Also, a new key visual novel has been translated, Loopers, available only on the Switch. Luckily I own a Switch so that's no barrier to me. However, I'm still plugging away at Triangle Strategy so I can't make use of this either. Eventually, though. June is a long month.
Sony says it's ramping up production of its PS5. If it actually manages to do so that would be nice, because I'm still waiting to play Tales of Arise with the PS5 game already on my bookshelf.
Berserk is resuming, which is quite a surprise, I thought no one could copy Miura's art style so the project was doomed. However, Miura's friend says he remembers the plot outline and Miura's assistants say they can do the art so the project can move forward without Miura. Hopefully the quality stays roughly the same. Even with these contributors, I somehow doubt Berserk will actually be carried through to its conclusion. The story is so ridiculously long, with so many plot threads still not addressed, I assume Miura's friend will die next before the story ends.
One Piece, on the other hand, is going on hiatus. The author wishes to plan things out for the 'final saga.' Unfortunately the author can't have a final anything, because he's left too many plot threads hanging to end any time soon. What about Noah and the ancient promise? How can Luffy fight the marine admirals and their crazy logia powers? What about Blackbeard? What of the shichibukai, and in particular the son of Whitebeard who is hunting for Luffy? What about Luffy's pirate underlings who supposedly were part of a world revolutionary event some time in the future? What happened at the reverie and where is Sabo now? The story is too big to end. It has to update us on what's going on with every character ever introduced in the previous 1,000 chapters before it can move forward. And even if Big Mam and Kaido are defeated for good -- (are they? Shouldn't they be back on their feet in a few days since they're both still alive?), that still leaves Shanks which Luffy said he wanted to beat. How will that be handled? How did Zoro get that scar over his eye? What is the One Piece waiting for Luffy's crew and the lost void century of history?
This reminds me of Bleach's hurried ending, where a 'silver arrow' was created out of the blue that instantly defeated the omnipotent and omniscient Ywach. That's certainly one way to end a manga, but it doesn't make for a good manga. One Piece needs at least 200 more chapters if it wants to do right by all its foreshadowing. I wouldn't be surprised if it needed 500 more chapters. So that's a minimum of five years until completion. Unless he plans for the final saga to be five years in the making, this 'final saga' talk is stuff and nonsense.
Figure skating has decided to ban athletes under the age of 17 from competing, even though they've proven themselves to be the best athletes by winning gold over and over in international competitions, including the Olympics. Yet again we see sports genuflecting to things other than excellence. In Tennis they banned players from competing who didn't get a Covid vaccine. In the World Cup they banned Russia from even contending. And now we have this. Young girls are to be punished purely for being young, not for anything to do with their prowess or merit. We are entering a world where your 'social credit score' matters more than objective individual ability in any field. Sports were supposed to be the one pure zone where objective merit won out, and now that's gone too. Every trophy hoisted by ever competitor in sports is no longer indicative of being the best athlete, but only the most socially approved athlete. He has the right stance on abortion, Ukraine, gays, transgenders, guns, racism, vaccines, January 6th, blah blah blah. We have no idea if he's any good at his actual job. That no longer matters. All the best players have already been sidelined by these infinite filters.
Every championship won in figure skating, gymnastics, tennis, soccer or whatever should have an asterisk attached to it, explaining that none of it is real anymore and no one actually defeated the best in their field to attain all these phony honors. It's all scripted theater now, meant to adulate socially approved, politically correct athletes, in order to instruct the populace on how to think and behave if they want to be successful too. All the pleasures of the world await you so long as you conform -- money, fame, glory -- but if not, no matter how good you are or how much you train or what you achieve, the abyss. The memory hole for you. It's like a metaphor for this whole twisted world.
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