never know what they write... Just kidding. But not entirely. It looks like the wisdom of the crowd was not very advanced in this case, so I'm downloading ep.1 of Sola now.