Last year I was rewatching a lot of long series like Fate/etc., Fairy Tail, Bleach, One Piece and Dragon Ball. I finished all the others but I'm still trudging through Dragon Ball Super. The quality of the average Super episode is beneath even the Buu saga, with fights unnecessarily dragging out, comic interludes which aren't actually funny, and annoying characters who take up way too much time. I'm sure I'll finish my third rewatch of Super eventually, but it hasn't been fun like all these other high ranking series were.
Meanwhile Kimetsu no Yaiba has essentially been announced to have plans to be fully animated to the manga's conclusion. At the production level Ufotable has been delivering, and with the supremely blessed ending material they have to work with, it wouldn't be strange to flip Dragon Ball's #6 ranking with Kimetsu no Yaiba's #33. This is easier on me because none of the other shows have to be re-ranked, so flipped rankings it is.
At some point, when all of Cue! is out, Bastard!! is out, KonoSuba S3 and DanMachi S4 is out, I'll redo the entire rankings and make them more accurate, but as a provisional patch this works fine. It conveys the point that I'm really excited about Kimetsu no Yaiba and disappointed in Dragon Ball's ability to be very long but not actually have much content. Even though the series was redone to cut the filler, it still feels full of filler material.
There is one odd aspect to this, in that I think Dragon Ball is full of interesting and likable characters, but Kimetsu no Yaiba only has two important people to me, Tanjiro and Nezuko. It's possible for series to be good in different ways though. The sheer spectacle of Kimetsu's fights isn't a likable person, but it is a great experience. Daki isn't a likable person, she tugs on little girls' ears over imperceptibly small irritations, but she still had a magnetic personality you couldn't look away from. The snake Hashira isn't a likable person, but he's still cool in his coldly calculating hatred of demons. The sound Hashira is way too over the top to be a likable person, but I still like that the series stood up for polygamy by giving him three wives. So the series is great in ways that can't be added up by personalities alone. The same is true of Sekai no Senki. Only Jinto and Lafiel matter to me in that series, but the Abh Empire itself is beautiful without being a person. The space combat is riveting in how technological and unforgiving it is, without being a person.
The second issue with declaring Kimetsu to be fully adapted into an anime is that the manga no longer has any value. This means I had to cut it from my manga hall of fame and add Hanayamata back in to take its place. Hanayamata was only out of my manga hall of fame for a couple weeks before finding a new opportunity. ^^.
The Rams played a great game and deserved their Super Bowl win. Stafford and Kupp on offense plus Donald and Von Miller on defense is too much talent for anyone to handle. I wanted other teams to win, though, so the whole playoffs were bittersweet. Still, the final 7 games of the playoffs were all determined by 3 points. I don't know if such a competitive and exciting playoffs has ever happened before. No one could ask for more from the NFL. And it is cool that the Rams won the Super Bowl at their own new home field stadium. That's a nice gift to their LA fans.
I'm having fun re-reading Negima from the beginning now that I've seen the ending. I think the author should have drawn the girls with nipples or refrained from constantly unclothing them, one or the other, it's kind of silly to vacillate halfway between. A girl with an anatomically incorrect body isn't as attractive as a clothed girl. Konoka in her kimono and her hair done up nicely, for instance, was prettier than all these bathing scenes. But I'll forgive the author because the girls are all so lively and cute, the plot is cool and it's hilarious.
Kamila Valieva will skate her individual competition. This is great for the audience because her skating is magnificent. Whether it occurred through doping or native talent, it's still a joy to behold. I don't think Kamila should be awarded any medals if she is in fact guilty of this infraction. The case is bizarre, though. She tested positive for a drug with multiple uses, some innocent, months ago, and only once. So she has clean tests heading into the Olympics and at the Olympics, and the performance we saw at the Olympics was the result of her own body's power. If she's that good clean, why did she feel the need to dope at all? For all I know the drug was somehow infiltrated into her without her own knowledge. As a 15 year old girl, maybe her coaches felt it wise to give her a leg up by spiking her drink or something. So there are multiple scenarios here. She really is a two-faced villain who cheated her way to the top and deceived the whole world including all of her Russian teammates (all of whom tested clean unlike her). Or it's a false positive, or she herself was deceived by someone else into taking the drug once, or who knows what.
All I know is I want to see her skate because she's beautiful and her figure skating is beautiful. And we will get to see her skate, so that's a win. Since Russia will win the individual women's figure skating gold whether Kamila is invalidated or not, in the long run it hardly matters. Since we've already seen what Kamila can do in the team competition, the most exciting aspect of the individual women's figure skating contest is getting to see the other Russian girls for the first time.
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