Uematsu taken down a notch:

Nobuo Uematsu has an enormous presence in my 5-star hall of fame, over 200 songs, and overall is thousands of points ahead of the next best composer, Yasunori Mitsuda.  I thought this might be ripe territory for finding lots of overrated songs just because 'all his songs are good,' a mental rut that could dangerously skew my results.

And it was true, many Uematsu songs were riding on his overall reputation and weren't uniquely good themselves.  Of course that reputation is derived from the vast majority of his songs which really are that good, and I still have no complaints with them.

But taking a song from Chrono Trigger here, FF6 there, FF7 over yonder, some FF2 songs, a Granblue Fantasy song, a Lost Odyssey song, an FF11 song, an FF14 song -- you get the idea -- taking all these piggyback riders out here and there gave me the opportunity to promote another batch of wonderful anime and visual novel songs that were stuck at 4-star.

So another 5-star to 4-star flip occurred, this time with Kalafina (really Yuki Kajiura) the main beneficiary, but also helping out Sphere, Luna Haruna, Jun Maeda and Yuka Iguchi.  Jun Maeda got enough points to surpass Mitsuo Hagita and take 10th place on the best composers list, this even before the Heaven Burns Red ost comes out this February.  Who knows how high he'll eventually rise?  As always the details can be found at my Good Music permapost.

Meanwhile, I rewatched Princess Principal Crown Handler 1 and Girls und Panzer das Finale 3 in bluray, fulfilling my oath to rewatch all ranked anime.  The Daikon War short where they rode horses was the best part by far.  They were both incredibly well animated and excellent stories full of colorful characters.  I'd like to rewatch more shows I've only seen the first time, but they haven't come out in bluray yet so I'm stuck with One Piece and Dragon Ball for now.

Shadows House S2 airs this July, sooner than I expected.  It's one of my most highly anticipated shows of the year.

UQ Holder ends next month.  The #1 manga of all time is going to get a perfect ending, capping off an already perfect story.  This kind of stuff only happens once in a lifetime.  If you aren't caught up on UQ Holder yet, now is the time.

The winter 2022 anime season is slowly getting underway.  I'll of course write a first impressions post once enough series have come out to make it worthwhile.