Mawaru Penguindrum - END
I'm glad the show didn't crash and burn on the final stretch. It was a great piece of character drama with really tight writing that tackled some seriously dark stuff head-on, albeit in a pretty abstract way at times (which is part of why I liked it, actually). It managed to catch me from episode one and only got better and better as time went on, and even though it did rely a lot on undisclosing vital information about the cast's past, it never felt forced and was often foreshadowed in some way or another (even if some of it was hard to understand), so I was okay with it. It's definitely going into my Top Anime list.
Also, the way the show used lewd imagery in ways that you can't help but find disgusting was really interesting (except for hatHimari, I guess). It did feel like a pessimist view on sexuality, but I guess I did find some novelty in that.
Yurikuma Arashi - #1-5
This, on the other hand, has been a much harder sell for me so far. While it does have the same elements of slowly explaining the cast's motivations to the audience and some interesting abstract elements, I guess the generic high school backdrop and the more alien setting of mankind walling itself off of a sudden outburst of sentient, man-eating, shape-shifting bears are making it a lot harder for me to stomach.
Then there's the gratuitious yuri fanservice all over the place, which sadly errs a lot more towards titillation compared to Penguindrum... and then the court stock footage we've been getting once per episode so far is infinitely less hype-inducing than hatHimari's.
Also, am I alone in thinking that cookie-cutter animal catchphrases get really grating after a while? I mean, cat-speak is okay-ish when they turn al their "ni"s into "nya"s (ie: Black Hanekawa), but simply adding "gao" at the end of every other sentence is vexing rather than cute.