Which Wonderful character got which song?:

Now that I've finalized my Wonderful Fictional Character music playlist, it would be fun to share the results with the broader public, the same way I did when I finished the '100 Waifus' playlist, giving the most appropriate unique song to each and every fictional character I've ever valued in life.

There are currently 66 Wonderful characters that didn't reach the '100 Waifus' list, which means 66 new songs had to be distributed to them.  Since 20 of those Wonderful characters are from Heaven Burns Red, 20 of the new songs are also from Heaven Burns Red.  But this is by no means a weakness, more like a strength, because the composer of Heaven Burns Red is the greatest of all time, Jun Maeda.  Dedicating more songs to him is never the wrong move.

In summation:

20 Heaven Burns Red:  Chiroru got Particle Effect.  Kozue got Arch of Light.  Mari got Goodbye Innocence.  Saki got Hero of the End.  Nanami got Hypersomnia.  Hisame got Muramasa Blade!.  Yingxia got Pain in Rain.  Isuzu got War Alive~Sometimes Desperate~.  Tama got Before I Rise.   Megumi got Burn my Universe.  Karen got Everlasting Night.  Tsukasa got Indigo in Blue.  Sumomo got Sad Creature.  Rumi got Shiva.  Adelheid got Arifureta Battle Song - Itsumo Sentou wa Mendou da.  Misato got ciga choco.  Ichiko got Dance! Dance! Dance!.  Charlotta got Heartbreak Syndrome.  Yuina got Houkago no Melody.  Erika got Soul Universe.

12 Dead Enders/Changeling:  Chiharu got Tension 1 (FF Tactics).  Masanori got Anxiety (FF Tactics).  Eri got Justice [Leo's Theme].  Rei got Lucia Vs. Zophar.  Yume got Kuusou Mesorogiwi.  Kip got Ode to Power.  Autumn got le grand retour.  Shiori got Neo-Overture (Ogre Battle).  Kotone got Try Unite!.  Saki got bloom and harvest.  Aiko got Sound Life.  Isao got Fonsa Myma (Night).

5 Pretty Cure: Hana got Watashi no koi wa hotch kiss.  Setsuna got yuuki wa doko ni kimi no mune ni.  Minori got The future is like the wind.  Uta got Welcome To My FanClub's Night! (Sheryl On Stage).  Kokoro got portamento.

2 Love Live!:  Shizuku got Rise up High!.  Keke got Absolute LOVER.

2 Oshi no Ko:  Akane got Urayan Tunnels.  Ai got Great Sword's Base.  

2 One Piece:  Law got legendary future.  Tama got Sunny Day Song.

2 Mortal Kombat:  Sub-Zero got Walking on the Path of Hatred.  Scorpion got Broken Bonds.

2 Vividred Operation:  Aoi got Stage of Death.  Momo got Thames, Spirit of the Men of the Sea.

2 Joukamachi no Dandelion:  Misaki got Go! Go! Go!.  Hikari got Entrance Parade (Ogre Battle).

2 Goblin Slayer:  Elf Archer got Eternal Blue [Rondo-Light And Shadows].  Priestess got Tumultuous Seas.

2 Sellsword:  Jin got Battle Theme (Lunar).  Harukaze got Mysterious Party.

1 Rurouni Kenshin:  Makoto got Colosseum (Noir).

1 Indiana Jones: Indiana got Indiana Jones Theme Song.

1 Naruto:  Orochimaru got Orochimaru ~Fight~.

1 Saki:  Yuuki got I hope the weather will be sunny tomorrow.

1 Xenoblade:  Mashiro got Elaice Highway.

1 Idolm@ster:  Miku got HIGH POWERED.

1 The Greatest Vision:  Lucinda got Jaws of Ice.

1 Ao no Hako:  Hina got Tears of the Stars, Thoughts of the People.

1 Shikkakumon:  Lurie got Fuse (Xenogears).

1 Dead or Alive:  Kasumi got Sore wa Bokutachi no Kiseki.

1 Dragon Quest XI:  Gemma got next sparkling.

1 Hayate no Gotoku:  Izumi got Dance Party of Valis Castle.

1 Full Metal Panic!:  Nami (the dead one) got Moonlight (Record of Lodoss War).

Autumn Howl:

It turns out Kaminsho was the same song as Hypersomnia, so I had to cut it from my music hall of fame.  As a replacement I downloaded a new and different Heaven Burns Red song, 'Autumn Howl.'  Now every She is Legend theme in gig mode has made my music hall of fame.  What a frenetic and twisting journey it's been.

