Charlotta and Yingxia immediately repay my faith in them:

My prescience is unbounded.  A day or two after I promoted Charlotta and Yingxia to my fictional character hall of fame, a new short story event was released in Heaven Burns Red featuring them as the main characters, where they soared to newfound heights.  This might have been the best event story the game has featured.

In this event we learn more about Charlotta's tragic backstory.  I had thought before she just had bum luck, but there's an actual and plausible reason for why she's the sole survivor of every battle with the Cancer, despite not being particularly stronger than her squadmates.  This makes her character a lot more relatable, because it's a lot more believable.  But her past intersects with her present, because she's confronted with the same Cancer that killed her friends in the past, but working together with her new friends, this time the duel ends differently.  My emotion as I went to avenge all the indignities this Cancer had done to my precious Russian loli was off the charts.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- this is the best game ever made.  I've never seen so many tearjerking, heartfelt, absolutely momentous and memorable moments produced by any other game.  They are rattling these incredible products off on a biweekly basis.  It's absurd.  A writer could be proud of producing one such story in their entire lives, but Jun Maeda can make a new one every two weeks.

Heaven also added some more bonus features -- lots of free loot for logging in or completing flashback battles, and a new game mode called the Astrarium where you can get quartz and other goodies for defeating challenging bosses while only being allowed to fight with different squads in each phase of the fight.  I haven't had much time to fight at the Astrarium because of March Madness, but starting Monday I'm gonna be grinding there for quite a while.

Rise up High!:

I've added two new songs to my Music Hall of Fame, deleting two Valkyrie Profile songs to make room.  One of them is from the recent Love Live! Nijigasaki movie, the opening song by Shizuku, 'Rise up High!'.  The song is as addictive as the dance.  In fact, the song and dance she performed is so good I decided to promote Shizuku to my Fictional Character Hall of Fame as well.  I always liked Shizuku, she was my second favorite girl among the Nijigasaki club, but this moment really put her over the top.

I love how her simple character design, long straight black hair with a dainty ribbon, managed to be so amazingly beautiful.  She radiates charisma with her bold theatrical gestures learned from her secondary drama club.  It's like, 'hey, look at me!' is always being released from her body in spiritual emissions.

Shizuku has always been a voice of reason in the club of oddballs, avoiding confrontation while producing results and getting along with everyone.  She's everything a girl should be.

The other song I added was Arifureta Battle Song, the theme song of Chapter 3 of Heaven Burns Red.  Like every song produced by Jun Maeda it's amazing.  My replay of Heaven made me more aware of that fact than before.  Rise up High! reached 4-star status, whilst Ciga Choco, Arch Light and Arifureta Battle Song had to content themselves with 3-star status.

I also think Heaven deserves two more fictional character entries:  Charlotta and Yingxia.  They're both beautiful in their distinctive Russian and Chinese garb and hairstyle.  Charlotta is the best yandere ever.  Obsessive, scary, cute and hilarious.  Yingxia is also funny in a sort of 'dame-ningen' way.  She's commonly misled, easily taken advantage of, and just generally incapable of getting people to listen to her, despite actually being intelligent, caring and strong.  That contrast is another continuous font of humor.

Fictional Characters can be good for reasons other than pure virtue.  If they make a lasting positive impression/impact, then they're still hall of fame worthy.  As always the marker of greatness is 'moving and memorable,' and they both pass that standard.  For the same reason villains can make my fictional character hall of fame.

I don't want a ceasefire in Ukraine, I want a Russian victory in Ukraine, so I'm happy to hear the Trump-Putin phone call didn't result in a ceasefire.  The war should continue until its natural conclusion, just like World War II, where Russia took Berlin.  I won't be happy with anything short of that.

As for the new war Trump launched against Yemen (which will undoubtedly spiral into a war with Iran) I kinda see the logic behind it.  We can't allow third world countries to impede first world trading lanes.  Our economies are important.  At the same time, it would be a lot easier to accede to Yemen's demand, which is completely moral and justified.  All they want is for Israel to stop genociding the Gaza Strip (which Israel is back to doing again with a new bombing wave killing over 400 people, like usual barely any actual combatants.)  Yemen isn't doing terrorism for fun but for the self-defense of the most unfortunate people on Earth.  Surely we could meet them halfway?  It would be a lot cheaper.  But as usual America is Israel's poodle, so back to the Middle East for another war we go.

