For whatever reason, my copy of Eiyuuden Chronicle is still stuck in the mail and won't arrive for another week. I beat the epilogue chapter of Unicorn Overlord for the third time, but am still no match for wandering monster Amalia, so I can't rely on that game any more to tide me over.
I finished Kana and Tsukasa's route in Irotoridori no Sekai and am now on Kyou's, but one can only flip from one romance to another so quickly. Especially when the only girl I want to date is Shinku, and so far I can't. Kana is a cool girl, a survivalist who has overcome incredible odds. Tsukasa on the other hand is, to be polite, very lacking in IQ and common sense. . . At least she's pretty, and I guess that's all a girl needs, really. . .
I'm all caught up on the spring anime, though I have given up on Shinkalion as being too non-serious and Vampire Dormitory for being too gay. So what is there left to do? The answer is read the newest volume of Wolf & Parchment. It actually came out in December but close enough, this was the first window of opportunity I had to read it in anyway. Supposedly volume 8 is coming out this May, so now I can read the two books back to back which should help my memory.
I'm only 14% of the way through so far, so hopefully this will occupy me until Eiyuuden arrives. I also took this chance to listen through my 1-star music hall of fame and find any songs I could cull, so that next time I add music I can stay at a nice even 5500 songs in all. The mission was successful and I found another 12 expendable songs. If Eiyuuden's soundtrack is good I can include it without disruption. I only found five songs in my 1-star tier that were underrated, out of 1,100, so I'm feeling pretty good about how accurate my rankings have become. I demoted some short and underwhelming 2-star songs to make room for the promoted 1-stars. The songs were even shorter than they seemed because they were so repetitive.
Even though this is my bottom tier of music, it was still fun to listen to, full of many famous and popular songs/composers from many famous and popular artistic works. It's the bottom tier, but it's the bottom tier of a hall of fame. These songs still have every reason to be proud.
Villages are falling left and right in Ukraine. Of course they've all been evacuated, so maybe it would be better to describe them as urban strongholds. But cities that had never fallen since the beginning of the war are falling like dominoes now -- Novomykailavka, Ocheretyne, Berdichy, etc. The new funding bill the U.S.A. gave Ukraine doesn't seem to have made any difference, as I predicted. There are some strongholds Ukraine has held fast in, though: Bilogorovka, Ugledar, Sinkovka. Russia has broken their teeth on those strongholds for years with nothing to show for it. And then there are the cities where Russia is making progress but glacially slow -- Krasnogorovka, Chasiv Yar, Robotyne, Spirne, etc. Depending on which front you're looking at the war could be described as win, loss or tie. Russia isn't willing to mobilize or spend serious money on this war so it keeps puttering on like this. In fact, in the middle of this war, Russia's civilian economy and standard of living is booming, it's completely unlike the rationing, victory bonds and victory gardens we saw during World War II. It really is just a 'special military operation' like they describe.
But who am I to criticize Russia? Ukraine is a gigantic country with at least 30 million people, supported by hundreds of billions of dollars from abroad. Israel, meanwhile, can't beat Hamas in little tiny Gaza Strip, a few square kilometers, with only two million people, most of whom are noncombatants, women and children, plus men unaffiliated with the terrorist group. They've spent a year fruitlessly trying to do something and achieved nothing. Compared to Israel Russia is moving at light speed.
Russia is going to conquer Ukraine in less time than it takes Square Enix to remake FF 7, one measly video game. So from that point of view the military is hyper competent. Of course, who owns Ukraine is less important than FF 7, in terms of historical impact looking towards the future, so maybe it should be decided faster.
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