Autumn Howl is a 1-star song, but a lot of other Heaven songs I've reassessed and upgraded -- 'Hypersomnia,' 'Shiva,' 'War Alive,' 'Houkago no Melody,' 'Pain in Rain,' and 'Hero of the End' all reached 3-star status.  I cut a bunch of classical composers to 1-star to maintain symmetry.  My music hall of fame, somehow or other, is still 5,500 songs, with 5 tiers of 1,100 songs each graded relative to each other from 1-star to 5-star.  It's been a dizzying amount of effort keeping that true, but I've done it.

Once a Heaven song reaches 3-star status, it becomes available as a representative in my Wonderful Fictional Characters music playlist.  So I switched all my Heaven fictional characters to Heaven songs, which makes a lot more thematic sense.  I had to eliminate some Chrono Trigger/Cross and Soul Calibur songs to fit in the new Heaven songs, but this is another case of vocal themes replacing instrumentals, which is never a bad idea.  Especially Jun Maeda themes replacing non-Jun Maeda themes, that's a no-brainer.

Houston upset Duke in a comeback win in the Final Four, which means I still have a Texas basketball team to cheer for at the National Championship game.  Not bad, not bad.

Jun Maeda +5:

Today I finished my replay of the main storyline of Heaven Burns Red.  It was almost as emotional as the first time -- and almost as difficult to beat the last boss as last time!  I had my plot squad assembled for the head of the boss, but that left it up to my dark squad to handle the tail, and they really struggled to do their part.  But with the help of Seika's 'Absolute Phenomena' ability I eventually got things to work.  It's crazy how I've done so little to support Seika but she's still one of my strongest characters.

Meanwhile, I added five more songs from the game to my music hall of fame -- 'Houkago no Melody,' 'Sayonara no Soukado,' 'Kaminsho,' 'Back from the Brink,' and 'Shiva.'  I kicked out five more Valkyrie Profile songs to make room.

This should cover all the Heaven music that's currently out, at least in America.  One more Heaven related task complete.

I also got Byakko's Thunder Cat SS Memoria through a stroke of good luck.  I'm out of upgrade materials I've been getting so many memorias lately, but I'll enhance Byakko soon enough.  Maybe I'll be able to build a thunder squad after all.

Meanwhile, Spice & Wolf Remake came out in bluray with English subtitles.  I downloaded eps 20-25 because they're actually new content, completing my bluray collection, at least until the next season comes out.  As usual the archive-ready copy can be found at nyaa.si.  Oshi no Ko S2 also came out in bluray at about the same time.

I don't want to stop dwelling in Heaven, so I guess I'll move on to the event stories and recollections next~

Uta and Kokoro:

Cure Idol and Cure Kyun-Kyun from Kimi to Idol Precure are great characters worthy of my hall of fame, but both of them share names with other girls already in '100 Waifus.'  This makes them prime candidates for my Wonderful Fictional Characters permapost.

I already have plenty of reasons to like Uta and Kokoro from what's currently aired, but the vast majority of the series hasn't aired yet, so I'll find reasons to love them in the future.  Right now I'm basing my decision on their obvious potential.

Together with Cure Yell, who I'd forgotten to assign a song despite already being in my Wonderful hall of fame, this let me add three new songs to my Wonderful playlist.  I went with Particle Effect (given to Chiroru), Muramasa Blade (given to Hisame), and Heartbreak Syndrome (given to Charlotta), since Heaven characters should be represented by Heaven songs whenever possible.

In order to qualify to the Wonderful playlist, a song needs to be 3-star or above, so I gave those 3 songs 4-star ratings, downrating some unfortunate Mozart tunes to 1-star to keep symmetry, even though they did nothing wrong.  Sorry Mozart, but I care about the best composer ever composing music to the best game ever more.

Heaven Burns Red is currently featuring a popularity contest.  It only allows you to pick your six favorite characters in the game, so I chose Ruka, Megumi, Tama, Tsukasa and Karen from Squad 31-A (the main characters of the story), as well as Charlotta the Russian loli.  (judging by how much I spent to get her she's clearly among my favorites).  If the popularity contest had let me choose a top 10, or top 20, I could have given them a lot more useful information.  Everyone is going to pick the main characters first, because they're given ten times as much content as everybody else.  But I'm happy to contribute what little input I can.

By completing the latest event and score challenge, I got enough protean shards to perform another limit break.  My original target was Misato, but circumstances changed.  One of the step-up paid quartz guaranteed SS Memoria I got was the fireworks Yuki one.  I already had this Memoria, so I was given 10 limit break shards instead.  But going from level 2 limit break to level 3 requires 20 shards, not ten, and fireworks Yuki was already at level 2, so 10 shards were sitting in my bank rotting away uselessly.  But by combining those 10 shards with my 10 protean shards, I was able to reach a level 3 limit break, worth much more than a level 1 limit break, so Yuki took priority this time around.