Ciga Choco:

The newest entrant to my Music Hall of Fame is 'Ciga Choco,' from of course Heaven Burns Red.  To make room I kicked out another weak Valkyrie Profile song.  While I was at it I also promoted 5 of the Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest songs to 3-star, demoting Beethoven classicals to make room.  This caused a chain reaction in my '100 Waifus' playlist as there were now 5 more eligible songs (3-star or above songs) that could represent Fairy Tail characters.  When possible a Fairy Tail theme should represent a Fairy Tail character, so I also changed their songs to more suitable ones.  Now every Fairy Tail character has a Fairy Tail theme personally matched to them.

All in all my music hall of fame is still symmetrical and correctly rated, which is as it should be.  Anyone interested in the details can always check my music permapost.

The SS Memoria I got from the guaranteed ticket was totally useless.  It was Sumomo's base form SS Memoria, when I already have a level 2 limit break version of her in swimsuit mode.  Aside from some edge case where I need a powerful lightning breaker instead of a lightning attacker (like, say, if I were farming Amon B for some strange reason), it's completely unusable.  It's about the worst SS Memoria I could have gotten.  Well, at least I did get Tama in swimsuit mode, a stroke of luck which I'll never forget.  Next month I'll purchase another premium pass which will give me one more SS Memoria guaranteed ticket, after which the fun times will end and there will be no more easy routes to SS glory.  Hopefully that one will give me Megumi. . .

Meanwhile, I promoted Keke to my Fictional Character Hall of Fame.  She wasn't a good fit for '100 Waifus' because her name is spelled Keke but pronounced Kuku.  The book is complex enough without unnecessary complications like that.  But she's actually a wonderful girl.  When she performed as center, in Absolute Lover, I absolutely loved her.  The very first Liella performance, Tiny Stars, was also special because of her.  She's basically the heart and soul of Liella, the reason it formed in the first place, the passion that led it to unprecedented success.  The Shanghai arc concerning her was the best in Season 3, and virtually all of season 1 is about her.  To learn that she's not only a talented performer but the top of her class in Shanghai (which is the highest scoring city for school students in the entire world) makes me marvel at her determination to make it big as an artist when she didn't even have to.  She could've become a doctor or lawyer or whatever, but she staked everything on moving to Japan and learning to dance and sing.  That's so amazing, and that she was good enough to succeed makes it all the sweeter.

Also, congratulations to High Point, Omaha and Southern Illinois-Edwardsville for their first appearance in March Madness.  The Dance is great at producing Cinderellas.

New KonoSuba anime announced:

Following the airing of the KonoSuba S3 oav's in theater in Japan, an announcement was made that more Konosuba anime was in the making.  It didn't specify whether it would be more oav's, a tv season or a movie, but common sense dictates it will be Season 4.  After all, there's still tons of light novels for the anime left to adapt.

KonoSuba was on my anime wishlist, so now that my wish has been granted I replaced it with a wish for a new season of Prince of Tennis.  I want to see the dramatic finale to the series where Ryoma takes on Ryoga.  I suppose the manga would have to actually publish the event first before I can expect an anime, though.

Now that I've rated Heaven Burns Red #1, I wanted a commensurate number of wonderful fictional characters that its station deserves.  So I also promoted Karen, Hisame, Yuina, Misato, Ichiko, Mari, Adelheid, Kozue and Erika to my fictional character hall of fame.  Now Heaven Burns Red has 14 famous characters, equal to Jun Maeda's other top work Clannad, which also hosts 14 names.

All these girls are worthy inclusions.  Karen is a beautiful, docile girl with great fashion sense, poise and singing skills.  She's nigh maxed out on all feminine traits.  I don't mind her murderous side -- after all the people she killed were a bunch of rapists.

Hisame is a genius sworsdman with impeccable loli looks -- short, flat and twintailed -- and a high voice.  She's prone to misfortune but she takes it well and troops on.  No one can doubt her courage, and she's constantly reaching out to help her kouhai.

