Another Wish:

A spinoff series titled 'Another Wish' of Ken Tensei has released its first volume and can be found over at nyaa.si.  I don't think it's by the original author, but Fran looks beautiful like always, so I have no complaints.  If Fran wants to be a phantom thief or cure people's broken hearts or whatever, since she's a lightly dressed catgirl regardless, I will never have any complaints.

In addition, the final Fate/Grand Order movie, the Temple of Solomon, is available with English subtitles over at nyaa.si.  Presumably this will finish the story.

I wanted to include some more anime songs into my 5-star hall of fame, largely the songs by Nao Toyama posing as 'Kanon' from TWGOK.  (But also the openings to Strike Witches 2, Madoka Magica, Tari Tari and Sakura Trick.)  Ten songs in all flipped from 4-star to 5-star.

In order to make room I targeted my usual suspects -- western instrumentals -- so Steve Fawkner, Paul Romero, Howard Shore, Russell Brower and Jason Hayes took a hit for the team.  The poor west, they're already reduced to a tiny fraction of my 5-star songs and yet here I am eliminating more.  I also cut Dancing Mad from FF6 and One Who Bares Fangs at God from Xenogears because I don't like their wailing 'vocals'.  (are synthesized voices really voices?)

Of course, this is all relative, these were all high quality songs being downgraded to 4-star, which is still the 'above average' category.  But cuts must be found somewhere because my anime songstresses have been horribly underestimated until now.

This should do it, though.  Anime now has the decent representation it deserves, the west has been completely laid low, and vocalists have scored a great triumph over instrumentals.  The new 5-star playlist should be perfect.  34.9% anime/visual novel/j-pop, 4.6% western (including the 20 western-origin game themes), 60.5% Japanese game music.

One thing to keep in mind, game themes tend to be shorter and simpler than anime/visual novel or western music.  So despite having more total songs in that category, their playtime isn't much longer.  Anime/visual novel/j-pop music is a day of continuous play time, whilst Japanese games are 1.4 days.  The west has .2 days in total.  So for instance there are 13 times as many Japanese songs as western songs, but their total play length is only 7 times as high.  And for anime it's practically neck and neck.  The advantage game music has from the percentage stat is only surface level.

I could make an even further caveat and say game music that includes vocalist opening, ending or insert themes is more like anime music than traditional game instrumentals and should be counted towards the anime tally.  For instance, the gorgeous openings to Tales of Graces and Tales of Vesperia, complete with a ufotable animated opening, count as game music, but they sure look like anime songs to me!  There are 25 such songs, with a playtime of .1 days.  What if they were added to the anime total instead?  Then it would be 1.1 vs. 1.3 in playtime.

Well, being that nitpicky is going too far, but you get the overall point.  The anime industry and the Japanese game industry should be treated as equal contributors to the world's greatest music.

Next up I need to do a 'victory lap' of my 5-star playlist, making sure all the changes worked and no weak entries slipped through the dragnet.  I doubt I'll have to make any more changes after I've been so thorough already, but I've been surprised multiple times already when I thought I was done before.  Better to be safe than sorry.  As always the details to the quality of my composers and songs can be found at my Good Music permapost.

I rewatched the first two episodes of Cue!, the only ones out yet, and they were indeed worthy of a great anime.  I don't think my ranking the series was premature, this show is amazing.  I can't wait for the next 22 eps.