This was the last benefit of my spending spree.  From here on I'll have to grind things the old fashioned way again.  But boy has it been fun.

The score challenge also gave me some dungeon passes, so I entered the Cave of Dark and farmed Dark Rings (which enhance Dark element attack skill damage), so that my dark squad can someday match my fire squad (which already has a great collection of Fire Rings).  I got some decent rings, with my strongest being +4 and my weakest +2.  (My weakest Fire Ring is +3, so dark still lags a bit, but that's to be expected since Fire is my main strategy).

For some reason there are a lot of Fire and Dark users in the game, but very few Light, Ice or Thunder users.  I wish they'd balance things out a bit so that I could form a squad for all five elements instead of just these two.  To be fair, though, I haven't even leveled my dark users to full, so I couldn't actually support all five elemental squads even if they did exist.  Well, everything in due course.

Jun Maeda +8:

Another day, another plethora of Heaven Burns Red good news.  The most important of which is the eight new songs from the game I added to my music hall of fame -- 'Heartbreak Syndrome,' 'Hero of the end,' 'Hypersomnia,' 'Judgement Day,' 'Muramasa Blade!,' 'Overkill,' 'Particle Effect,' and 'War Alive~Sometimes Desperate~.'  For now they're all rated 1-star to preserve symmetry, but they're probably worth more than that.

I kicked out 8 more Valkyrie Profile songs to make room.  My 1-star tier is going to be amazing by the end of all this.

'Heartbreak Syndrome' comes from the latest event update, which was also amazing.  It focused on Squad 31-D, which hasn't had much screentime until now, and surprisingly made them a lot more relatable than before.  I ended up liking Risa a lot by the end, and was miraculously awarded her SS Memoria through hardly any effort that was also only released today.  I also used my leftover paid quartz to take advantage of their 'step-up recruitment' campaign and bagged myself three more SS Memorias, but they were all repeats and thus only contributed to various limit breaks.

Luckily one of the limit breaks went to Isuzu, so now I'll get to use her more often in more serious fights.  Right after I promoted her to my fictional character hall of fame the game rewards me for it.  I've been getting SS Memorias like candy recently because of my willingness to pay the game money, but today truly marked the end of those easy times.  Unless they release another Megumi SS Memoria recruitment chance there's nobody else I feel strongly enough about I'd pay money for.  I've already assembled quite the vast cast of SS Memorias to work with, and it's going to take me months just leveling the girls I have.  I'm content.

I also completed all the songs available on Gig Mode at normal difficulty.  I'm not even going to touch the Hard difficulty much less the Expert difficulty.  Normal is ridiculously difficult for me as is.  I'm proud enough hurdling just that.

The Spring anime season has begun, and the Final Four is tomorrow.  There's no pause in this entertainment schedule.

Aoi and Momo:

I took Aoi and Momo from Vividred Operation out of '100 Waifus' because their names overlapped with others, and they only have small roles in a small, 12-episode series, so if someone had to go it was them.  But they're actually great characters deserving of fictional character hall of fame status, once they're no longer stepping on anyone's toes.  So I added them back in to my 'Wonderful Fictional Characters' permapost, though obviously not back into '100 Waifus.'  That's what the Wonderful permapost is for.

This got me to an even 60 characters in the Wonderful permapost but not in '100 Waifus.'  I thought this was a good opportunity so I made a special new playlist for the Wonderful characters, basically, 'had they been in 100 waifus, what songs would they have received?'  This let me add 60 more unique songs to the 'Wonderful + 100 Waifus' music playlist.  These 60 new songs, in turn, gave me a chance to completely represent Love Live!, Noir, Record of Lodoss War, Xenogears, Lunar 1 & 2, Ogre Battle and Xenoblade.  I also covered all 5-star vocal songs that hadn't been caught in the previous '100 Waifus' music dragnet.

A lot of my unrepresented Wonderful Fictional Characters come from Heaven Burns Red, so obviously the playlist also vacuumed up a lot of Heaven Burns Red themes to represent them.  Soul Calibur, Chrono Trigger/Cross and Final Fantasy Tactics also got some love.

Since Wonderful Fictional Characters are just as good as the '100 Waifus' characters, only left out for various reasons like too many overlapping names, I think I'll listen to this playlist from now on.  Also, the new songs that represent the new characters are just as deserving as the old songs for the old characters.  They too were only left out for non-merit based reasons (basically, I just couldn't fit them all.)  If I come across new great characters I'll give them new great theme songs too.  There's still plenty of great music to welcome them with.

