Verknokamianske didn't fall after all:

Obviously I don't have a magic eye that can scry out the actual locations of troops in Ukraine, I can only report what I hear, and the Russian ministry of defense did announce they'd taken this city.  But it turns out they were lying and/or mistaken.  The city is so unpronounceable maybe they were trying to talk about another town and bit their tongues.  >.<.

So there's no Siversk offensive, everything is the same as it has been for a year.  The only small progress Russia is making is in Toretsk.  On the bright side there's another unconfirmed rumor that Ukraine's armed forces have taken 1.8 million casualties, with maybe 750k of those being killed in action.  With casualties like that it's hard to believe Ukraine can fight much longer.

Russia isn't the only one making slow progress on their projects.  I'm only on Chapter 24 of my 46th re-read and re-edit of '100 Waifus.'  I've found plenty of things to edit, but it's mainly single word substitutions -- a continuation of world wars 'just,' 'even,' and ','.  Either I replace the offending terms with more varied words or delete them without replacing them because there was no reason for them to be there at all.  Once I replaced an 'all' with a 'the' in an exciting change of pace.

Every edit is vital to the overall quality of the work, this will definitely improve the flow of the story for first time readers, but it doesn't do much for me, a 46th time reader.  All I wanted to do was read the book without having to stop and edit all the time, and I missed out on that chance by Chapter 4.  From there on I knew it was going to be a slog.

The Kindle edition of the new Red Wheel book has received multiple delays, all the way to October 22nd, so I can keep reading and editing '100 Waifus' while I wait.  There's no deadline so the reread will take however long it takes.  I'd like to finish editing the book this year but there's still plenty of time to reach that standard.  I'm pretty sure this 46th edition will be the final edits, because the edits I am catching are all so minor and nitpicky.  It's not like I'm adding whole new sections of dialogue or anything, none of the content is being affected.  If this is all I can find wrong with the book then clearly there's nothing wrong with the book and my work is done.

Next time, when I get my 47th edition in paperback, I'll be able to relax and just read the story like I've always dreamed.

Meanwhile I rewatched season 7 of Hero Academia, fulfilling another great anime rewatch promise.  I also rewatched Hibike! Euphonium season 3, though maybe I've mentioned that already.  My work on the music hall of fame continues apace.  I've screened 4600 songs out of 5500.  Once I'm done I'll flip a lot of songs a tier up or down and eliminate some 1-stars that don't deserve to be here.  As you can see, it isn't just Russia that's bogged down in giant difficult tasks.

The starship booster making a chopstick landing was amazing.

Trump is up in the polls and betting markets.  My longstanding prediction Trump would win is looking pretty good right now.  Basically the only possible way he could lose now is vote fraud.

Biden admits Israel is attempting to genocide the Gaza Strip through starvation, but inscrutably has decided Israel should stop doing that 'within 30 days,' not, like, 'right now.'  Because genocide is only bad if it continues for 30 days. . .

Congratulations to Precure on their 900th episode of great quality anime:

I'm a Precure connoisseur, I don't accept any and all seasons as great, only the actually great ones.  But when you add up all the great episodes and great movies of Precure, today is the day the legendary series broke the 900 barrier.  No other anime has even reached 600 yet, and here Precure is at 900.  Of course most series are lucky to get 25 episodes.  The rarified air Precure lives in is truly ridiculous.

Nevertheless, the repeat animation and repeat situations of normally episodic Precure episodes means this number should be taken with an asterisk.  If you were looking for genuinely original content, I'd say Precure is around 300 episodes long.  The problem with saying 'it's actually 300 eps long,' is viewers still have to watch the episodes in full, there's no 'abridged Precure' or 'Precure Kai' fan edit, so it actually is 900 episodes long.  It's a 900 ep long slog that feels as rewarding as 300 eps.  It's the price all Precure fans must pay.

900 is ridiculous, but even at 300 eps worth of distilled quality content, that's very rare.  That puts Precure in the company of other titans like Dragon Ball, Fairy Tail, Naruto and One Piece.  And whaddya know, Precure is in the top ten alongside all those guys.  There's no fighting the sheer enormous quantity of Pretty Cure.  It's like Germany versus the Soviet Union.

Speaking of Dragon Ball, Daima is better than I expected.  I was prepared to rate it as great as simply a fillip to the dead Akira Toriyama in honor of his passage, but that isn't necessary because it actually is great.  He still had it.  To his dying day Akira was a genius.

