Thanks to the wonders of broadcast order, today's episode (13) was actually the first episode. But in reality it was a pale imitation of the first broadcast episode (01), which it ostensibly precedes. The distance from great to mediocore is only one wrong step.

In my judgement, despite all the trickery, Shinbo failed to break the curse of Jin Kobayashi and the running manga. The official ending (12) was ok, and attempted a minimal closure, but did not reach further than Fruits Basket. So, the leader episode was the best part, and the rest wasn't worth watching (mind, plenty of people disagree, but the war horror didn't impress me).

Liked: it wasn't bad
Rewatch: not likely

QUICKIE: To see a drastically different tack on Arashi 13, check how Moero Amazon summarizes it as: "Jun is cute indeed. But we weren't able to see Jun in swimsuit, and it's a pity..." (all screencaps are that of Jun as well). For each his own, I guess.

Another thing, I know now that I should've watched K-ON instead. I have Crunchyroll and easy availability to blame for that. Ironically, I was interested enough in the beginning to switch from Crunchyroll to raws on Youtube in order to gain a week.