I finished enhancing and reverting the Memorias of all my new characters.  As things stand, everyone's A Memorias are at max enhancement, everyone's S Memorias are either max enhanced or max enhanced other than tear enhancements (tears are kinda precious), and everyone's SS Memorias are max enhanced or max enhanced other than introjections/skill evolutions (nordstrom crystals are also hard to get.)  Obviously I'll be getting those introjections and skill evolutions as soon as I can, but that will still be months and months from now.  At least I've done everything I can, and that's all I can ask of myself.

P.S.:  I decided to elevate Isuzu and Chiroru from Heaven Burns Red to my fictional character hall of fame as well.  Mainly because they're both kind and beautiful -- but also because they're strong and brave.  Both of them are mischievous pranksters, but that just makes them more fun to be around.  (Who here dislikes Haruka Saigusa?) I'm not sure what else you can ask of a girl before she becomes admirable.  As a side benefit, this allows me to include into the Wonderful song list the last two 5-star rated Chrono Trigger/Cross songs that hadn't made it until now.  Another album full clear.

Burn my luck:

I decided to spend all my quartz (12,000) in an attempt to get my Russian loli, Charlotta, her SS Memoria.  Instead of all things I got the Indian loli, Vritika.  In frustration I went to the purchasable with cash SS Memoria tickets to see if I could get the Memorias I wanted the easy way.  I had a 1/3 chance each time of getting the Megumi SS Memoria I was aiming for, but all three times I got the Erika SS Memoria instead.

Of course, I do like Erika so that wasn't a horrible result.  But what the hell?  I'll have virtually won the game if I could ever get a Megumi SS, thus completing an SS version of squad 31-A, and I had a 70% chance to do so with those purchases, but still Megumi eludes me.

So in even greater frustration I switched back to at least getting Charlotta.  I bought two more packs of quartz and platinum ticket rolls and aimed everything at Charlotta, with the knowledge that there was only 1 day left to get her and after that she'd forever be beyond my grasp.  All the rolls failed me (I got more Vritika's, which were exchanged for limit breaks, as well as another Muua I could exchange for a limit break, and a new Chie (the Fallen Innocence SS Memoria), but never the one person I originally wanted, the Russian loli.  Only by accumulating all 150 exchange points (meaning I rolled for Charlotta 150 times and failed 150 times) was I finally allowed to directly purchase her SS Memoria fair and square (exchange points are an in-game currency, so I finally could stop spending actual money.)  Those exchange points would have all been dissolved into mist tomorrow if I hadn't accumulated enough (150) to purchase Charlotta, so it was all or nothing.  I had to choose how much Russian lolis meant to me today, there could be no dithering on the question.  The answer is I'd basically spend anything for a Russian loli.  And now I've got her.

As a Russian patriot who wants Russia to conquer Ukraine, it's the least I could do.  Rarely does my love for Russia and this particular video game so perfectly intersect, and when those powers combine I'm defenseless.  ^^;

The gift pack I purchased also included protean shards which allowed me to choose two more characters to limit break.  I decided on Chiroru and Charlotta.  (What would be the point of spending so much to acquire Charlotta if she were too weak to actually wield?)  Now hopefully, once I level everyone to max, I can field a Dark Element squad of potential strength similar to my Fire Element squad.  I'm close to getting enough protean shards to limit break another character, and I have a variety of good options to choose between -- Seika, Misato and Miko being the most reasonable.  I guess I'll lean in to my Dark Element theme and go with Misato next.

It would probably have been more reasonable to limit break a select six people to the max limit break of 4 and try to make one ultra-squad, but there are good reasons not to do that.  For one, I like more than six characters in this game, so restricting myself to only playing 6 isn't fun.  (There are only 4 characters I like who I still don't have an SS Memoria of, so I'm actually making good progress on this front.  It's just that not having Megumi after all this time is so utterly ridiculous.)

For another, limit breaks don't transfer between Memoria.  So if I get an SS Memoria to max limit break, only to discover that a later version of the same character has a new, stronger SS Memoria, I have to choose between sticking with the old version because I've maxed out its limit breaks (a sunk cost), or starting all over with the hope of reaching the higher potential strength of the new SS.  I'd rather keep my options open and be able to start over, which means not putting all my eggs (limit breaks) in one basket.

It costs twice as many shards to go from limit break 2 to 3 or 3 to 4 as it takes to go from 0 to 1 or 1 to 2.  So the reasonable balance is to get your character to a level 2 limit break and then stop.  I now have 8 characters with level 2 limit breaks and zero with 3 or more.  The sole exception is Ruka, who the plot gave me a max limit break version for free, so she hardly counts.  This is all part of the plan.