Hoshikoi x Tinkle:

A new year means a new slate of visual novels coming out every month, and the most promising one of January 2017 is Hoshikoi x Tinkle.





The game is slated to come out January 27th in Japan, and (most likely) never anywhere else.  But at least we can look at the pretty artwork in the opening video and dream.

My New Year's Resolution of 2017 is to finish Majikoi S.  I feel like the game is so long that I can't even promise I'll get to A-1 or A-2 this year, but at the very least surely I can complete S.  Maybe once I finish S I can worry about setting a new ambitious goal.

Other projects that carry over from 2016 -- my Tales listening project and the construction of my ultimate video game music playlist.  The rewatch of Naruto now that the anime is more or less complete.  The Osananajimi wa Daitouryou fandisk.  Reading the rest of the Baccano light novels.  Reading the rest of Frank Herbert's Dune series.  Finishing Final Fantasy XV once all the update patches are released.  Finishing the blu-ray rewatches of Working S3, Yuru Yuri S3, and Schwarzesmarken once they're actually released with subtitles.

Shinryaku! Ika Musume got an entire new volume of its manga translated as a gift for New Year's Eve.  Even so, the last volume remains to be translated as a project for 2017.  Amazingly, the only manga that was both completed and completely translated in 2016 was Boku Dake ga Inai Machi.  Let's hope 2017 cleans a little of that backlog up with the completion of Squid Girl and Gokukoku no Brynildr.

Girlish Number had a good final episode.  Hibike! Euphonium was almost a recap ep.  Brave Witches was perfect.  Fate/Grand Order was a cool New Year's Eve present, but felt too much like a commercial for a video game.  Kizumonogatari - Nekketsu Hen was gorgeous visually but very weird in its art direction.  Like the repetitive face laughing of Episode.  Or Araragi screaming way too much against Thaumaturge.  Well, whatever.  I'm looking forward to the third and final movie coming out in 2017, completing this vital arc of the overall Bakemonogatari corpus.

If we're lucky, maybe Owarimonogatari Ke will also come out this year, and we can see the true ending to this series?  Even if we do get the 'ending,' the author has added in tons of additional books since then, so this had better not be the ending of the anime either.

Fairy Tail's promised new movie comes out this spring in Japan, so perhaps this winter for the outside world.  It's titled Dragon Cry, which fills me with a lot of anticipation.

Clemson and Alabama destroyed their competition yesterday.  These are indubitably the two best teams in college football, just like they were the year before.  I expect an amazing game to decide the title next week.  By then we'll already be in the midst of the NFL Playoffs as well.

A new year means a new winter 2017 anime season, so I'll be working on my first impressions post over the next couple weeks.  Just as soon as we put a period on 2016's year in anime, the 2017 year in anime review begins.  A hero's work is never done.