Based on your comments, I decided to try "Ore no imouto ga...", "Bakuman", and "Yosuga no sora". I am going to try watching them raw. We'll see how it goes.

Bakuman #1. The first anime I saw in this format was Comic Party, which I liked pretty well. There are interesting similarities and differences with Bakuman. I'll be interested to see how it turns out. I'm assuming this show will take the characters through the whole doujinisi scene, including trips the Comic Con. That the girlfriend wants to be a seiyuu is an amusing twist. I would probably not have chose this one, except Rob mentioned it was the same storytellers as in Death Note. I wasn't that captivated by the first ep, but I'll definitely give it 4 or 5 to warm up.

I have to say that, watching Bakuman raw, I didn't quite get a few details.


Also, at the beginning, he was hashing through the usual litany of hurdles faced by Japanese youth: entrance exams, job-hunting, the possibility of becoming a freeter. It seemed like he wanted a way out of all that, but then his behavior seemed bought in. It was a little confusing. If the anime continues like this I'll probably switch to the subs.

Ore no Imouto ga..#1
I am not so sure that the daughter couldn't get away with an otaku habit without anyone finding out. If  I understood the raw correctly, it seemed like they all knew she was showing some hikkikomori tendencies, and that is a common problem in Japan. There was actually less fanservice in this show than I expected from the comments here: mostly just ass-in-the-air shots. The designs are way-moe, of course. I don't know if I'll finish it either, but I actually enjoyed it reasonably well. (Neither moe nor fanservice bothers me.) I just have trouble seeing where it can go that is interesting.

Less believable to me is that she could be appearing in nationally distributed magazines and no one in the family knows it: especially the brother. But this is anime-land, where most teenagers are abandoned by their parents, tragedies happen conveniently to move along a plot, chance encounters happen when you most or least need them to, etc. I figure this is not much more disbelief to suspend.

I am so wrapped up finishing Kimikiss right now that all the other stuff seems stale by comparison. I'll write my reaction to that whole series in the proper season thread after I finish.