Seeing Oh Edo Rocket, I was suddenly ashamed to watch crass, poorly made stuff like Strike Witches and Ookami-san [1]. OER is a living proof that well-made, thoughtful anime does not have to be a sleep-inducing festival of pretentiouseness (like Mushishi, for example). And what qualifies OER as well-made the most is its villains.

Geriatric animebloggers tried to theorise around what makes a serviceable villain before. In terms of the villain section in the Chizumatic FAQ, OER does absolutely amazing job at #5. Personally I was particularly impressed with the balance, because all too often anime makes me root for wrong side badly. Akai's heinous crimes weren't letting that happen.

By the way, the story end leaves a lot of side characters dangling, e.g. Gin goes away again. Or more importantly, how stable is O-Nui? It would suck a lot if she were to devolve. But it's all right, because that's how stories overlap in life, and the main story has ran to completion.

Liked: Very
Rewatch: Quite likely

P.S. Forgot to mention playback issues with the streaming. ANN is a total loss across the board. Hulu is dependable, but is getting seriously overloaded with ads, G4 style. Youtube is generally ok, except that ep.19 was pure madness. No idea how the server and/or the stream makes Flash misbehave this way, but it was bad. My suggestion to everyone: don't repeat my mistakes, do not try to tough it out with "legal" streaming, torrent the series and buy DVDs when they come out. The dumbest thing about my way is that I decided to buy a set anyhow, so I suffered streaming for nothing.

[1] Strictly speaking, Mitsudumoe was what I thought about here. The problem is, it's not "poorly made". It's only less-well made.