Yeah I'm having trouble with Samurai 7 as well.  I actually put it in today hoping to maybe get closer to finish it (I'm near the end of the second bluray disc).  Then I remembered Arrested Development season 4 got added to Netflix.  Blassreiter is pretty intense.  They don't really go into too much back story, just leave hints and expect you to fill in the blanks, but I thought it was good.  How far are you in it? 

Anyone know if Accel World is any good?  I watched a few episodes at Anime North this weekend.  It got me interested.  Saw a few episodes of Berserk too, godamn that animation/art O_O.  Anime was truly well drawn in the mid 90s.  Not really too many new animes I looked at at the con.  Crunchyroll actually sent people over so they set up some stuff.  Viz might even have sent some promo material, there were water marks on Berserk. 

OKEY... DON'T! Just go back and watch the first two season ASSAP! Don't make that stupid thing... JUST DON'T!... the series have a rgeat Story, and Great characters.. is a waste to just go and wtach the ending...

Lots of good things are based on eroge (like Kanon or Air), and there are lots of good eroge that don't get decent adaptations (Fate/stay night, Kagetsu Tohya, Katahane). I assume that's just unfortunate wording on your side, but please don't generalise genericness of tons of VNs (mostly eroge whose only selling point is porn).

While I do agree that skipping the first two seasons is a silly thing, I can't say that Shakugan no Shana is a great show. It was one of my first anime and I even own a DVD set of the first season, but I would no longer recommend it. The archetypical titular character (who created an archetype of her own) is an annoying, badly made tsundere who constantly tries to ensure her own superiority. Plus, there's an incredible gap between the last OVA in Shakugan no Shana S and the third season - the studio has skipped a considerable amount of novel material, and the confusion at the beginning of S3 caused me to drop the show entirely.

I wasn't trying to critism the series because it was eroge based, just pointed that.. my bad :/

Yeah... I was really confused with the beginning of the third season... but is still the series is pretty good.. I haven't watched any of the ovas.. so not sure what are you talking about.. but I wasn't that lose with the story...

and i'm not sure what are you trying to say about the characters and tsunderes.. is that bad? I enjoyed with Shana and or the clones later... is just a trend like sometimes are Little ssiters, sengoku based series, yuusha-maou based series (there have been some latelly...), and how probably will be Patcheyed girls and have been the term of Chuunibyou (8th grade syndrome) recently... but I don't think that's a valid point to criticsism, just because it became popular?

I liked that serie a lot.. but toward the end just became really WTF?! And the ending was just normal and not so convincing for me... but liked a lot that serie... reallly, but the ending was a bit dissapointing and confusing.

Just got some more series Claymore , Basilisk and Noein , I don't know a lot about Claymore and Noein , so what can I expect from them in a general plot and overall rating.

I'm not saying that popular=bad, because that would be blatantly hipster :P

The part abous Shana clones was just a side remark about a trend that has appeared. I'm more concerned about how annoying such character can be, especially in most of the series featuring Shana Clones. Why is that? Because being a tsundere loli with KugiRie's voice becomes a definig trait for most of such characters, hence preventing character development, something that I sincerely hate.

Don't get me wrong, though - a character archetype is by no means a bad thing, as it is inevitable - it's virtually impossible to come up with a character that would not fall into one archetype or another, or a deconstruction, Flanderization, inversion or subversion of one. All the bricks have been invented and the challenge is to connect them in a meaningful way.

My main problem with Shakugan no Shana is that at some point I started expecting something I shouldn't have from an average shounen series (not the same kind as manga shounen, but there's a similar think among novels - like Zero no Tsukaima, Index or aforementioned Shana), or maybe I got bored with painfully archetypical characters, or maybe it was this huge gap between second and third season. Whichever it was, it caused me to drop the series altogether. And regard it as not holding any value beyond repetitive Good Versus Evil shounen-style battles with superpowers where a regular high school student gets involved with supernatural world and becomes the only person able to save everyone, or at least the crucial key to do so.

