January Updates:

Fairy Tail Zero has been amazing so far, but the next episode is filler.  It looks like they're trying to fill out a rather short arc into an entire winter season, so I guess this was to be expected.  I think I'll watch it anyway just because I like Mavis so even filler is probably going to be reasonably good.  However, unless it has canon content somewhere inside the episode, it won't count towards the anime's total length.

Boku Dake ga Inai Machi continues to be good, but I feel like the story is very linear and limited.  Either the killer is caught or he isn't.  Either the girl is saved or she isn't.  There's really nothing else suspenseful about this show.  Everything is on rails and all of his decisions are pretty much predetermined due to the nature of time travel stories.  On the bright side, rumor has it that the anime will cover all the way to the manga's proper conclusion so this will be one of those rare anime works that actually has a beginning, middle and ending for viewers to see.

Musaigen no Phantom World has a lot of annoying fairy hijinks and a lot of repetitive chants.  Its only redeeming feature is the art/animation.  That moves it to below any show with a good plot for the season, which is pretty much the bottom of the pile.

I've reversed my decision on One Piece.  It's back to #3 in my manga rankings and #5 in my anime rankings.  It used to be #1 in both, so I have punished the series a bit.  However, I have to admit that few if any other shows can compete with the epic yarn playing out before us and the dedication of Toei will never waver in the release of additional episodes until the very end, based on the ratings and manga sales figures up until this point.  Combining these two points makes for a juggernaut that the rest of anime just finds a hard time overcoming no matter how good their individual episodes might be.  Fairy Tail is #1, but I have no idea if A-1 Pictures actually intends to animate the whole manga.  For all we know Fairy Tail Zero could be the ending of the series as far as the anime is concerned.  Meanwhile Naruto at #2 still hasn't gotten out of filler hell or made clear what it intends to do after it reaches the ending of the mainline manga (if it ever does. . .)  One Piece just doesn't have problems like these.  It's on a different level of reliability compared to the nonsense that occurs with other shows.

Ant-Man was a good movie.  When Marnie was There was merely watchable.  Between the two I had a lot more fun watching Ant-Man.  As expected of my #4 favorite western movie franchise of all time.

Speaking of NFL teams relocating, it's ridiculous that the San Antonio/Austin metroplex doesn't have an NFL team.  Texas has way more people than New York and Florida but they both have three teams.  Why does Texas only have two NFL teams?  Texas is the most football loving state in the country.  The Dallas Cowboys are the biggest brand in the NFL.  We live football down here and they don't even give us a proportional number of teams.  By all rights, considering the amount of football talent that comes out of Texas, and the amount of fan support for football teams that exists in Texas, we should have a disproportionate number of NFL teams compared to our population, not a gigantic gaping void in the 7th largest metroplex in the country.  Since Oakland can't afford to buy an exclusive football stadium for their Raiders, I suggest they move to San Antonio where the Alamodome has been sitting waiting to be used all this time and has been designed for football use from the beginning.  San Antonio is even willing to build an even bigger and better stadium to host the Raiders if that's what it takes, but the Alamodome is already better than what the Raiders have and sits largely empty all year round.

I don't really see what the Chargers have against San Diego or Qualcomm Stadium.  It looks like a lovely stadium whenever I'm watching the Holiday Bowl.  I don't see the point in LA getting two teams, as one is already enough to have a tribal loyalty towards.  The second is just excess fat.  Furthermore, the LA Rams have a long history with LA but there's no connection between LA and the Chargers.  The Chargers have always been in San Diego and there are no Chargers fans in LA.  It makes no sense to relocate the Chargers but oh well what do I know.

In addition to One Piece, I moved around the rankings for a few other shows.  Yuru Yuri dropped down to #76 after an unimpressive third season where essentially nothing happened from beginning to end.  K-On! dropped down to #23 because unlike its competitors it was never fully adapted.  The same problem applies to the demoted #29 Major, #30 Da Capo, #31 PapaKiki and #32 TWGOK.  Yuuki Yuuna, Vividred and Scrapped Princess moved up to #68, #69 and #70 respectively because they all had proper endings, unlike their competition.

According to my rules wherein I feature the top 1/3 of any shows that are at least mediocre as 'great', I should have around 193 shows in my top anime rankings, but recently that policy has become just too lenient.  There aren't enough worthwhile shows to reach that heady a number (yet.  Anime still has many years of great new series to come.)  But this season could see the addition of as many as five new great series to my roster at once, getting me at least to the round number of 180.  Hai to Gensou, Boku Dake ga Inai Machi, and Dimension W would have to screw up royally to not get into my rankings at this point.  But Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm, Nurse Witch Komugi-chan, and Kono Subarashii Sekai are also still in the running.  It's been a great season so far, but I'm leery of jumping the gun like I did with Charlotte.  There's no point adding a show to my great rankings if I just have to take it back off the list a few weeks from now in disappointment.  I have to wait and see how things develop, ideally for at least the first six episodes, before I can be sure of anything.  If my patience won't hold out then I can at least wait until the third episode before I say anything.

Princess Precure had a really good episode explaining the new, modern concept of what makes a good princess, contrasting it with the old and stale model that is rightly ridiculed.  The idea of the princess wasn't wrong, only the implementation, in the past.  A 21st century feudalism would be a lot more effective (see Seikai no Monshou for a worked example.)  I feel like the whole series was waiting just to reach this episode and deliver these lines.  The rest of the show will just be tying up loose ends and winding things down.  What's really left to look forward to isn't the ending of Princess Precure, but the beginning of Mahoutsukai Precure in three weeks.  With Yui Horie as Cure Magical, they've already set themselves up for an epic success.  That's almost as good casting as Kana Hanazawa as Zera in Fairy Tail Zero.  The best seiyuu always coagulate around the best series.