As of now the fall season is airing new episodes of canon #1 ranked Fairy Tail, #2 ranked One Piece, #4 ranked Precure, #5 ranked Bleach, #6 ranked Dragon Ball, and #7 ranked SAO.  Such a legendary lineup has never happened before and will never happen again.  It borders on the miraculous.  Like every planet in the solar system lining up as they revolve around the sun.  You won't see this again in 500 million years.

What a time to be alive.  Savor and cherish this moment, because the world could plunge into nuclear fire at any moment.  Israel vs. Iran, Russia vs. USA, everything is right on the brink.  In a few weeks the world economy could mean anime can no longer afford to be aired and no one will have the internet to receive it.  All satellites above Earth could be destroyed.   Or we could just all be dead and thus unable to view this lineup.

This is such a weird moment in world history for so many different reasons.

If we do manage to survive World War III, at least we have the ending to Hero Academy to look forward to.  They announced a final season that covers the rest of the manga starting next year.  One more mega-project to scratch off the to-do list.

The Ohio State vs. Oregon game was as good as I said it would be.

I was right about the transgenders:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/33-high-schoolers-identify-transgender-cdc-survey-claims

This data is straight from the CDC, so it's unquestionable.  It says 5.5% of high schoolers are transgender or unsure what gender they are.  The CDC goes on to point out that these people all have awful lives and 26% of them attempted suicide last year.

An X user then commented that this rate of transgenderism is up 1,000 fold from 2013.  There's no way 1,000 times as many people were 'born that way' in ten years.

So all the ducks are lined up in a row -- A massive number of children are transgender -- if there are 74 million children aged 0-18, and high school is four years long, it follows that there are 856,842 transgenders in high school right now.  The natural rate of transgenderism is 1,000 times less than this, so let's subtract the 'born that way' group as not the media's fault -- the remainder is 855,985 kids whose lives are ruined and will shortly end, according to the CDC's own reporting.

Honestly it's probably better to die of a Covid vaccine than get your body and spirit mutilated beyond recognition and live in perpetual agony while constantly attempting suicide until you finally succeed.  And all 855,985 kids became transgender due to external influence, not because they were 'born that way.'  All their fates were preventable.  All their fates were foisted upon them.  By the same government that mandated the death jabs.

If killing 185,000 kids isn't enough of a crime for you, how about 855,985 more?  Now we're over a million tortured to death kids in America.  There's a big hullaballoo over the Armenian genocide which killed 2 million people.  So do American kids get an entry in the history books for their genocide?  Or does the number need to keep rising?

Speaking of dead kids, a good post by Caitlin Johnstone proves Israelis are busy killing kids too.  It's no wonder the American government is Israel's greatest ally, they're peas in a pod:  https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/10/10/israeli-snipers-routinely-deliberately-shoot-palestinian-kids-in-the-head/

The strongest piece of evidence (though all of it is overwhelming) is when 45 separate American doctors all signed a testimonial reporting that they'd specifically treated deliberately sniped in the head children in the Gaza Strip.  There's no way that many doctors are lying or the conspiracy to paint Israel as evil could be that vast among accredited U.S. doctors just reporting what they're seeing back to President Biden.

I'm for not killing kids.  I don't want to shell kindergartners like Ukraine brags about doing.  I don't want to snipe kids in the head in the Gaza Strip like Israel is doing.  I don't want to give kids a vaccine that kills 5 out of every 1,000 who take it.  I don't want to turn 5.5% of kids into transgender freaks whose lives become mental and physical agony until they take their own lives.  There's no telling how many covid vaccinated kids are also living tortured lives due to the aftereffects of the vaccine, but one good example of these aftereffects is found in the exact same asthma study already cited -- vaccinated children have twice as much asthma now as unvaccinated:

Cohort 1, 4.7% of COVID-19 infected children without vaccination developed new-onset asthma,

For Cohort 2, COVID-19 infected children with vaccination showed an 8.3% incidence of new-onset asthma,

Now multiply asthma by every other imaginable health condition, because these vaccines impact every single corner of your body and brain, and you'll get the health toll, which is magnitudes larger than the death toll, to kids given this unnecessary vaccine.  (Basically zero children died of Covid).

I have tried to describe how evil America is with terms like 'Satanic,' 'inverted,' and 'nightmare hellscape,' but apparently people still don't get the import of these terms.  They probably associate these adjectives with 'he's a cat person and doesn't like dogs.'  Or 'he's a fan of vanilla as opposed to chocolate.'  So maybe I'll try to describe America with no adjectives at all:

America's government policy is to torture and kill as many kids as it can get away with across the entire world.  Its victims are, at the least, counted in the tens of millions (the American invented vaccines were used all over the world, America gives free bombs to warring countries all over the world, America spreads pro-LGBT messages all over the world).  Its potential victims, if it insists on needling Russia further, are every single one of us, over eight billion.  I am opposed to this government.

