Light and Water for the Trees

I got the 3-D printed bronze seals I ordered!
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The .stl file is downloadable here. I can make the object orderable online in case anyone is interested.

Someday I have to check how the following may have influenced the philosophy of Noir:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Accursed_Share

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Gankutsuou

It's the Count of Monte Christo - IN SPACE!

The good: even though I more or less knew what would happen (the plot deviates a bit from the original), I was still eager to see the next episode each time. It was nice to focus on some of the characters that are usually left out of adaptations. Telling the story from the point of view of Albert and his peers was interesting. I liked the character designs, the costumes, backgrounds, and the music. There were some actually sympathetic characters. It was also funny how nearly every male or dubiously gendered character could be interpreted to have a gay crush on Albert, but he remained completely oblivious.
Peppo!

The bad: oh gods, the plaids! Nearly every costume had a plaid pattern that isn't animated or even animated separate from the action. At its best, this just pulled me out of the story. At its worst it causes motion sickness or bleeding eyes...
The titular "gankutsuou" - an immortal entity that will possess the Count's body in exchange for granting his revenge - didn't add much to the story in my opinion. They could have simply left it a mystery how he escaped and gained his fortune, and not be worse off story-wise.
The ending was more silly than dramatic (load bearing boss?)

Overall I still liked it.