1 not sure if linking to something like that is what you want on this site but using http://torrentscan.com/ I found a copy of Ego Trip at http://tracker.openbittorrent.com/announce

The entire series and two copies of the movie are also on demonoid.com
if you need an invite to demonoid I have one available

2 Well, in terms of watching bad new series so you don't have to....

Panty & Stocking: The Gainax guys finally ran out of gross-out bodily fluids after 6 episodes, so they had to do something else in #7, The first part being a transformers parody, and the second being a "Need to get a job to make earth money" story for the angels, which of course goes awry when they hit it big in a casino run by the two devil girls from an earlier episode.

The World God Only Knows took one potentially interesting plot/character twist and totally ignored it.

MM! Continues to hide tiny grains of Really Funny amid deserts of Obnoxious.

All in all, you're not missing much.

Although I'm still seeding Wakfu if you want to give French Anime a try.

3 Re: Mauser

I guess we have different interpenetration of this season's.  I didn't bother with Gainax's latest offering, but for me, the 2 stand out show of this season is The World God Only Knows and My Little Sister Can't Be This Cute.  Your mileage may differ.

4

Steve, last year you'd mentioned you'd watched the first episode of "Wolf and Spice" and found it better than you'd expected.  Did you ever watch any more of it?  I'd be interested in your opinion.  If not, and you're really bored, it might be worth a view now, simply 'cause it was so different from most anime (at least, to my more limited experience).

Yes, this is a kind of "recommendation," so feel free to excoriate me scathingly.

5 I really have no urge to watch any more of it. Sorry.

6 Kind of in the same spot. New stuff isn't really appealing. Decided I'd go through some of the older things I've got on hand - there's enough of it that it ought to be a while before I need new stuff again!

7

I've done some rewatching. Lately I've been watching StrikerS again, or pieces of it.

Caro is pretty neat, you know that? There were so many ways they could have ruined that character, and they didn't. She could have been angsty. she could have been snarky. She could have been a coward. but she isn't.

She doesn't complain. She doesn't ask for any concessions because she's the smallest. She does the training, tough as it is, and works as hard as she can. I think the only time in the series she ever really got pissed off was when she summoned Voltaire for the first time and frankly, she had every right to be.

When they were about to go into action for the first time, she was nervous. I don't think she was afraid, in the sense of fearing for herself. I think she was afraid she'd let the others down.. It was more like stage fright. But she didn't complain, and once the action started, she did her job. And when things went really wrong, she got it together really well and saved the situation.

If you really pushed all four of Subaru, Tia, Erio, and Caro to the max, Caro is by far the strongest of the four. She's really impressive. I like her, and respect her enormously.

I'm really glad they didn't make her henshin deck a lolicon-delight, the way Nanoha and Fate were in the first two series.

8 I've worked on shows where I watched the henshin sequence every time. With Nanoha, it was "oh lord skip skip skip!" I guess I can feel good about that; the job didn't turn me into a lolicon!

Honestly, Caro's a little too good. Like you say, she never complains, never grouses, never gets upset except when she really ought to. She's practically a Belldandy. There's very little trope subversion to her at all, in a series with a lot of subverted tropes. (Elio gets a bit of this too, though he's a little more aggressive in accordance with the various male tropes.)

I like Teana as a character, but I've got to admit that she's a bit overdone; Subaru is definitely my favorite of the bunch. Almost the entire worth of Strikers is contained in the Subaru/Teana dynamic...

9

The second OP for StrikerS spends a lot more time on Subaru than anyone else. That, and certain other things, make me think that deep down the writers thought she was the most important character in the series, the one it was mostly about.

She's the first major character in the series to show up on screen in the first episode, and she's the last one we see at the end of the last episode. (Or I thought she was. I just checked, and Nanoha is last. Subaru is second-to-last.)

10 You don't have to apologize.  We like what you have to say, or we wouldn't show up. 

11 Heaven knows I understand about the whole "not wanting to post" thing.  Take your time, rest up, then put the rest of us bloggers to shame when you come back when you put up 7000 words on the correct positioning of the little fingers when you throw a Kamehameha.

(I don't know what's scarier: that I spelled that correctly, or that Firefoxy's spellchecker has "Kamehameha" in it...)

And for the record, Subaru is far and away my favorite character in StrikerS, and perhaps my fave in the entire Nanohaverse... except for perhaps Vita.

12 Actually WonderDuck, it's perfectly rational for the spellchecker to have Kamehameha's name in it.  He is, after all, the famous King of Hawaii.

(Which always put me in mind of Goku standing in for Punchy in a Hawaiian Punch commercial.  "How about a nice Hawaiian Punch?")

BigFire, What I dislike about TWGOK is the big red reset button at the end of every "case".  It's about as satisfying as watching that first Voyager time loop episode over and over. The Interesting thing about the Idol singer physically vanishing with the lack of attention was totally handwaved away with the next episode and virtually ignored thereafter.  A shame, because that was the first thing that really perked my interest.  As a result of the big red reset button, the hero has undergone ZERO character development, and there have been ZERO consequences from his actions.  That's what makes it dissatisfying to me.

At least in MM! the "Hero" is accumulating a sort of "Negative Harem".

Well, I do like the OP in TWGOK.  And I also really like the ED song in Panty & Stocking.

13 This isn't an "open thread". I don't do those here.