Meanwhile, I've had to make several edits to '100 Waifus' in my latest (46th) readthrough, so my hopes of finishing the book are stymied yet again.  Most of the edits were in Chapter 4, where I renewed 'world war just' and substituted various words for better alternatives.  I also added Taiki from Ao no Hako to the fictional character hall of fame embedded within the book, replacing Makoto from Futari Ecchi.  Taiki is more heroic than Makoto since his love is sincere and resists the temptations of other girls, unlike Makoto.  Also Taiki is a unique name, unlike Makoto, so it's two birds with one stone.  It also means all my ranked anime are represented in '100 Waifus,' something I'm always striving for.  So that's three birds with one stone.

Since I was going to have to buy a new paper copy of '100 Waifus' anyway, because I corrected the spelling of Eltolinde too late for it to appear in the paper copy, all these additional edits are essentially free.  I may as well do them now while I have the chance.  That way next time I can get it right and have a real final paper copy of the book.  Maybe the 47th readthrough won't have any issues and I can fulfil my purpose in life.

I was right about the covid vaccines:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-10-05/shock-study-finds-six-fold-increased-death-rate-covid-vaxxed-kids

“The study about Covid and asthma in American kids and teens has gone mostly unnoticed. It hasn’t been cited once since it was published in June.

Which may be why no one has raised an alarm over the stunning figures buried in its appendix about deaths among mRNA Covid-vaccinated kids.

They show that 354 of the 64,000 children and teenagers who received a Covid mRNA shot died within a year after vaccination - a death rate of almost six kids per 1,000.

In contrast, only 309 out of 320,000 unvaccinated kids died, fewer than one per 1,000.”

As far as I'm concerned this is the decisive study.  They took a giant sample of unvaccinated and vaccinated kids, who presumably are the same age and health (before vaccination.)  They tracked how many died one year later, and six times as many vaccinated died as unvaccinated.  What possible objection does the other side still have after this?

The old argument is that sure mortality rates are up, but that's all due to 'long covid,' not the vaccines.  But 'long covid' doesn't seem to have done much to the unvaccinated kid cohort.  So that argument is out the window.

The other old argument was that unvaccinated people tended to be younger and healthier than vaccinated, but this is kids vs. kids, there's no apples to oranges comparison being made here, it's apples to apples.

There is no argument left.  This study has just blown up the other side.  Not only are vaccines dangerous, they're insanely dangerous.  Forget the sixfold increase in the death rate for a moment, just look at the pure death rate there -- five more kids for every 1,000 died due to the vaccine.  That's .5% of all kids died in a single year due to the vaccine.  How many children are in America?  According to Google, 74 million.  According to various websites, at least half of them were vaccinated.  So do some simple arithmetic and you get 185,000 kids murdered by the 'safe and effective' vaccines in a single year.  How many more will die early due to the long term effects of the vaccine?  Who knows.  But surely murdering 185,000 kids is sufficient to count as a crime against humanity right there.

I mean, I know everyone supports Israel murdering 185,000 kids in Gaza, but poisoning to death 185,000 kids in America, surely that's a crime, right?

Can we now move on from this murderous regime and switch to something more like I've called for?  Since clearly I was the one trying to save everyone's lives and they're the ones trying to liquidate them?  Do I get any credit for this?

While we're at it, today Russia has definitively taken the Nevelske cauldron, which includes Nevelske and the fields around it for around 100 square kilometers.  Obviously they didn't take all that today, but we finally have proof they took all that today.  This gets Donetsk out of artillery range once and for all.  Now Ukraine would have to waste expensive missiles to kill civilians in Donetsk for the rest of the war, which they'll probably do because they're that insane and evil, but at least it will be less frequent than what has happened up until now.

Indeed, Donetsk isn't usually the site of new atrocities these days, that's been moved into the Kursk region and Belgorod.  The first objective of the war, protecting the civilians of Donbass, has already been reached.  Tis a glorious day.

Ao no Hako is a great anime:

It didn't take rocket science to calculate that Ao no Hako, a series that actually exists, is better than Summer Pockets, a series which does not actually exist.  Whenever possible my top 200 rankings should be about anime that actually exists.  Honestly I thought I'd conquered the 'non-existent top ranking anime' problem long ago.  But at least now I've conquered it yet again.

