Just so ya know, I have no knowledge whatsoever of the anime, so I'll be 
commenting from complete ignorance.

And I know I don't need to tell ya this, Nick, but just to be safe:  all my 
comments are always meant to be constructive.  You can cheerfully ignore 
everything I say and that's fine.  You and I have slightly different 
approaches to prose, as you well know.  I'll be commenting from my 
perspective, of course, but you can always ignore that and just what the 
perspective you feel comfortable with.

Occasionally one would deviate from formation, usually to pick up a rescue 
pod; even
then, the actions were done in silence, with no word broadcast over the 
general channel.

Aiyee!  Punctuation overload!

I'm in the process of editing all my old stories in preparation for putting 
them back on my web site, and this is one of my biggest sins:  long, 
complex, compound sentences that are awfully difficult for a reader to 
parse.  I'd suggest breaking this sentence in two at the semi-colon.

Second Wave was well-prepared for, as they'd had 189 years to prepare.

The meal was well-cooked, since they'd had 189 years to cook it.

Slightly redundant there.  =)

This few, this band of brothers, had faced the abyss and lived to tell
the tale - but, in some ways, they would never come home.

Just something to comment on, something I've been trying to do in my own 
writing: try to avoid cliched phrases.  "band of brothers", "lived to tell 
the tale" - all extremely well-worn literary phrases.  Try not relying on 
them so much and developing your own terminology.  You're so very good at 
it, Nick, that you shouldn't need to use crutches like these.

"'This... thing of darkness... I acknowledge mine.'  Shakespeare, The 
Tempest."

Shakespeare, woot!

Here, in any way that truly mattered, the truth set her free.

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fred!

Sorry, had a Pratchett moment there.

So, so far I'm fairly clueless about what exactly is happening, but the gist 
is clear enough.  It's enough of a starting point that I can somewhat latch 
on to it as someone unfamiliar with the series, and will probably be a lot 
more satisfying to someone who does know the source material.

He was, first and foremost, a teacher; for him, to face crowds
of men and women who hung on his every word (or, alternatively,
slept through his sermon) was second nature.  He'd taught
everything from Shakespeare to combat theory; no subject should
faze him at all - not even this one, a subject he'd had to teach
once before.

Two sentences that contain:  six commas, two semi-colons, two parentheses, 
and a hyphen.  You're making your readers work too hard on parsing, in my 
opinion.  Again, I acknowledge that this is a style choice on your part. 
Just wanted to offer my viewpoint on the subject.

To make matters worse, the only experts on the subject were
the subjects of the sermon itself.

The only cooks were the ones who would be cooking.

my own mentor, James-sensei,

Just curious: canonical?  Or Zen-inspired.  =)

 A vision of a young girl in the bright orange of Stellvia's prep
uniform caught his mind.  Laughing blue eyes, deft fingers as she
played her guitar... soft, husky alto voice.

Nice.  I'm in love with her already.

even regular students would give the uniform pause.

Er, that doesn't sound right.  You're making it seem like the uniform is 
scared of the students.

And she would enjoy every minute of hearing them.

Wow, lots and lots of setup going on here. You are doing a good job of 
establishing your characters.  My only objection so far is that there's a 
kind of sameness to them all, that I don't find anything unique about them. 
It's like the same character, just in different situations.  (I say this 
only because I'm rewriting "Thy Inward Love" and it's suffering the same 
problem; all of my characters sound *exactly* the same.  When Ranma and 
Nabiki start talking the same way, you know you're doing something wrong.)

The teapot was automatically filling; Shima had programmed the pot
to automatically fill upon her entry, a small favor for which she
was grateful each night.

The backups were automatically running because she had programmed the 
backups to automatically run.

Another day, another dollar.

Bleh.  Cliche.

Finishing construction of the new Stellvia had been her second job
for the past one-and-a-half years, now; while it would be another
year before it was complete (and another decade before all six
Foundations were complete), it was at least finished enough to be
operational, as of six months ago.

<Richard's CPU overheats and shuts down>

Would you believe that's all *one sentence*?  I actually had to read it 
three times to parse it correctly.

She poured a cup of tea for herself and savored the aroma; she wasn't
sure exactly what Shima had done to make it taste so good (one of her
mother's tricks, she always said), but it was the perfect way to unwind
after a hard day.  She closed her eyes after the first sip; a day of
classes and homework followed by evenings manipulating multiple Biancas
at once tended to leave her wishing for blindness, and it felt good to
just not see anything for a little while.

At least this is two sentences.  Still, unnecesarily complex in my opinion.

The gentle eyes and soft smile she'd always thought of as the byproduct
of a quiet, contempative soul; as he sat with only the kitchen light to
illuminate them, she noticed just how tired he was.

This sentence just doesn't compute.  If I'm understanding it correctly, the 
light is illuminating James's eyes and smile, and Shima is noticing how 
tired he is.  One thing about semi-colons: the part before and after the 
semi-colon should be complete phrases.  "The gentle eyes" part isn't a 
complete sentence and is difficult to match up with the part after the 
semi-colon.

As long as I get some each night, I'm not complaining."

Bow-chicka-bow-bow

(sorry, couldn't resist)

Earth receded from the port window's view, a brilliant bluish-white
marble in the emptiness of space.

Her eyes turned to the infinite of space.

So how many "...of space" descriptions are we going to be using?  =)

"...the vastness of space."

"...the deepness of space."

"...look, space is big.  Really, really big.  I mean, you might think the 
trip down to the chemist and back is big, but that's nothing compared to 
space."

She felt the tears coming; she didn't even try to hold them back
as the ship made its way through the emptiness.

...of space?

All ribbing aside, you're using the same descriptions over and over again.

He never quite understood why people always said that space was empty

As oppossed to being infinite?

the void of space

She always asked him about the wetness of water...

With himself alone, he could find lies in space; he could be fooled by
what he felt.  With her beside him, with her heart and mind and soul...
there was only truth.

Nice.

Is that it?  Er, what's the plot, exactly?

Is this just supposed to be a kind of beginning, like describing who all the 
Sailor Senshi were before they met up?

It's a nice series of character vignettes, the kind of stuff you're great 
at, Nick.  You've got me interested in what kind of anime this is, which is 
good.  Very evocative prose, as always.

Glad to see you writing again.  =)

-Richard 


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