And let's not confuse setting with archetypes - Sengoku era, fantasy, space opera - either of these can make a great work, because the setting doesn't define much - you can move between high/low fantasy and hard/soft sci-fi quite easily, just swapping aliens for a fantasy race, technology for magic etc. I also applaud skillful use of cliched jRPG setting of Hero against the Demon Lord to create great and quite insightful works like Maoyuu or Hataraku Maou-sama! Incest-ish works are fine as long as they don't fall under the generic harem type (compare and contrast OniiAi against Mahoua Koukou no Rettousei), eyepatch moe and autismoe are fun in their own way too - Chu2koi managed to escape the fate of generic harem too.

tl;dr I don't complain about the existence of Shana Clones but about how they are used.

CLAYMORE is a pretty good show... So I'll warn/spoile You this Teresa dies Over your own risk read that.. but either way read it or not, You'll come back crying or angry.. xD.. Well, the story and characters are pretty good, specially some villians, the setting world is like mid age and very grey f tones of colors. Toward the end it differ from the original and have a alternative ending (the original manga continues nowaday) So if You want to continue stop at chapters 22 or less...

the other one I don't know.. and Basillisk is really great.. The manga, the Live Action and this animated series...

I'm not confusing anything, I just say that sometimes settings or archetypes become trends, and that what happenned with kugimiya Rie is because she got a lot of lots of fans.. and thus she became a good seller point for any series... just like some years ago Hirano Aya was. And like the Seiyuu of Sunohara (CLANNAD) became just stuck with charcaters like that (a lot of Fool/joker/comedy reliever character he have do). And like sometimes certains musicians/singers/bands repeat continuosly until burn (Nigthmare, jap, Ali project, kotoko, kawada mami, mizuki nana, tomatsu haruka, and a LOOOONG etc.) just because halp the series sell.. I remember I began towatch a Show (Dragonauts or somethin lika that) just because the principal cast of Haruhi was voicing there... ended being boring and dropped it later...

Is not the same all those shows you say.. but still is a trend... not equal but similar themes... is fun to watch it.. but curious how most of them get aired at the same time or in a short period of time..

About Shana, I didn't feel any hole on the arguument between second and third season... surprising the beginning but they filled the holes later properly, I think.. at least this way was a more impactant way to begin the third season. Or may be I just fill the blank space on my own too well... :/

Well, the problem is that there's always at least one or two Sengoku series in a year, bunch of fantasy and some more sci-fi, lots of modern Japan shows about high schoolers and maybe one or two "rare" cases like Gosick where the theme is completely different.

I believe I didn't say that trends and following them is inherently bad. As seen with Chu2koi, Maoyuu and Hataraku, it tends to bring some quality content. The problems start when series start basing their premises on trends - like having a tsundere loli with superpowers as the main character (Dragon Crisis, Hidan no Aria) and then progressing the story in almost exactly the same way as everyone else for one simple reason - because it sells. I can't see most of the Shana Clones (aforementioned Dragon Crisis and Hidan no Aria, as well as Zero no Tsukaima) in any other way. Thankfully there are several examples like Aisaka Taiga...

Anyway, I have grown to despise genericness, that is series built on a "premise that sells", because they are just a waste of time and bring nothing valuable to my experiences. This might have been one of the things that caused me to abandon Shana in S3 - that Shana was so generic it became its own caricature (the same thing happened with Ika Musume and Working!!, but we're not discussing those now <: ).

Another is the confusion - I don't know if you marathoned S3, I know I tried to watch it when it aired. So I couldn't just put on the next episode hoping that everything will be explained there. A small hint on storytelling: a small (or even medium) bit of confusion is perfectly acceptable, as long as it's hinted to be explained soon. Shana didn't do that, introducing a timeskip during which SOMETHING happened, Shana knew exactly what and so her priority wasn't to find out (while being accompanied by viewers), but to resolve the problem, which automatically put the resolution off until an undisclosed later date. This is mildly interesting, because just having whatshisface become one of the bad guys without giving a reason or at least "introduction" beforehand isn't enough, at least for me. But that's just me and my opinion, especially considering the fact that my tastes have evolved a lot between the last Shakugan no Shana S OVA and the first episode of Final. Though despite that I still enjoyed Zero no Tsukaima F a lot more - because it didn't make the same mistakes, instead introducing a new conflict properly and not holding back with explanations.