While cooking lunch, I checked Chizumatic on my Kindle Fire, and Steven is giving IS a second chance.

And while I won't say it's great I can say that it isn't really too awful. I'm enjoying it, and it isn't quite as dreadful as mecha shows so often are.

Yes! My capsule entry for IS is "Sadly the best fun anime Japan still can do". Remember Sekirei? Kampfer? This is better than either of those. Not great, but we take what we can. It's the same verdict that Jessie delivered after one episode: "The show attempts to establish an atmosphere of sexism" (heck yes!), but "I have little doubt that, in 6 months or so, most people will have forgotten that the show even existed" (yeah). Of course, "most people" forget everything that's not being constantly re-applied to their brains. See my research into Haibane Renmei: does the result mean that it was a "forgettable" anime? If not, the fact that "most" people quickly forget IS means nothing in itself, too [1]. I am only quoting Jessie as an example of specific sentiment, arising immediately after seeing the show.

Of course, one thing that otaku will always argue about is which of the girls in a harem show really should win. For me there isn't any contest: it's Charlotte.

Cecilia is arrogant and obnoxious. So is Rin. Houki is too screwed up and angsty. Laura is a psychopath. Charlotte is kind, gentle, trying hard, and quite frankly is the best looking of the bunch. (Even in drag.) And though her backstory is among the more sad, she isn't sunk in self-pity.

Yes! Paging Dr. Mike, Dr. Mike to the courtesy telephone please! Although, as I mentioned in retrospective, IMHO Charlotte was not as dramatically superior as everyone else thought. In the "ends" bracket, I wrote: "I wish that Charlotte did not join the rest of the cockblocking gang in the end. I expected more from her [..]". Nonetheless, the overall picture is unambiguous, and Steven's entry sums it up.

[1] They actually animated the meta story of fans moving on into a cute OVA Rescue me, Mave-chan!. It may be that numbers of people remembering Mave-chan are larger than numbers of those remembering Yukikaze!