Yuina is the old guard leader of the entire Seraph army.  She's beautiful, determined, effective, charismatic, kind and earnest.  She's also a prophet.  She's like an archon who lives up to the title of Seraphim perfectly.  But she doesn't mind taking second fiddle to Ruka and Squad 31-A when they burst onto the scene.  Instead she's relieved that finally there's a competent squad beside hers that can lead humanity to victory, and does everything she can to support Ruka on and off the battlefield.

Misato is a genius Go player who has extended her knowledge of the game into tactical mastery of the battlefield.  She leads her squad (31-D) of, frankly, incompetents, to impressive results purely on her Zhuge Liang like management.  She's pretty in a very classical Japanese getup who enjoys a very classical Japanese pastime to the extreme -- (I also enjoy Go so I can sympathize).  But what's really great about her is her love for her grandfather who introduced her to the game and her gratitude to him that she can repay by winning the war and keeping Go alive via keeping humanity alive.

Mari is the consummate shopkeeper who somehow manages to stock everything you would ever want and run every shop in home base at once all on her own.  She has a great fake business customer appreciation voice and smile that cheers you up even though you know it's fake.  On top of that she's a ninja do-gooder who went around saving little girls long before the war began and now goes around saving humanity.  On top of that she also promised her mother that once the war ends she'll achieve a woman's happiness of marriage and children, realizing there are worthy female as well as male pursuits.  And of course she's beautiful.

Adelheid is the little girl Mari saved.  She then grew up determined to be a beautiful ninja herself, with long blonde hair, blue eyes and a prominent rabbit-ear-like red ribbon.  Her ninjutsu skills are amazing, and she has a cheerful attitude to go along with it that means she'll happily perform for a crowd (or even act in a movie) with said skills.  A friendly beauty is a rare combination -- usually the more beautiful a girl becomes the more standoffish she becomes because too many people hassle beautiful girls.  But she doesn't mind being hassled and thus keeps the bright attitude.  She's fought to the brink of death fearlessly to save her squadmates, though thankfully she didn't have to actually pass over that brink.

Ichiko is the eldest of the sextuplets and the most reasonable, also their squad leader.  She loves her imoutos and does everything for their sake.  A brave and responsible leader, she also draws manga from a young age up until today to entertain her family -- and she's a gifted artist, though not so gifted a writer -- but even that flaw only makes her efforts more endearing.  She selflessly shields and buffs the rest of her squad in battle rather than take on any of the flashy rolls, which is exactly how she's been since birth.  She's beautiful and wears an awesome cape and beret that accentuates that beauty.

Kozue is a paranormal specialist with an eyepatch covering her mystic heterochromia eye.  Her short skirt and sporty laced sneakers are an amazing combination, simple, subtle, yet utterly captivating.  She's constantly going around helping the dead and the living in ways they're not even aware of, selflessly toiling without thought of award.  She's the host of a radio show where she uses her beautiful voice to charm the masses.  A peacemaker of disputes instead of an instigator, she acts like a proper girl.

Erika died so that Ruka's squad, and thus humanity in general, might live.  There could be no greater or more consequential act of heroism than her last stand against the Crimson Vertex.  Lots of people are willing to die on the battlefield, but Erika went beyond that.  She encouraged Ruka to fight when Ruka wanted to run away, so she willingly placed herself in grave danger knowing she was putting herself in grave danger.  And once there, she summoned hidden reserves of strength she'd never shown before or knew she had so that she could accomplish her mission.  She didn't just do everything in her power to win, she did everything beyond her power to win.  Even now, much deeper into the war, no one has channeled the same spiritual strength through their seraphim as Erika did on that day, creating a pillar of white light that could be seen for miles.  In other words, her determination remains peerless.

Erika is also lovable off the battlefield.  She has a traditional suite of feminine virtues -- modesty, love of animals (and the ability to get along with them and take care of them), musical talent, studiousness, obedience and a desire to avoid confrontation.  Even with short hair and low-key fashion she's a beauty -- maybe because her inner beauty shines through.

Heaven reigns supreme, so it's about time their fictional character total did too.