If Summer Pockets correctly follows the visual novel it will undoubtedly get ranked as well, but that will happen when the anime actually airs, not a year before it airs.  For now this is Ao no Hako's time to shine.

Ao no Hako is a romance in the setting of a sports gym.  It is not a sports anime with romance.  There's a big difference in what the story focuses on and cares about between these two.  Blue Box always focuses on people's feelings rather than the excitement of the competition.  Which is the correct answer when we're talking about badminton as the sport.  I mean, how exciting can anyone make badminton?

Conveniently this makes for the tenth 'romance' genre franchise in my top anime rankings, a nice round number.  For now Ao no Hako can camp out at #200, until the season ends and I can verify its true worth.

Meanwhile Extreme Hearts finally got a bluray release.  That's always nice, but what I really wanted was a 2nd season. . .

Oshi no Ko got a 3rd season, which was almost assured given how popular the anime is.  (But you never know, just look at Haruhi Suzumiya. . .)  This virtually assures that the anime will cover the manga all the way to the end, because no one would waste time adapting the next arc of the anime if they weren't also going to do the ending.  Once Oshi no Ko adapts the entire story it's going to be a very good anime.  Far above the likes of Ao no Hako.

The latest episode of Hero Academy was fantastic.  Now we all wait on tenterhooks for the final episode of the season and the possible announcement of a season 8.

Another blockbuster week in college football awaits, with #2 Ohio State facing off against #3 Oregon.

Fall 2024 Anime First Impressions: Part 2

Orb: On the movements of the Earth:  For some reason this anime felt the need to do a fictional recounting of the Copernican revolution, because apparently the real version of events wasn't entertaining enough.  I'd watch this show if it were the real history because it seems like a useful thing to know, but I don't need to fill my head with lies.  Fail.

Puniru is a cute Slime:  The art style sucks and the male lead sucks and basically the show sucks.  Fail.

Tsuma, Shogakusei ni Naru:  Marrying a loli is every man's dream, but not like this.  The loli only visits occasionally after school and offers bentos.  Other than that she chokes you or nags you.  Then she goes back to her house with her parents.  That's not good enough.  A real loli marriage can be found in a different show this season, Tensei Kizoku.  The protagonist of Tensei Kizoku is a reincarnated adult salaryman into the body of a child nobleman in a fantasy world, Ars.  He then marries another child, Licia, the same age as 'Ars,' but not the same age as Ars' total mental lifespan.  Through this loophole an adult Japanese man gets to marry a blonde duchess child and she actually does live with him and flirt with him and society doesn't get in their way.  That's the loli marriage people are looking for.  Everyone should stop watching this series and switch over to Tensei Kizoku.  Fail.

Haigakura:  The show was too boring to watch so I can't even critique it.  Fail.

Raise wa Tanin:  A despicable boy tries to pimp out his fiancee so she responds by selling her kidney.  Because that makes sense.  Fail.

Nina the Starry Bride:  A rags to riches story where a pauper is told to impersonate a princess for the sake of smooth diplomacy with a foreign state that's expecting a princess bride.  The pauper princess is cute and the story is harmless fun wish fulfilment.  No objections here.  Pass.

Yarinaoshi Reijou:  A washed-up broad gets to rewind her life back to a blonde loli with purple eyes and propose marriage to a better man.  The man is a man of culture, and thus instantly accepts and proclaims her loli-hood to be ideal, though it would have been better if she were a little younger, but beggars can't be choosers.  What a great anime.  If only all girls rewound to loli-hood and started proposing to boys out of the blue!  Pass.

All that's left is Ao no Miburo and Touhai: Ura rate.  Touhai doesn't seem to have anyone interested in translating it and Ao no Miburo comes out in 11 days, so the first impressions will have to stop here.  Overall the picture looks like this:

Here's the good anime that's currently airing this season and is worth at least a try, in the order of how exciting each episode is week to week (not in the order of how good the series is overall, which would favor older/longer series too much):

1.  DanMachi S5

2.  Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest

3.  Bleach TYBW S3

4.  Monogatari Off & Monster Season

5.  SAOAGGO S2

6.  Love Live Superstar S3

7.  Ao no Hako

8.  Wonderful Precure

9.  Prince of Tennis World Cup Semifinal

10.  Tensei Kizoku

11.  Idolm@ster Shiny Colors S2

12.  Dragon Ball Daima

13.  Re:Zero S3

14.  Sayonara Ryuusei

15.  Seirei Gensouki S2

16.  Arifureta S3

17.  Hitoribochi Isekai

18.  Rurouni Kenshin Remake Kyoto-hen

19.  Mahoutsukai ni Narenakatta

20.  Nageki Bourei

21.  Ranma 1/2 Remake

22.  Nina the Starry Bride

23.  Yarinaoshi Reijou

24.  Chiyushi Tsuiho

25.  Hamidashi Creative

25 series, possibly 26 once Ao no Miburo starts airing, in a single season is amazing.  13 of the 25 are from great franchises.  If you count the sporadic releases of new One Pace episodes, that would make 14.  What more could anyone ask for from a single season?  That's about as good as a full year's output right there.  I've been excitedly awaiting this season for a long time, and it's delivered.

