The Japanese part...forced, unrealistic, full of spelling errors in the Japanese, quite frankly, unnecessary to WRITE it in Jap, unless the author wishes to flaunt their skills. BUt the author's note is what killed me. I had to bang my head against the keyboard. WHO CARES? Nobody, hun. Nobody cares that it was hard to translate that part. It's inconvenient to the story. The rest turns into a desperate attempt and it's still hard to poke out the plot out of the soup. どうしてねえ？ これがかもいいだね！ サイバアスペエスでうしなわれるよ ケ

Reading this piece feels like listening to an mp3-player with low batteries. The flow is...not there. I can't point my finger on why. Sci-fi is hard because despite all the hard technology stuff one has to try to keep it simple, but it's rather the words and the lack of picturesque descriptions. I think much is lost in the science descriptions since there is a heavier reliance on that than the usual descriptions. One can't forget to include those, no matter the genré of the story.

The thing that kept me reading was the summary which is very well written and caught me. Who doesn't like rockstars? ;D But when the story itself starts, it's not written in the way to arise questions, there is no suspense. The language is very good, nice vocabulary and easy to understand (though in many cases not to visualize as I said earlier); I like the wordings. In the second "part" it gets much easier to imagine things, somehow I see it in front of myself. But darling, where is the conflict?

very nice, I like the detail you used in describing the particular scenes, although I wouldn't nescessarily describe myself as "raven-haired" I had a good laugh :)Also very cute

Very nice, I really felt better about the descriptive nature of this chapter. The romance was cute and further employed just about every cliche shoujo romantic/comedy elements that I can think of offhand... cute. I could really feel the tension in the end, not unlike that little silence after that little scene in Virgin Night, "Joudan Joudan" *waves hands dismissively*

Very funny, although I think you may be overestimating the strength of my work ethic, ("excuse me but I'm trying to code.")? I usually tone things out pretty well besides.

I felt that the descriptive detail in this situation was rather lacking, I know the places you are mentioning only because I have seen them, some of them anyway... and that is how I feel I understood it, however I feel it would be best in future if you actaully described what our little Pagoda looked like especially since I'm quite sure it is not a widely available brand that everyone is aware of, little things like size, accomodations, the jingle of the bell as you open the door, alright that one doesn't exist, but little things like that are what grant the unbeknownsters a clear mental picture, I know I've been guilty of this practice many times... actually to the contrary I have been far more guilty of overloading my stories with pure-positional nonsense than anything else, however in Retirement I feel that, at least in the begining, I was starting to get it better than I ever have before and I think that a balance between the over-descriptive and the under-descriptive is something that needs to be worked on in this case. Chapters are not restricted to 300 words or less, and targets are meant to hit my friend.

Very nice, although the fact that I've actually seen Machine City helps me picture the scene, I felt that your sentence long portrayal of it was quite adequate. I really felt the smooth flow of the peice and for an instant thought it better than me, which it is... considering I have nothing recently done to compare to it. For the time being I bow to you, good

Wow, this is really original, an alternate reality future biography. Your style of writing is really good too, very smooth and little quirks that are really amusing -one thing- what does shikusou mean? *feels very inadaquete as a japanese student*and looking at the small amount of lyrics in this chapter I can truthfully say I would be honoured for you do write Sango's lyrics, they would suit him perfectly!anyway- long reveiw I know, but hey- best get on to reading your other things! ja ne!sakura

hanashi ga daisuki da yo sairyoku ga aru wa! sugoi ano... johnkun wa sekai de ichiban yasashii da to omoimasu yo De, kitto sou deshou atashitachi wa zutto ii tomodachi deshou./ hayaku hanashi wo owaru yo!:D yomitai! gambatte ne genki de! x

I like it; I think the plot so far is middling to decent.

I do have a few niggles when it comes to technical issues, though. You should get a spell checker, or at least a dictionary: "porcelin"? And some of the sentences in there were a touch long for my eyes, with possibly too much technicality thrown in. I'm not sure all your readers will know what an Ogg video stream is.

Having mentioned these points, though, good and shiny things come through from the story. The descriptive passages are detailed enough to provide a real scene for visualisation, and there's a definite progression to the story so far; furthermore, Ohno's personality comes through in his random chatting/cursing with the car computer.

Basically, I want to see more. We want chapter Two!