The Decline and Fall of Manga:

Since 2013, we've on average lost 6 good manga series and gained only 1 per year.  At that rate manga will disappear off the face of the Earth by 2025.  The scary part about 2017 isn't that this year is abnormal, it's that it's the new norm.

And with Bleach, Naruto, Fairy Tail, Akame ga Kill! and Hayate no Gotoku ending, we're no longer talking about minor unimportant series.  We're talking half the top ten here.  Cross Game and Dragon Ball ended ages ago, so we're actually talking over 50% of recent highly ranked series all coming to a close in the past few years.

A business that loses half its customer base in three years can only be described as in trouble.  So what about an art form that loses half its best producers?  The road for manga is rocky looking ahead.

Meanwhile, I finished listening to my 'other anime' playlist.  I upgraded 100 songs to the top tier, 10 star anime playlist.  This is eerily close to the 98 that were removed from the 10 star anime list in order to join the new visual novel music category.  Like reinforcements to a World War I division, I've managed to plug all the gaps, despite dismal 20% casualty ratings.

36 of my new recruits come from my Record of Lodoss War soundtrack.  My 10 star anime list used to consist solely of vocals, usually openings and endings, but Lodoss War's regular background music is so good that it can compete evenly with other shows' openings.  (So can Eva's background music, though to a lesser degree than the absolute #1 perfection that is Lodoss).  The saddest part is the composer, Mitsuo Hagita, never composed anything else of importance before or since.  The only other song by him I even own is the opening to Miyuki's anime.  Well, at least we'll always have Lodoss War to remember him by.

Despite being newbies, my 100 new entries won't lose to anyone.  Rather than feeling 'well maybe this song can keep up,' the songs I graduated were always accompanied by the thought 'why wasn't this song in my top tier already?  What on Earth is it doing down here?'  So I predict no difficulties in integration with the rest of the list.

My 10 star anime list now stands at 526 songs, and the 'other anime' list includes 386 runners-up.  The rest were consigned to oblivion.

Next up is judging Star Wars to see how many of its songs can graduate up to Star Classical level, just like Lord of the Rings did before them.