Piro speaks:
actually, "my girlfriend is cute and i'm a pathetic dork" applies to sarah and me as well :) But that's just one of those eerie paralells between me and comic piro.
One thing that i've observed over the past few years is that there is this real split reaction to the way Piro behaves. For Largo's behavior, a lot of people seem to get irritated that he's not acting like largo, that he's too subdued right now. One way to look at largo is he's like a warrior who has plunged into battle and galloped straight into the line of fire, and kept going, and was wondering where the enemy actually was. its hard to maintain a charge against a dispersed enemy, and you could almost say that largo is slowing down, not really sure what the target is now. Not every player plays at his best, and if largo just always won, and i feel that it'd be pretty lame if he just suddenly was an expert at everything he came across in japan. Trying to make largo a character that learns and grows is hard. Some people get it, many don't, and those are the ones that gripe.
As for piro, the difference in the reaction that people have is far more interesting, and is less a problem with my pathetic story telling abilities, as it is with the nature of the character. Piro is a certain type - and some can indentify with his pathetic nature. Overcoming that nature is, of course, an important part of the story, and we'll see if he actually does. What amusing is the people who are just frustrated with him and sick of his constant wussing out. Some even accuse me of not moving the story along because piro is such a lump that he doesn't step up and just break out of that and start sexxin up the girls in the story.
Y'know, people who are like piro don't just act like this one or twice and then suddenly stop doing it - it's almost cronic. They do it all the time, and its a cycle that is very difficult to break out of. One of the irritating things about anime is that you get the impression that the real problems that prevent the protagonist and the girl from getting together are all the other crazy things in the world, other characters, or situation issues. What you dont see enough of is how the real barriers are often ones that we set up ourselves. There are no 'opponent' characters in Megatokyo. No bad guys. Kinda like in the real world, each character is really thier own worst enemy.
Anyways, lt's like anything - i think some people just get frustrated because (gasp) they have to finish reading the book to find out how it ends. Wow, what a burden :) People who do what piro does are annoying *in real life*, so don't be so hard on him.