As much as I try to avoid my bias, I just can’t watch it without reminding me of K-ON, which I hold a truly passionate hatred for. As a result, I have a very difficult time putting Sorawoto in a positive light. All I can say is that the qualities you listed most certainly exist, at least from the parts I watched.

I found sorawoto to have an excellent story with good pacing and high production values for art and music. In particular, the way the details of the world’s history are revealed from episode to episode was very engaging. The series often makes interesting observations about the nature of human endeavor as seen through the lens of a post-apocalyptic setting. Also, the series’ arguably ‘main’ characters, Filicia and Rio, have interesting and well fleshed-out backgrounds. This also applies to Noel to some extent.

All in all, the series is probably quite polarizing since it could be easily construed to be yet another moe-pandering show, with a moe-blob main character that has an annoying high-pitched voice and is obviously an attempt to cash in on the K-ON! boom [/bitter sarcasm]

I’m going to live with my inability to see the actual quality of art you describe. I doubt they’ll send it to the US, and even then, I’m too cheap to spend $13-15 per volume when my Korean friends can rent it for $.30 a pop and read it to me. I suppose I’ll put this on the list of future books to read, because it will be many years before I will be able to read it without translations.