My Heaven playtime continues to expand as well.  I decided to go back to the beginning using the 'relive memories' feature and play the game all over again.  But this is an ongoing game, so what I'm doing isn't really 'playing again' but 'still playing.'  I'm still gaining skill levels, experience levels, enhancement materials, personality trait growth points, etc.  The main benefit of the replay is all the new dialogue I get to see due to the visual-novel like branching dialogue options.  Last time through I took all the most reasonable dialogue choices, but now I get to see what happens when I say unreasonable things instead.  There are a lot of branching dialogue moments so I'm actually getting to see a lot of new content.  I didn't want to set the game down and voila, I didn't have to.  Now I can keep playing all the way to March Madness.

And in 2 days I'll receive another SS guaranteed recruitment ticket as part of the Chapter 4 Part 2 release celebration.  Odds are I won't recruit anyone new or anyone good, but there's always a chance I could get Megumi. . .

Premium:

For around $20 I purchased the premium and light passes of Heaven Burns Red, which gave me enough quartz to get to my SS Guaranteed ticket.  I calculated it out and there was just no way to reach my target in time otherwise.  I didn't want to waste all the effort to achieve my goal I'd already made and miss out on the opportunity as well as all the sunk cost.

There are two bright sides to this decision:  after delivering such a magnificent game, the best game ever made, I don't mind supporting Yostar with my money.  Hopefully this will encourage them to keep releasing the game in the USA and translating it into English.  Fans like me need to step up and provide the resources they need to deliver the product or the product will be canceled midway.  That's the last thing I want.  I would be willing to pay much more for the game if it guaranteed they would translate all of it.

The other bright side is the SS Memoria I got from my hard-earned ticket was Muua, one of the sextuplets and a healer.  I love 31-E, the sextuplet sisters, so getting an SS memoria version of her is especially nice.  (I now have 5 out of the 6 sextuplets at SS level.  I can almost field the whole squad as-is).  And that she's a healer expands my capabilities moving forward.  She's only the 2nd SS healer I own, and the game has started demanding I field two squads in combat at once, so being able to give both those squads an all-important healer is basically essential to all my future combat victories.  She couldn't have come at a better time.

Healers are also useful in gig mode, keeping the band alive long enough to reach the end of the song.  If I could make a powerful enough healing focused squad maybe I could satisfy gig mode's 'intermediate' level of skill and unlock a lot of extra rewards thereby.  The hard difficulty of gig mode is absolutely impossible, I don't even understand what the symbols mean or what it's asking me to do.  But if I were just a little bit stronger I feel like I could beat the intermediate mode.

I also took the opportunity to 'relive memories' to fill out the game's art gallery.  Now I've made all the branching route choices necessary to unlock all 299 works of art currently in the game.  You can call it a 'full clear.'

Full clears suck, I want to keep playing Heaven forever. >.<.  To be fair though, I still have plenty of new games left to play, and March Madness is only a week away.  It's just difficult to step down from 'the best game ever' to doing anything else in life.

P.S.:  I promoted 'Bubble Rise' to my 5-star music hall of fame, demoting Snake Remains Chamber and assorted other ilk to maintain symmetry.  There are still exactly 1,100 songs in each tier, and the songs are rated accurately.  Victory!

P.P.S.:  In Japan Heaven Burns Red is currently 5 chapters long, but the sixth chapter is in the works.  By the time America gets all of Chapter 5 I suspect Japan will have a chapter 6.

Amon B Defeated:

Finally, the last Orb Boss has been conquered.  That was the last challenge I hadn't overcome.  Using the more powerful boosters and chips from the main story chapter 4 part 2, I finally gained the strength necessary to beat this monster.

It still wasn't easy, though.  I had to retry the fight endlessly, for maybe 10 hours, learning bit by bit how to improve my tactics and my equipment/equipped skills.  I only had 1 high level SS Memoria with lightning (Sumomo), the boss' vulnerability, so I had to figure out a way to give her enough buffs and support that she could basically do all the damage to the boss.  She became the point of my spear.  Tama did a great job healing and Tsukasa buffing, with the others contributing what they could.  The key to victory was retrying over and over until all my Electro-Triangular Slashes critted.  You would think this would be easy given I was using a skill to raise her crit rate before each attack, but even with that skill it was about 50/50 whether it critted or not.  So three attacks, each with a 50% chance to crit, means I had to try at least 8 times for the law of averages to be on my side.

I love challenging fights like these because they really teach me how to be better at the game.  I discovered a lot of uses for skills I thought weren't any good until now.  Suddenly they were the crux of my entire strategy, when before I hadn't bothered equipping them.

