For anyone who might be interested in a top-level view of how Sato is adapting the Miniskirt Space Pirates novels for anime, here are the chapter titles of the first two books, along with the volume titles of all seven.

Mild spoiler potential, of course. If they keep the current pace, I’d expect book 2 to take the series up to around episode 9.

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Digital first, apparently, with DVDs to follow. A very pleasant series, but the decision seems to have a lot of folks scratching their heads.

One of the things I discovered on my recent trip was that there were ten OVA episodes for Stratos 4, continuing the story. They were subbed by SS-Eclipse, whose torrent is still seeded, but since I discovered this by finding the DVD box set at a decent price, I only needed the softsubs, which were also floating around out there.

…at the present time, One Piece is inescapable in Japan. I was honestly surprised not to run into crossover merchandise of Luffy with Hello Kitty. I’m sure I just missed it in the blur.

This was the toilet paper display outside the grocery store near our hotel (Best. Tie-in. Ever). When you get into actual nerdy parts of Kyoto and Osaka, 90% of the merchandise is tied to One Piece, and even otherwise unrelated stores in DenDen Town have a rack or two of the stuff mixed in with the refilled printer cartridges, hand tools, used suits, spy cameras, robot parts, and porn.

…with two Hoihoi-san figures…

Still “no thanks”, except maybe for pictures of the actress playing Kasumi.

Pics and short video clip.

Shrinkwrap spacesuits and cockpit-service.

Coming in December, 2011.