matplotlib/matplotlib — pull request #3621 by mdboom (2014-10-07 21:41:09+00:00)
Title: matplotlib.__version__ is now unicode as of 1.4.0

see here: https://github.com/pydata/pandas/issues/8502

this breaks ``LooseVersion`` (not sure why that is)

is this typical to make this unicode? (and not a plain string even in py2)?