-Snowblind-

If you like military sci-fi, give the Helfort's War series a shot (two books out now, third coming up in November, I think). A little light on characterization, but it's pretty good on the military/action side of things. It's written by a former RN/RAN officer, so shipboard life and the tactics feel authentic.

As opposed a lot of sex-obsessed western fans...? Nothing happened.... deal.

...How did the other two characters actually develop more than this, though? You learn more about their backgrounds and what makes them who they are, but fundamentally they don't change much. As far as I can see, the Alto at the beginning of the series would still make the same decisions that the Alto at the end of the series would make. He still chose the sky over the girl (or his old life). Sheryl had a bit more development, but she also had far more screen time toward the end of the series, not to mention impending death to move things along. All in all, Ranka may have suffered from under-development (though as pointed out by FV, not as dramatically as some would make it out to be, but she didn't fare that much worse development-wise than the other two leads, and arguably far better than Alto.

I didn't see it quite that way at all. In fact, it seemed pretty open ended to me... ...Such as? Saving Frontier and Island 1? Helping to bring peace and understanding between the Vajra and humans? For saving Sheryl? Yes, that's absolutely horrible. How dare she. At worst she was used by Grace, and Sheryl's fate would have been no different if she hadn't found Ranka instead. Any harm done was purely unintentional (in fact, it was encouraged by those in command of Frontier, Alto and Sheryl... they're as much to blame as pointed out in previous threads...) and all because of a misunderstanding of just what 'power' she really had over the Vajra.

I think, as pointed out by someone in the episode 21 thread, it has more to do with their pro-Sheryl stance than any rational reason to dislike Ranka. I can't see any reason to hate her (or even dislike her, but that's a matter of personal preference). Sure, she's made some mistakes, but every major character in the show has.

Going commando in more ways than one...

Really not getting the reaction here... Sure, he was a great character, but all the signs that he was going to die have been there for a few episodes now (at least the previous episode, if not earlier), so it shouldn't come as a surprise. And why shouldn't a likable character be killed off? If there's no sense of danger for the characters, then it's just boring, and has no meaning. And if you're going to kill a character off, at least he got a great send off. So... absolutely no complaints about the episode, and it's still a great series. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.

...Is it just me, or does that kinda look like Dr. Chiba from M7? O.o

I've never had a problem with .mkv files. I don't own any high end systems, either, just a 2.0 single core Turion with 2gb of ram and integrated video and a 3500+ with 1gb of ram and a 7300. I also use MPC with k-lite. No trouble to play files, no choppiness, no timing issues. O.o

...Yeah, not buying that myself. I think it's as simple as her being a street urchin that Grace chose as an experiment that no one would miss if something went wrong.

It's not necessarily even saying that all of these fleets are still out there. Some have obviously settled, and others are known to have been lost, so even the fact that it still depicts Megaroad-1 on the map doesn't prove anything one way or the other. It's just saying that, yeah, these colonization fleets were launched.

Halifax, Nova Scotia...