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Saturday, April 29, 2017

Da Capo III DreamDays:

A new Da Capo game has been announced, D.C. III DreamDays, centered around Charles this time.  This is the 30th Da Capo game in the franchise.  3 have been translated into English so far, so you can guess how likely we are to ever see this product.

But you have to admire Da Capo.  There's no other visual novel franchise with remotely as many entries, and even if there were none of them are remotely as good.  Da Capo is the sine qua non of visual novels.  I'm sure the people of Japan are very happy right now, and I'm happy for them.  Long live Da Capo, queen of the artistic world, even though we'll never get to see her face.

Coincidentally, this is my 30th post of the month, one for every day.  A lot happened this April.

Today marks the end of the Tales of Zestiria anime.  No other Tales anime has been announced, so it's also the end of a seventeen year long franchise.  The Tales anime franchise is largely a story of missed opportunities.  Either they didn't adapt the right games, or they didn't adapt them well enough.  In Zestiria's case both problems were evident.

Even with these drawbacks, due to its massive length of 81 episodes/movies, and the innate strength of the source material, it's still my 82nd favorite anime franchise of all time.  So be sure to catch this straggler from the winter season and complete your Zestiria watch through now.

Fresh Pretty Cure's movie is out subtitled in blu-ray now.  This is an upgrade from the previous version, which was just a dvd release (dvd's are only 480p, this one's 1080p).  But it has the same catch as the series -- though released, it isn't seeded yet.  Maybe someday, right?

I don't think Sakura Quest has what it takes to reach my rankings.  The nine remaining empty slots will remain empty for now, until we see what the summer season has to offer.

It doesn't look like Full Metal Panic! will be airing this year after all.  But at least we have Imouto Sae Ereba Ii coming this fall.  This is from the maker of Haganai, so I have high expectations.  Also, New Game season 2 is coming as soon as this summer, just two months away now.

Once the final nine slots are filled, I'm going to up the requirements to get in.  First off, obviously, you would need to beat somebody already in my rankings in order to take their place.  This creates a problem though.  In order to truly be a great anime franchise, you have to be worth watching not just once in full but twice.  That second watch through is meant to be once the blu-rays come out, and can take years before it happens (just look at Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls, released in 2015 but the blu-rays still aren't out.)

If I let things play out normally, I'd be eliminating series ranked 'great' before I even rewatched them, before their blu-rays even came out.  This would create an endless churn of pseudo-ranked series that never really 'made it' getting killed off as soon as they're born.

In order to uphold the integrity of the ranking process, things will have to change.  No series ranked as great can be disqualified until all current ranked shows have been watched and rewatched, so that everybody is on a level playing field and everyone is equally legitimatized as having truly deserved their spot in the sunshine.

It's not even fair to eliminate a show that has been watched twice before other shows haven't been watched twice.  Because imagine if, upon seeing a show a second time, I decided it was actually worse than I previously remembered.  In that case, the show could conceivably be demoted below the show that I was about to eliminate in order to free up space for someone else.  By denying at-risk shows that chance I'm being unfair to them.

This isn't a problem if the new content is just a sequel to an already firmly established show (like in the case of Cinderella Girls).  Idolm@ster is mostly ranked for its first season, not its spinoff sequel.  But in the case of shows like Dimension W, which are new series I have yet to rewatch, the situation is truly grave.

So here's the new rule -- until all of my rookie, debut franchises have been watched and rewatched, once my hall of fame list reaches its destined 200 entries, nobody else can enter or leave the rankings.

Everyone who is on the outside looking in during this time will also be given a new rule -- until they've been not only watched but also rewatched, they can't get on the list even when the conditions are all green.  They'll just have to stay as good series on the runners-up list until they've proven themselves twice over.

This will create a pause of a couple years where nothing is changed for a good while, giving a sense that yes, all of these series are the real deal, even #200.

Of course, once that pause ends, shows will be entering and leaving at the same pace as now, just delayed by blu-ray release timing instead of by when the show initially airs.  But at least that air of permanence will add luster to the hall of fame even once the dams have broken down again.

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