Rewrite Shafted:

The Rewrite anime is going to be great.  The source is so good that no matter how the anime butchers it, it will still end up okay.  They haven't changed the music, voice actors, or original writers after all.  8-bit is a good company that pulled off a nice Grisaia anime and Yama no Susume anime before this.

It's going to reach my rankings.  But this could have been a top 10 anime, or at least a top 20 anime.  If it had fully and faithfully adapted its source material, that's what we would have been looking at.  Instead it has decided to be a mere 13 episodes long, and it will 'adapt' an original-for-the-anime 6th route instead of the Rewrite we know and love.  The original Rewrite writers wrote the script to the anime, so it isn't pure filler, but it isn't what we've been waiting for either.  This is not the top 10 anime that it should have been.  It's a throwaway promotion for the Rewrite+ visual novel release that now people will be forced to buy in order to read the true story.

The lack of respect for this Key work is really shameful, considering Air, Clannad, Kanon, Little Busters and Angel Beats all sold over 10,000 copies per volume in blu-ray sales.  Both commercially and critically, Key based anime have always been considered megahits and masterpieces.  So for Rewrite to be treated like a dishrag and get only 13 episodes when it needed 48, and to not even tell the actual story in the actual visual novel, it's just shameful.  There really is just no making sense of the anime industry.  This should have been a complete no-brainer.  There is no doubt that people would have loved and embraced Rewrite like they have every previous Key anime.  But they choose this farce of an adaption instead of the real thing.  Why?  Who knows.  Why didn't Index get a third season?  Who knows.  It's all just a mystery what goes through people's heads over there.  None of it has ever followed any logical sense.

Romania's always been a great country.  They are named after their founders, the Roman Empire, and are the legacy of the greatest Roman Emperor of all time, Trajan.  When Rome fell they got lost in the wilds, eventually being absorbed by Austria-Hungary, then the Ottoman Empire.  But with the help of Russia, they eventually threw off their Ottoman oppressors and became one of the first free countries of Eastern Europe.  They were awarded additional land after siding with the Allies in WWI against the Central Powers, despite performing miserably in the actual fighting.  In WWII they were much more heroic, siding with the Axis Powers in order to reclaim the land that was stolen from them by the USSR, just like Finland did in the north, but they were ultimately defeated again militarily and their borders sizably shrunk after their defeat.  But any ally of the Nazis is automatically cool, win or lose.

After WWII the Soviet Union used and abused Romania, but they found a new avenue towards success via the Olympic Games.  In per capita medal count, Romania is the 16th best country on Earth.  Now, some of those medals are suspect, given the USSR was known to use doped up athletes for all their Warsaw Pact members, but you can't 'dope' yourself to victory in women's gymnastics.  That's all grace, beauty, and skill.  Romania has 72 medals in gymnastics, a jaw dropping number for a country of just 20 million people.  A lot of those medals were cleverly won during the 1984 LA Olympics, which Romania attended despite the Soviet boycott and won 53 medals in.  Romania also flouted the soviet will by not invading Czechoslovakia when they attempted to rebel against the USSR, though the rebellion was eventually put down anyway.

Romania's Olympic glory, and its gymnastics glory, is highlighted and best symbolized by its amazing, practicably unbeatable medal streak in the women's team artistic gymnastics event (the most prestigious event in the summer Olympic Games, and let's face it, more prestigious than any Winter Olympic Games event either).  Starting in 1976 where they won Olympic Gold in the all-around competition with the first ever perfect 10.0 score by Nadia Comaneci, they won silver in the team competition, behind the USSR.  After that, in 1980, again led by Nadia, they won silver again, again behind the USSR.  In 1984 team Romania won gold.  In 1988 it was back to silver again due to the return of the USSR team to the competition.  In 1992 it was silver again, losing to essentially the USSR though this team was titled the 'unified team'.  In 1996 they got bronze in the team competition, behind the traditional winners Russia, but also behind the 'magnificent 7' from team USA who won the team all around for the first time.  In 2000 they were back on top again with gold, beating Russia in 2nd place and the USA in 3rd.  In 2004 it was gold again, beating the USA in silver and traditional rival Russia in bronze.  In 2008 it was bronze, behind home-team winning China and 2nd place USA.  In 2012 it was bronze again, behind 1st place USA and 2nd place Russia, seemingly the only teams Romania ever has trouble with.