I tried the clocktower on hell mode again to see if my newfound power could work there, but nope.  I got curbstomped by the very first mob.  That clocktower is insane.  I have no idea how strong I would need to be to get anything done there.

For now the game is a race against time.  Can I get 4,000 more quartz in 10 days, and buy myself a SS Memoria guaranteed recruitment ticket, or will I fall just short?  The only way I can get more quartz is by using life points, and I only get new life points every four hours, so. . .::fingers crossed::

My pro-Assad stance in Syria has been vindicated by the rebranded ISIS terrorists massacring men, women and children by the thousands for the crime of being a different religion than ISIS.  My pro-Russia stance is also vindicated by this development, as Russia supported the good person, Assad, while America supported ISIS and brought this ISIS revolution to fruition.  Now Syria will reap our foreign policy's bitter fruits for decades to come.

My pro-Russia stance was also vindicated today by battlefield developments in the Kursk region.  Special forces infiltrated the Ukrainian rear via crawling through a narrow gas pipeline for ~12 km.  This led to the Ukrainians caught surprised from behind to a panicked rout, giving up over 100 square km in a single day.  The rest of Kursk region should be rolled up shortly.  A dramatic and sudden victory after far too long an impasse.  However, Russia taking back its own soil is hardly a dramatic success.  It should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.  All this does is restore things to how they were before Russia invaded.  If Russia's goal was to own its own territory all it had to do was not invade in the first place.

To win the war it isn't Kursk region that Russia needs to conquer, it's Toretsk, Chasiv Yar, Kupiansk, Pokrovsk and Siversk.  And they still haven't managed to take a single one of those cities.  I cheer every little Russian success, but temper that cheering with the realization that all the victories really are 'little.'  If things continue on like this I wouldn't be surprised to see another Korea-like ceasefire ending the war with no clear victor.  If Russia wants more it should do more to achieve that desire.

Heaven Reigns Supreme:

After finishing Chapter 4 of Heaven Burns Red, I've decided it's already the #1 game of all time.  If I viewed it as a visual novel it would be the #1 visual novel of all time too.  The combination of endless hundreds of hours of content, akin to World of Warcraft, alongside the incredible soundtrack that only Jun Maeda can provide, alongside the heartrending, tearjerking plot and setting that makes you care more about their world than the real one. . .is something no other work has ever achieved.

Chapter 4 of the game alone took as long to beat as most standalone video games take, and that's with me barely sleeping.  The fact that Heaven is 6 Chapters long and counting really does make this comparable to the entire corpus of Final Fantasy or Tales.

The ending to Chapter 4 Part 2 is more emotional than the ending of Chapter 2, and that's something I never could have imagined saying until I finished playing it.  The mechanics of the boss fight had me on edge and the boss kept transforming and presenting new challenges like freaking Sephiroth from FF 7 Rebirth.  And the music of the last dungeon and last boss was on level with FF 7's as well.  It was so intense it was hard to breathe.

Ostensibly this chapter is about defeating the new hub tier cancer Skullfeather -- but it's actually about Tama and Megumi.  Their past and their future.  And their future together.  The epic, absolutely satisfying conclusion to the cliffhanger they left me at in December.

I love Squad 31-A so much.  And I love squad 30-G, 31-C, 31-B, and 31-E too.  I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up loving 31-X, 31-F and 31-D too by the end of the game -- with Jun Maeda narrating eventually he'll make me fall for all 48 characters.  I swear.  He can make the impossible possible.  He's at a superhuman level -- the only possible title deserving of his talent is 'Heavenly', which is obviously why they named the game he made 'Heaven.'

I still have goals to achieve in Heaven despite finishing the main storyline.  There are still socializations, recollections, Orb Bosses, and new SS Memoria that need to be leveled to max level.  I got yet another new SS Memoria today, Niina's, so the backlog of girls I need to pay attention to keeps growing and growing.  Most of all I need to farm up 6,000 more quartz in the next 11 days so I can get that guaranteed SS Memoria recruiting ticket.  That's my laser focus goal for now.

I dearly desire a SS Memoria version of Megumi so that my plot party can eventually become my power party.  That's really the one thing I'm missing.  The game would be perfect with that.