Swimsuit Heaven:

The new Heaven Burns Red event featured new swimsuit SS Memorias for Karen and Megumi.  Those were the last two girls from 31-A who didn't have a swimsuit model.  The story then promptly created a reason for all 6 squad members to wander around Narishino dome in their swimsuits for the rest of the event plot.  It was heavenly just to look at the latest event, but it also turns out to have been a wonderful heartfelt story centered around Tama, Rumi and Megumi.  The best part of the best game ever is Chapter 4 Part 2, so for the event story to go back to Narishino dome and talk some more about that section of the story is pretty much always going to be a good idea.  This was probably my second favorite event ever, only Charlotta's story was better.

Using the paid quartz I had saved up from my previous spree of purchases (which were necessary to get Mari and Adelheid in their swimsuits), I managed to get Karen and Megumi's new looks with no further spending.  Their swimsuit Memorias aren't just pretty, though, both had such great abilities I immediately slotted them in to my thunder and dark squads.  At this rate 31-A will take over all my squad positions.

Then my thunder squad, now featuring swimsuit Megumi, immediately took on the new score challenge which was weak to thunder.  After trying for hours I finally crested 400k points, which is the minimum necessary to get all the important loot.  This boss has an ungodly amount of health, just like Apophosis, which is the type of enemy I hate most.  I always run out of exclusive abilities before the enemy runs out of health and then have nothing left to fight with.  But my thunder squad rose to the challenge and got the job done once I learned the fight well enough.

Meanwhile my fire squad took on the secret boss of the event and beat it as well.  The reward was 300 quartz so that's always satisfying.

I also was lucky enough to acquire coldsnap Kozue's 2nd limit break and fox Miya's 3rd limit break.  Fox Miya is an essential pillar of my thunder squad so getting her limit break is a stroke of great fortune.  Kozue is also a member of my ice squad so this is also an important breakthrough, (though ice is my weakest squad.)

The game has promised to give me two more SS Memorias over the next two weeks for free so I'm looking forward to what, ultimately, this event will provide in full.  But I've already hit the jackpot.

Megumi, Erika and Yuki now also know the 'skillful means' orb skill.

Heaven Burns Red music added to hall of fame:

I listened to my new Heaven music 100 times and gave the 14 new songs that made it through the gauntlet their official ratings.  Bougainvillea, Kuso atsui hi no chikai, and Welcome to the Front Line! got 5-star ratings.  Asian Soul, Forgotten Railroad Tracks, To the other side of the sun, and World We Changed got 4-star ratings.  Debate Soldier, Goodnight Seven Seas, and Valkyrie's Epic got 3-star ratings.  Goodbye Early Summer, Oort Cloud, Solar Route, and Spectacle Through the Glass got 2-star ratings.

To make room I demoted Matouya no Doukutsu and The Spy to 4-star, and combined FF3's ending themes 1, 2, and 3 into a single song.  I also deleted entirely the 1-star songs from Valkyrie Profile and Front Mission.  No big loss there.

After that I demoted a bunch of 4-star, 3-star and 2-star classical songs to keep all the tiers even.  The result is still 5,500 songs, graded relative to each other on a curve, with 5 tiers of 1,100 songs a piece.  It's amazing that I've been able to maintain this perfect symmetry all this time.  Obviously it's taken a lot of effort.  The new hall of fame stands at 12.8 continuous days of playtime.

This also had a side effect on my wonderful fictional characters hall of fame.  Some 3-star Heaven songs were kicked out of the playlist and replaced with the new, better 4-star and 5-star themes.  In addition, to honor Tomo Sakurai, I promoted Meimi (Saint Tail) to my wonderful hall of fame, kicking out Chiyo and Ayumu from Azumanga Daioh to make room.  This way there's still a 'silver 60', it just includes Saint Tail instead of Azumanga, which is an improvement.  Tomo Sakurai was the seiyuu of the main character Meimi, so this is one last chance to honor and regret her passing.

I also added Yuki and Akari from Heaven Burns Red to my wonderful fictional characters, kicking out Mai (from Kanon) and Michiru (from Koichoco) to make room.  Lastly I added Yuka from Touch to keep the numbers even at 1400.  Yuka is conniving and overly persistent, but all in the name of love, so it's charming instead of a put-off.  She's also cute and surprisingly strong, which are all plusses.  Mai, on the other hand, is way too suicidal and stupidly quiet.  And Michiru doesn't have much going for her other than her looks.

