Fortunately I haven't tried Diet Dr. Pepper yet.

When she keeps holding saito down saying don't do the laundry and now saito saids ill be back and all that like newleyweds so cute, >.< also siesta is pissed off too That was funny :P and also the part where saito open the door and guchi was behind it and knocked him away and thens threatens momentrecy(spellcheck) lol hilarous...

Saitoh will probably anger both Louise and Siesta for different reasons Louise because she thinks Saitoh will go see Siesta and Siesta because of Louise's love love attitude and I bet Saitoh will probably blackmail Montmorency into finding a cure and from last week preview maybe Tabitha and Kirche will meet up with them somewhere of course Louise will be cured and she will show her "grateful" attitude lol

The first half of the episode was pretty funny - the part with Louise biting Saito's neck was great. I do wish we could have seen more of Siesta getting angry, but oh well. I'm glad that they're forming a story here at least, one that looks like it'll carry the series through to the end.

If you haven't read the novel, then how can you tell if it's rushed or not? There will always be moments where a development in a story makes you go "wtf" or "yeah right", but that doesn't mean it's poorly done or rushed.

It's true that Shana's anime moved away from the novel in the final episodes (around when Ball Masque showed up), but that's because the anime has followed the novel up to that point (around vol.6) and now it needed an ending because the season was ending, since they obviously couldn't continue on to vol.7+.

There has been a few changes made to the Shana anime (such as Alastor not appearing during the Friagne fight, but in the final episode instead), some of which are good changes, some are bad. But as a whole, you can tell that Shakugan no Shana's anime was a pretty big success simply by looking at the Japanese fan reactions and sale results. Story aside, the anime did have impressive sakuga quality and an excellent soundtrack.

Again, no anime adaptation can ever replicate the original story fully (some people might argue that Suzumiya Haruhi was a near replication of the novel, and I agree that Kyoani has proved itself to be the god of animation companies. But compared to other anime adaptations, Suzumiya Haruhi's anime covered very little of the original novel (they only covered vol.1, with misc. short stories from other volumes), so it's really a tradeoff), especially when we're talking about latenight timeslot animes that usually only have 1~2 cours worth of episodes to tell the story. Fans watch these animes knowing perfectly well that there will always be things left out or changed, so it wouldn't be very smart to expect the animes to cover everything you wanted to see from the novels.

Finally, since you asked, I do read the Shana novels, and is up-to-date at the latest volume (Shakugan no Shana S). Would I recommend it? Well, if the anime interested you, then I see no reason why you shouldn't try the novel out. Takahashi-san's writing can be a little heavy-handed at times, bogging the reader down, but he's getting better. Either way, Shana is still one of the greatest tsunderes out there. :heh: Besides, as an Itou Noizi fan, I'm obligated to buy everything that features her works. :heh: