Shadows House out in bluray:

I've already watched and rewatched Shadows House, but I still want to watch it again now that it's out in bluray.  This series looks as good as a Ghibli movie so seeing it in bluray, getting to show off its incredible artwork at the highest resolution and deepest coloration, is a must.

Yesterday also featured a wild NFL regular season finale, with two overtime games determining who got in and who stayed out of the playoffs -- the 49rs beat the Rams in overtime to keep out the Saints, and the Raiders beat the Chargers in overtime to keep out the Chargers and promote the unlikely come-from-behind Steelers.  The extra week of the NFL season provided all the drama one could hope for.  I think the extra game was a great idea, as were the two extra playoff spots they added by taking away the first week byes for the 2 seeds.  A lot of deserving teams barely squeaked in which wouldn't have under the previous formula.

I replaced 9 underperforming songs from my 5-star music with 9 underappreciated songs from my 4-star music.  John Williams clawed back two songs that were cut a week ago, Jun Maeda got four songs from Girls Dead Monster in, and Masaharu Iwata contributed three more songs from Final Fantasy Tactics.  This was enough to propel Jun Maeda over Yasunori Nishiki into 9th place of my all-time composers rankings.  Heaven Burns Red wasn't even needed.

Congratulations to Pretty Cure on their 800th great episode/movie to reach my rankings.  That's nearly twice as many episodes as the next largest series, One Piece, which due to One Pace's treatment is shrinking in size instead of growing day-by-day.  Soon enough Pretty Cure will be twice as large as the next biggest competitor.  Delicious Party Precure looks really good, and though Precure seasons aren't all great, there's a 95% chance Delicious will be, which means 800 isn't the end by any means.  Size matters.  With a size like that, no matter how mediocre each individual ep might be, Precure easily runs away with its #1 of all time anime ranking.  A mildly entertaining 24 minutes x 800 is a lot more entertaining overall than a stupendously entertaining 24 minutes x 12.  It's just math.

Also, congratulations to 15 year old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva for her world record setting performances, chock full of perfectly landed quad jumps alongside beautiful spins and classical music choreography, the most complete package I've ever seen.  Unless she messes up horribly in Beijing she has the gold medal in the bag.  (The second and third best skaters are also Russian by the way.  Russia won the team gymnastics gold last year and now they're going to sweep the figure skating medals this year.  Russia has us beat in hypersonic missiles and women.)