Kingdom Hearts Music:

I needed to breach the 1,000 new songs barrier before the end of the year, so I decided to check out the music from Kingdom Hearts.

I'm a huge fan of Yoko Shimomura, but I'm not a fan of Kingdom Hearts, so I've always avoided these soundtracks up until now.  But necessity called so eventually I had to give this franchise a try.  As I thought, Kingdom Hearts is not my cup of tea -- way too jolly and upbeat -- but Yoko Shimomura pulled through for me in a pinch.  After scouring the soundtracks of both 1 and 2, I came away with 12 songs worthy of entering my music hall of fame.  Now I can safely delete new remixes or bad songs that pop up and still stay over the 1,000 song barrier for the rest of the year.

Of the 12 songs, 'Passion - opening version -' really takes the cake.  It's head and shoulders better than the rest.  It was only after hearing this song that I decided to take the plunge and download all the Kingdom Hearts music and test it all.  I figured if Passion was part of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, undoubtedly other good songs would be as well.  I bet on the quality of Passion and was rewarded with the other 11 as a result.

I might check out the music of Kingdom Hearts 3 when it comes out too, but that's not a priority.  The priority was reaching 1,000 new songs in a single year like I'd already bragged as having done.  I don't actually want to turn my music hall of fame into an unwieldy beast bursting at the seams with additional songs.  Just the very good ones I'm nostalgically fond of should be enough.

While testing out the new Kingdom Hearts music (at minimum listening to all the new entries six times) I needed something to read, so I dug in to Uchi no Musume.  I was able to finish books three and four.  Things sure happen suddenly in this series, but I guess that's fine.  Just 5-7 left to go.

Btooom's volume 23 has been delayed to January so Uchi no Musume is all I've got.

12 Kingdoms' newest volume nine is coming out in 2019, but we still lack a full translation of volume 8, so it hardly matters.  *sigh*  I would love to see the ending to this story, too.