As do I my friend, as do I.

Happy Halloween to you too...Haven't celebrated it since forever, though.

Thanks, so you should have someone dressed up as Haruhi?

Though, that is a mixed blessing IMO.

The only major issue I've had was that there's a bit too much dialogue - and coming from a hardcore Bakemonogatari fan, that says something. Episode one just plain had too much, while in episode four I felt Saber and Lancer talked too much during their fight, making the proceeding feel a bit unnatural.

How would you change the master's group, though? Replacing Lancer's master would be pretty easy, but the rest of the "cold professional" brigade is Kiritsugu, Kotomine, and Tsokiomi... Kotomine has an established personality and I think there's something to be said for contrasting the cynicism of the other two with the more optimistic attitude of their children.

I generally consider myself pretty good with dialogue and original characters (says the guy who has never written anything more substantial than a 37K word 'draft" for NaNoWriMo 2007), but only with certain kinds of characters and themes. The stuff Gen is doing here doesn't fall within that range.

Also, here, have some moe:
http://oreno.imouto.org/post/show/196464/
(I have to admit that that's actually one thing that strikes me as a continuity flaw between Fate/Zero and F/SN. Admittedly I haven't played the game, but I never got the impression that Rin and Sakura actually recognized each other in the anime despite attending the same school.)

I won't deny I've been wanting to see more loli-Rin.

I'm not generally a fan of brooding characters but I honestly find Kiritsugu kind of sympathetic. When he does stuff like compare the weight of his daughter to that of the gun he's holding... he comes across as different from say, Tsokiomi, who doesn't really seem to care what he puts his family through.

And as for a serious response to the Rin question... I'd probably enjoy having a Rin-like character involved in some capacity, but I'm not sure about using a Rin-like character as a master. Fate/Zero's conflict draws a lot of character from the high "bastard to good guy" ratio among the masters and I wouldn't want to mess with that. A character like Miharu or Hitagi would be a better fit for a master in this story, IMO.

But overall its just not that big a deal to me. I like what Gen has done with this story, and unlike with say, C3, I don't find myself thinking that I could have written a better version (my version would probably end up channeling a lot of Iriya no Sora or Kamisama Dolls in terms of character relationships and gunning for audience sympathy).

I've actually been referring to him as Paul since the first episode when chatting with Reckoner.

Yeah of course it's a reference to Paul Kariya, yet another in a long line of jokes I've made that nobody is likely to get.

You know, after Episode 5, I reckon Rider in Fate/Zero is pretty like the Ultimate Warrior from old-school WWF.

Who dares to criticize Fate/Zero?!

When I first saw Infinite Stratos episode 12, I remember being bothered by the Houki ending too.

More recently, however, I got the chance to skim read that scene in the original IS novels (the current anime adopts three of seven volumes, and I suspect there may be more to come), which like many LNs are written from a first person perspective (edit: sorry, meant to say that it gives the thoughts of the current viewpoint character... its still third person) . In that version, it’s clear that he’s not so much picking Houki over Charlotte as about to give in to temptation when the rest of the girls show up. I strongly suspect that we’re not going to see a “winner” anytime soon.

That said, I’m still somewhat disappointed by this result since the “Charlotte route” is unusually well developed in the anime and it really feels like the author is just giving in to harem anime tropes by not committing to it.

Regarding Guilty Crown – I one of the people who actually has been taking a wait and see approach to it, because I was seeing a definite mix of things I liked and didn’t like. Some thoughts:

-My favourite parts of the show are definitely the high stakes “cat and mouse” games we saw in episodes one and three.

-The actual summoning system is kind of cool but every time Shu uses it in combat a little voice in my head screams “OMG H4X!”. It’s just too powerful and rule-breaking. So while I like the cat and mouse games, I don’t much care for the large battles.

-I had high hopes for Inori early on, seeing her as a bit of an “action idol” in the vein of someone like Macross Frontier’s Sheryl Nome. Now she reminds me a lot of Iriya Kana – broken and half dead. Except that Kana got significant moe points from me because I could always feel how badly she loved Asaba and how it gave her the will to keep fighting. Inori just feels kind of… dead. Maybe that’ll change over the course of the series. For the moment though, I’m liking the two pilot girls (Tsugumi and Ayase) more.

Since you like the NWO, I thought you'd get a kick out of this.

I could go as far back as the mid/late 80's (WWF, WWE, WCW, ECW) as long as it was on TV or rented, I watched it. And I still remember (alittle bit) the start of the NWO.