I don't recommend art to other people that I don't consume myself. So when one of the 25 light novel series I'm following comes out with a new translated work, I jump on it and get things done.
In this case it was the long running Spice and Wolf series. It's so long and so much of it hasn't been animated that it just keeps rising in the ranks of my value-added authors. Perhaps next time it will be Hataraku Maou-sama, or maybe the next Hai to Gensou no Grimgar will come out. Whatever the case I'll be ready and waiting to read them all.
One of the songs I added to my hall of fame wasn't actually good enough and I had to cut it again, 'Foul Fiend', so I'm back down to 4931 songs. Yasunori's lead over Sakimoto shrank back down to just 16 songs. When Valkyria 4's music comes out it will be a close run thing.
The rest of my newly inducted music has held up very well though. I've listened to them all six times now and they're all up to standard. This is what happens when you pursue music by the very best composers, there's very little that can go wrong.
The trick to good music is finding local maximums. Just because you've already composed the perfect song doesn't mean there aren't any other perfect songs left to create. A song is only perfect in terms of being a local maximum, based on the unique aspects of which instruments you chose to use, your singer's voice, the tempo, volume, pitch, style, genre, the emotion or narrative you're trying to convey, so on and so forth. There's a perfect answer for every song, but if you enter the arena with a different set of variables, the answer also changes into a wholly new shape and form. It's this wonderful variety of inputs that leads to the wondrous variety of outputs, and why I'm not content to just listen to the 'best of collection.' There are so many 'bests' out there, for each particular situation and moment, that I'll probably never get to hear them all. Even the lowliest of songs in my hall of fame isn't strictly inferior to anyone. It's always the exact best at expressing itself.
I'm not interested in remixes, because they are strictly inferior works of art. They aren't local maximums, they're discarded ideas on the way up to the local maximum, things that are close to the maximum but aren't actually the maximum. But new songs by the same artist experimenting with different inputs is an entirely different story, even if it's their 878th composition. I'll pursue such works to the ends of the Earth.
Meanwhile, I've rewatched all the great anime in my rankings that came out in 2016 or prior, except for Ojamajo Doremi which Doremi Fansubs still hasn't released the HD version of. Even Dragon Ball Super, One Piece and Mahoutsukai Precure, long running series I had no current obligation to rewatch, I've now covered their 2016 and before releases.
Because anime is so good, unlike books where I just read what I recommend, I actually watch and rewatch the anime I recommend. And I'm perfectly on schedule in that above and beyond sphere of duty as well.
There's still a month until the World Cup and I have nothing important left to do, so I guess it's back to Hatsukoi 1/1 for me. . .
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