The light novel covers two significant events after the manga ends. The first is a battle between Yamato and the Seven Luminaries vs. the evil empire's vanguard, which is a victory for the good guys thanks to their helicopter Ringo made. But it's made clear throughout the fight that the losses inflicted on the enemy are negligible compared to their main force's numbers. So the drama of how they're going to stop this army is clearly going to be a key issue for the final volume.
The second significant event is that when Shinobu infiltrates the enemy's capital city and defeats a powerful enemy ninja named Sasuke, she meets the Merchant luminary and informs him that his side is serving an evil world ending dragon. She thinks this would be sufficient inducement for him to switch sides and work with the other prodigies, but it turns out it isn't and the Merchant instead shoots her twice, saying he's fine with evil dragons destroying the world.
Obviously they wouldn't really kill off the lovable Shinobu, she'll somehow manage to survive in volume 9 I'm sure. This series is too lighthearted to go all Game of Thrones. The bigger question is if the Merchant sincerely is a villain, or if this is all a clever ruse and he's a double agent deep undercover right now, so he had to shoot Shinobu to gain the enemy's trust. I don't know. Maybe he's just a bad dude. I'll learn in October, this and how they plan on defeating the evil empire and stopping the resurrection of the dark dragon.
I wish Eromanga Sensei's final volume were translated like Choyoyu is going to receive. It's ridiculous that such a good story by such a famous author would be left stranded so close to the ending. Why does this keep happening? It's the same with Bakemonogatari.
I think we need a rewrite of the declaration of independence, it seems to be the source of every bad idea that's plagued the world since 1776. We are not all created equal, and we are not endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. We were all created for the purpose of creating Utility, both for God who doesn't do work for free and certainly wants to be paid back for giving us life, and for ourselves because God is a benevolent being and wants to see us happy. Fulfilling that dual purpose is actually our inalienable duty, and the utility God is pining for is beauty, truth and love. We were put on this planet to mass produce these commodities, which is why we have the unique capacity, in all the universe, to produce them. If we had had some other purpose, God would have constructed us with other faculties that produced other things. But we have these faculties and these are the things we produce that no other life form or machine can. So this is clearly our purpose. And if it's our purpose, it's also our duty. Our duty to God who we need to pay back for the favor of life, and our duty to ourselves to live up to our full potential and reap the greatest rewards life has to offer. By doing God's work we nourish our souls.
We have the inalienable duty, endowed by our Creator, to appreciate, understand and affirm life and the world we live in. We don't have the right to anything. Why would God want rebels with rights? No, he'd want employees who do their damn jobs. We were hired for a reason. God certainly didn't put us here so that we could freely engage in whatever atrocity or despicable, disgusting act we could possibly imagine. It doesn't matter if it helps us pursue our happiness, the question is does it further God's happiness? If not, why on Earth would he endow us with an inalienable right to it? It's absurd. No rational God would do what the declaration of independence says. This newly invented Creator, who doesn't have the same values or precepts of any previously described God in any of the holy books, born just for the declaration of independence, is the worst God ever. All he does is endorse and protect sin, euphemistically calling it 'liberty,' ludicrously furthering the falsehood that blacks and whites have the same IQ and criminal inclination, tears apart families and lowers reproduction to below survival levels. Do Gods really act like this? Doesn't this look a lot more like the Devil? Does God really want us all dead?
Thomas Jefferson, in a single paragraph, gave birth to the worst monster to ever stalk the land. It is destroying the entire world, sucking us dry, twisting us into pretzels, as we follow to the logical conclusion lunatic lies.
I'm doing my part -- yesterday I started rereading and editing '100 Waifus' for the 37th time. Already I found lots of 'evens' and 'justs' to cut and rephrase with clearer, less repetitive phrases. This doesn't change the content of the book, but it does change the delivery. Like how Final Fantasy 5's music could have been better with a better synthesizer, '100 Waifus' can be better, with the exact same notes, if delivered by a superior instrument. There is a frustrating aspect to this, I'm so busy editing I don't get to really settle in and enjoy the book as it's meant to be enjoyed, but I guess that can wait for a 38th readthrough, as clearly this time it's about work not play.
I also contributed to 'beauty' by rating 'Golden Time' by Yui Horie a 5-star song. This is the 83rd and probably last recent addition to my 5-star tier, because there aren't any more bad FF 5 songs left to demote. Out of 1100 total songs, 83 is 7.5%, which is a pretty dramatic level of turnover. But now I can switch modes from constructing the playlist to actually listening to it, which together with the women's World Cup to watch on mute should be enthralling. Anime and visual novel music now makes up the clear majority of my 5-star tier playtime, an improvement from when it was tied with video game music. There are more moving and memorable themes outside of video games than in, and now my playlist accurately reflects that.
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