Just curious guys, Janime has the twins written as Rua and Ruca, but I noticed you guys referring to them as Lua and Luca. I'm well aware of the whole l and r issue with Japanese. I used Rua and Ruca in episode 13, and before I do 14 + I was wondering what the fans prefer. Perhaps I can convince Nebs to make a poll or something lol. Anyway, I'm curious to hear your opinions on this.

~GU (from GX_ST)

Well I like using Luca/Lua simply because that's how it's written in the series. I can understand Japanese animators messing up romanized names by switching an L to an R, but not vise-versa. That means it was probably done that way on purpose, & that the Japanese staff recognizes that as the official spelling of their names. Plus there's tons of English writing in 5D's, so I think they know what they're doing this year.

Also I only just realized something as I was writing this. Back when the community got early info of GX season 2, everyone wrote Edo's name as Ed (& continued to do so even after the first few episodes had aired). But once his name was written out in English during his duel with Kaiser, EVERYONE switched to calling him Edo. So now we have a similar situation here in 5D's, & I don't understand why a large part of the community isn't switching how the twins' names are written. It's the exact same circumstance, after all. I don't get that.

Anyway, I'll see what I can do about setting up a poll sometime soon. ^^

speaking of romanizations... just curious: how would you spell your name in kana? ネブス Nebusu? ネブズ Nebuzu? Or perhaps, since the FAQ claims it's short for "Nebulamon" (I imagine that'd be spelt like ネビュラモン Nebyuramon), either ネビュス Nebyusu or ネビュズ Nebyuzu? -Yamato

LOL, never really thought about it. If I had to say, it'd probably be ネブズ.

Good point. I checked episode 13 and was surprised I missed that the name is written out as Luca. You can do a poll if you want, but usually when I see it written out a certain way in the show I tend to stick with that. I'm leaning towards Luca and Lua now.

having gotten around to the final episode, my comments: one thing that constantly bugs the hell out of me with finales is being left wondering if certain characters will get to make one last appearance (I recall way back when I was watching Silent Mobius on G4, Tech TV at the time, and getting worried that the nifty sentient sword, Grospoliner, suddenly disappeared for the last portion of the series... but come final episode, there he was ^^). It's kinda nice that (most) of that was already taken care of through crowd scenes within the first few minutes. On top of that, we finally got to see Meister Kirisaki strut his stuff, which I don't think we've actually seen him do since his introduction... Yuuichi would've been nice, but Shadow got pretty close enough, so I can't complain much (even if that 2% difference with Shadow was apparently enough to restructure the entire show XD).

I do have some complaints, though (mostly character-related as well). I would've liked to see Gran Kaiser again after his (surprisingly honorable) defeat at the Monaco Cup, and Yukino and Tsukino don't get to settle their differences neither... I'm hoping the manga covered these things. Speaking of Kaiser, it seems that hardly anybody from the Monaco Cup saga showed up... though, I guess considering most of those characters are fucking halfway across the globe, we should be lucky just to have gotten Pierrot and Sophie. But I sure wouldn't have minded seeing more of the [deep breath] "dead milf turned prego turned fatso turned trimmed-down but still prego finally turned resurrected yet stern but nonetheless a milf once more" (AKA Pierrot's mother) ^^'. On the subject of hotties, while she at least got to appear in the final episode, I would've liked to see Kazuma's sister a lot more throughout the series (I'm particularly disappointed because the first opening gave me the impression she'd be playing a particularly large role past the first episode T_T). And what the hell ever happened to those Yakuza members, and Tsukino's grandfather? If that old bastard kicked the bucket, I'm sure we would've heard about it. Finally, as nice as it was to see most of these characters again, they ultimately never really did anything for the finale (though Yukino's awesome for having lampshaded this fact XD). -Yamato

From what I know, the ending of the anime at this point was a very rushed & last-minute decision, as can be felt from the actual pace of the episode. The manga didn't end here, & heck I wouldn't be surprised if the events of this episode didn't happen this way at all in the manga (I don't think the Yukino battle happened either). I'm not sure for how much longer, but the story does go on. We even learn in the manga at some point why Kirisaki became the way he did.

The manga's being released in the US, but they wont get to the Yakitate 9 arc (called Yakitate 25 in the manga) until late this year or early next.

yeah, it did have that rushed feel to it (I mean, there was absolutely no introduction to this match, they just kinda start the episode with it right away. Though, I guess it was a pleasant surprise that they gave the impression that Azuma was battling Yuuichi, then shifted to Meister, and not taking time with the standard opening may've helped)... I just really like characters getting in some kind of last word, so I guess it accomplished that much, to an extent. And I checked Wiki to see what the real reason Yuuichi became the way he did (as much as I hate spoilers, I can give a bit of leeway when I already saw a respective anime adaption)... that's some pretty crazy shit going on right there. XD -Yamato