Ojamajo Upgrade:

Doremi fansubs is planning to upgrade the video, audio, and translation quality of the entirety of Ojamajo.  Whether this comes in the form of tv HD remaster broadcasts, dvd releases, or whatever, the point is that Ojamajo is currently a lot like modern anime releases where we're waiting on the blu-ray before seeing any reason to rewatch the series.

The first time you watch a series, anything will do, because novelty is its own reward.  But the second time you watch a series, you want as high quality an experience as possible, to make up for the lack of novelty.  The second time is frequently the last time you watch a show as well, so you don't want to leave any lingering regrets behind, like not watching the show in its final and most perfect form.  For this reason, there's no point rewatching a show until its final, highest quality release version is available.

The first season of Ojamajo is about to receive that high quality release, in the next week or two.  But all the subsequent seasons are still being worked on, and therefore there's no way to currently rewatch them.  Until they're done, there's no point rewatching the earlier, worse versions.

It's great news that we're getting a visual upgrade to Ojamajo Doremi.  The series desperately needs it.  But it means my plan to rewatch the whole franchise within the year is probably shot.  I can only watch as much as Doremi upgrades, which is going to happen according to their schedule not mine.  I'll rewatch the first season for now when Doremi makes its high quality release and see what comes of the rest.

Coalgirls has released a blu-ray version of Hunter x Hunter.  This is a great reason to rewatch Hunter x Hunter from the beginning, though the filesize is a bit daunting.  Perhaps Hunter x Hunter can replace Ojamajo as a go-to long series rewatch for the year.

Other shows that could really use a rewatch, but still have no blu-ray release yet:

Wake Up, Girls!
Love Live 2nd Season
Soul Eater Not
Atelier Escha & Logy
Ao Haru Ride
Fate/Kaleid Liner Prism Ilya 2wei
Locodol
Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun
Hanayamata
Yama no Susume season 2
Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha
Ranma 1/2 blu-ray box 3
Maria-sama ga Miteru
Scrapped Princess
Galaxy Angel
Higurashi no Naku koro ni
Hayate no Gotoku Cuties

Will eventually need to be rewatched, but aren't even released in Japan in blu-ray yet:

SAO II
Akame ga Kill
Sailor Moon Crystal
Amagi Brilliant Park
Akatsuki no Yona
Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works
Grisaia no Kajitsu
Shirobako
Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru

So Ojamajo is off the radar, but there's still over twenty other shows that can take its place if luck rolls our way.

Durara Shou's first blu-ray volume is out, and the sales are a pretty disappointing 6k or so.  The previous volume 1 sales of the first season were 30k, so we're talking a 4/5ths drop here.  This calls into question whether the entire show really will be animated all the way to 2016, like they had initially promised.  The average sales of a show are generally well below the initial volume's.  I could see average sales trickling down to 2k a volume or so, at which point the company would just be bleeding money every episode it makes.  Will a company value its reputation in fulfilling its promises more, or its bottom line?  I really like this season of Durara, so I hope its the former, but I also expect it will be the latter.

WoW is designing a system where people can buy game-time via in-game gold, thus removing the subscription element to this greatest of all MMO's.  That's great news, except that the amount of gold you might have to make could be mind boggling, like 20 thousand or 50 thousand a month.  It's great that people can make WoW free to play if they really set their mind to it, but if the amount of grinding labor it takes exceeds the amount of effort it would take to just earn the money in the real world, there's no real point.  I'd like to see a reasonable price point set for these game time tokens, such that people can afford to buy them while just playing the game as normal, through their incidental increase in gold.  Once people are spending weeks doing nothing but mining or herbalizing for gold, or what have you, so that they can pay their game time rent at the end of the month, it will just become another headache.

I've updated my beautiful anime girls permapost to include a lot more pictures, mainly of Fairy Tail girls.  This is because Fairy Tail has amazingly attractive females and an enormous cast to draw upon.  Hiro Mashima is incredible in both his talent, creativity, and work ethic, always giving us exactly what we want.  I suspect once the Fairy Tail manga gets long enough, it will surpass Naruto in quality.  The most recent manga arc has been really good so far.  The only question is whether the Fairy Tail anime will last as long as the Naruto anime has.  Having already been put on hiatus for a year before, it's highly likely the series will be cancelled outright somewhere down the road.  If that's the case, the Fairy Tail anime will never be able to overtake Naruto, which is going to reach all the way from the beginning to the end without interruption.

The Fairy Tail manga is 223 chapters shorter than the Naruto manga, currently.  It's 204 episodes shorter as an anime.  Until it catches up with these massive length advantages, it doesn't stand a chance.

I've also updated my good visual novels permapost to include a ranking of the visual novels I've actually played, a tiny subset of the number I suspect are worth playing.  More information is always better, I presumed.