Thank you for your feedback! I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed the characters. :-D
The enemy "thinking" time specifically I have no idea how to get rid of -- I set padded thinking time to 0, but I think the remaining thinking time is just how long the engine takes to process enemy options. Faster battle pacing in general has been a common critique of this game, and I'll definitely test having more of shorter battles in any future games I make. :-)