But just think about this.  This incredible team.  For 36 years, 10 Olympics, which they won gold in 3 times, they continued to compete at the highest level against the two greatest superpowers in the world, the USA and the USSR.  With just 20 million people and a tiny GDP, they defeated all comers, from everyone, all over the world, ten times in a row.  Now in 2016 that most prestigious of all medal streaks is coming to an end due to injuries and bad luck during qualifying.  But even as recently as 2015, a Romanian women's gymnast Larisa Iordache claimed bronze in the world championship all-arounds, behind only Simone Biles (three time repeat world champion) and Gabby Douglas (2012 Olympic gold all-around medalist).  Iordache's injury will likely prevent her from taking Romania's sole women's gymnastics slot in Rio, but her teammate Catalina Ponor, slated to take her place, is a proven successful Olympic medalist herself, so not all is lost.  This country is so amazing.  You can't dope yourself to a record like that.

After communism fell, Romania's economy boomed, and now they live a comfortable middle class lifestyle of $20,800 per capita.  Their Russian rivals are only slightly ahead at $25,400 per capita.  Unfortunately, it seems those creature comforts have made them relax investment into their sports programs, which was their previous only outlet for excellence, so Romania's gymnastics era is probably coming to an end for good, as well as their just all around Olympic excellence which was spread across many sports.  Their joining of the EU in 2007 opened up all sorts of new investment, emigration, trade, and foreign aid opportunities and unlike Britain they're more than happy to have reached the promised land.  To them, it's just ever onwards and upwards from here, they've been having a run of good luck ever since 1976.

Britain is leaving the EU just as all these happy prospering East European countries like Croatia are joining it.  Their main objection is that Merkel threw open the gates to a flood of Muslim rapefugees and they'd rather not participate in this self-destructive madness.  Meanwhile Italy is stationing ships just five miles off the coast of Libya, picking up any African migrants who wish to capsize into the ocean, and sailing them to shore in Italy where they're disembarked into the EU to roam where they please.  When the rest of the EU is literally piling up its own funeral pyre, it's time to get out, whether the original concept of the EU was a good idea or not.  So congratulations to Britain on voting itself free of this beast before it took you down with it.  But Brexit is meaningless unless new legislation is passed limiting 3rd world immigration into the country, because the global elites who rule Britain, whether part of the EU or not, still have as the status quo policy to accept any and all comers and devil take the hindmost.

Leaving the EU is only a net negative unless a populist politician like Nigel Farage is made prime minister next.  Leaving the EU but making the exact same mistake as the EU, importing the third world by the millions, doesn't make a lick of difference to the overall eventual outcome.  I see a lot of people celebrating Brexit these past couple days, but there's nothing to celebrate yet and a lot to dread.  Lawrence Auster called Britain the 'dead isle' in his absolute disgust of their handling of PC-Multiculturalism, and nothing about this prognosis has yet changed.

Meanwhile, the third Locodol ova came out, and it was as charming and funny as ever.  You've got to love this series.

Meanwhile, the Majikoi A-1 patch came out, this visual novel translation team has been on fire recently releasing product after Majikoi product.  I'm still working on Majikoi S but this will definitely be on my must-read list in due time.  Majikoi is one of my top ten visual novel franchises and with the addition of A-1 it can only go up from here.

The Labyrinth of Grisaia is also out translated on steam, though I feel like the anime covered it well enough that this isn't really a priority.  Well, better safe than sorry, there can never be a large enough backlog.

Da Capo III is fully translated and it's only a matter of time now before this perfect gem of a game is released as well.

I've finished rewatching Assassination Classroom S1 in blu-ray, now I'm just waiting on S2 blu-ray so I can complete another great series' mandatory rewatch session.  Now I'm working on Durarara Shou + Ten which are out in blu-ray to do the same for that series.

My Tales listening project has finished off Graces and is moving on to Hearts.  Not only is Graces my favorite game, it may also be my favorite Tales soundtrack.  We'll just have to wait and see but that's definitely the case so far.

I'm halfway through Hataraku Maou-sama volume 10 but it's slow going because it just isn't that good anymore.

The supreme court blocked Obama's lawless amnesty power grab 4-4.  If Trump doesn't become president and appoint the next supreme court justice, you can kiss all borders goodbye because Clinton has promised even more thorough open borders and an even bigger amnesty, with or without congress, once she's in charge.  This really is the last democratic election which will ever matter in the history of the USA.  Sort of like the fall of the Roman Empire, the Romans themselves didn't realize they had fallen until centuries afterward, but you could trace back their decline and pinpoint the fall of Rome long before then.  This November is the fall of the USA, or its rebirth, no matter how long the state continues to last on the map.