Fall 2024 Anime First Impressions: Part 1

Nageki Bourei:  Everything about this show is average except for the cuteness of the girl with black hair and twin red ribbons in her hair.  That girl is ridiculously cute.  And that's good enough for me.  Pass.

Hitoribochi Isekai:  This is a rather fun concept.  A guy gets isekai'd, but instead of being given a mission and a party to work with, he's just stranded in the middle of nowhere.  And instead of choosing a powerful ability, he was given a bunch of junk abilities who, through their sheer number, are sufficient to be a cheat skill after all.  Certainly interesting enough for a first episode.  Pass.

Wajutsushi:  A wannabe adventurer has the abilities of a synergist from FF 13.  However, he's rude to his companions, who are in turn rude to him.  By the end of the episode they've fallen out.  Since there's no one worth respecting in the show there's no point watching any further.  Fail.

Rekishi Nokuro Akujo:  All villainess stories are the same -- the main character mocks romance with boys and instead heightens their battle power/job skills and become independent.  Since that's the exact opposite of what I want in girls I end up never liking any of them.  Fail.

Acro Trip:  So a bored girl gets excited when she sees chaos and mayhem, accompanied by a mahou shoujo, in front of her.  The mahou shoujo seems about ready to end the chaos and mayhem, but that would mean the world becomes boring again, so the bored girl decides to help out the evil side to keep the action flowing.  Not only is this unacceptable behavior, but it's really boring when you stop and think about it.  A girl has so few problems in life she has to create them herself.  That basically means the story is about nothing.  Fail.

Negaposi Angler:  There's a limit to how bad you can make your main character and expect people to keep watching.  Fail.

Kekkon Suru te:  I'm tired of lies and liars.  Fail.

Dandadan:  Bad art and over the top overly rude characters don't a good comedy make.  Fail.

Mecha-ude:  The most boring plot imaginable.  Instead of saving a cute girl in distress, the hero needs to save various mecha arms from being exploited by an evil company or something.  Not even full robots.  Just arms. . .Fail.

Sayonara Ryuusei:  A surprisingly good story.  The lamia is cute and original, at least for Japanese fiction.  Xanth had an even cuter naga named Nada but we can't all be as good as Xanth.  What intrigues me most is the red-haired loli.  Is she even real or just a figment of that guy's imagination?  No one else talks to her or even looks at her. . . Well I'm sure that's due to a plot hole instead of an amazing plot development, but it was certainly hilarious for the entire first ep.  Pass.

Ao no Hako:  I've read the manga so I know generally how good this series is.  I'd say the manga is right on the edge of being hall of fame quality.  What I didn't account for when I began watching this show was that it would be animated by Wit Studio, the people behind Spy x Family, Koutetsujou no Kabaneri and Shingeki no Kyojin.  With the incredible quality of Wit Studio backing this show, it has real potential to reach my top anime rankings.  Sort of like how Isekai Nonbiri Nouka became great through the sheer power of its adaptation, I could see the same happening here.  Pass.

Magilumiere Magical Girls:  A cg work about transgender magical girls.  Even the non-transgenders are transgenders because the girls act like cocksure boys.  Fail.

Mahoutsukai ni Narenakatta:  The plot is confusing and rather dull so far.  But that's okay, because the art, the presentation, of this anime is off the charts good.  Think No Game No Life good.  I could watch this show on mute for just the visuals.  Pass.

Hamidashi Creative:  Cute girls gather around and talk about meaningless stuff.  A fine idea, but it's only a low budget short anime so can't do much with it.  Pass.

Chiyushi Tsuiho:  Yet another story based on the failed premise that someone was unfairly fired from the 'hero party' despite actually being 'the strongest.'  On the bright side, it seems to really be about the cute martial artist companion and not the 'strongest healer,' in which case the story still works.  Pass.

Kimi wa Meido-sama:  A former assassin wishes to be a maid for this random guy.  However, the guy is worthless and the assassin is too clumsy to do simple cleaning jobs, which is oh so funny.  Except that it isn't.  Fail.