@LMK: I fear finding my own deeper thought-out posts about Alto on this board would take literal hours, since they are sadly not concentrated in his thread but have been strewn carelessly by me across a lot of threads. I find myself with a substantial list of things to do and not enough time this evening. So I'll have to pass this time on writing up another long post about that. I need the inspiration for
another person on our little group, too. <cracks nuckles>
As a consolation, please take these two excellent posts by Crusader from just after the series had finished, which summarize a lot of what I liked about the character.
Post 1
Post 2
The section in post 1 about "Ranka as a troll on moe" is quite worthwhile reading, although you'd probably disagree.