Mai may not be a wonderful fictional character, but she'll retain her spot in '100 Waifus' as a daughter of Nayuki, first off because I don't want to edit the book any further, and second off because she has a strong connection to Nayuki so it makes sense for her to be Nayuki's daughter.  For the same reason Rin from Precure 5 isn't in my fictional character hall of fame but remains Nozomi's daughter in '100 Waifus.'

This allowed me to give Camyu the theme song of 'Ultema - The Perfect Body' and Yuka 'Cid's Theme' (From FF9).  Meimi got Atlasdam, Center of Learning.  Yuki got White Spell and Akari got Ciga Choco.  Regina got The Highlands and Pudding got Ending Theme 1-2-3 (FF3).

Ever since I demoted Cid's Theme and Ultema from 5-star to 4-star I've been looking for a way to at least promote them back into my wonderful playlist, so this is a great success.  Honestly these songs are 5-star quality, it's just that I'm out of 5-star room.  With these changes my 5-star tier is finally majority vocal pieces, 552 vocals as compared to 548 instrumentals.  Victory!

Unfortunately for Jun Maeda, he's still 2 points behind Yasunori Nishiki in the all-time great composers list.  938 to 936 (6th place to 7th place).  To think they'd be that close when the numbers are of that magnitude.  Maybe Jun Maeda will come out with a new great Heaven theme song which will put him over the top.  But at the same time, if Nishiki composed some new great music for Octopath Traveler 0 then. . .

For anyone keen on the details they can always check out my up to date Music Hall of Fame and Wonderful Characters hall of fame.

Ao no Hako available in bluray:

An English subtitled, bluray version of Ao no Hako is now available for download.  The filesize is actually smaller than the original broadcast version so it's perfect for archival purposes.

Tales of Xillia is getting a remaster just like Tales of Graces did and is coming out soon.  I've played Tales of Xillia multiple times already so ordinarily I'd have no interest in this remaster, but for the first time the remaster will include a Japanese audio option, which makes this a must-buy.  I want to hear the true voices of mai waifus Leia and Elize.  Getting to hear the true voices of Sophie and Cheria was an amazing treat earlier this year and I'm ready for a recurrence of that.

Index GT 13 is fully translated and available for perusal.  I'm about 2/3 of the way through my 50th reread of '100 Waifus,' so once I finish that I can get to Index next.  I have found a few things I'd like to edit, like adding in Kudryavka's middle name, but I've refrained from doing so because I want this to be the final version.  Unless there's something egregiously in need of amendment, nothing will move my hand.  2/3 of the way through and no edits -- I'm so close to being done!

Leaked documents show Ukraine has 1.7 million dead or 'missing' men due to their choice to wage war with Russia.  'Missing' is generally a euphemism for 'dead but the state of Ukraine doesn't want to pay survivors' benefits', but I suppose it can also mean deserted.  Surely Ukraine can't last much longer when it's taking casualties like this.  The list doesn't even include the number of irreparably wounded men on the battlefield, which could easily double this number.  How many men are even left in Ukraine?  Sadly we don't know because like all failed states they haven't taken a census in decades.  It doesn't really matter if Ukraine isn't officially 'demilitarized' after this war, because its depopulation effectively means Ukraine is demilitarized forever anyway.

RIP Tomo Sakurai:

The beautiful voice behind mai waifu Mylene Flare Jenius is dead at the tender age of 53.  She died of malignant cancer in all her organs.  How does a 53 year old develop such extreme levels of cancer save by the turbo-cancer inducing Covid vaccine?  Odds are she actually died of the vaccine.

A fit Japanese woman usually doesn't die until she's in her 80's.  If someone like Tomo Sakurai dies before then you have to assume something is afoot.  And this is 30 years before then.  I'm upset that such a beautiful, talented woman had to die so soon.  Her reward for all her good work while on this planet shouldn't have been turbo cancer.  She's just one more victim out of the billions who were given this death jab based entirely on lies.

At the same time, Aki Toyosaki, the voice of mai waifu Yui from K-On!, was deprived of her husband who also died far too young.  Aki Toyosaki is only 38 years old.  Her husband died suddenly of internal bleeding.  What could have possibly caused that except the vaccine?  38 year olds don't just suddenly bleed to death for no reason.  So that's two of the most important voice actresses in anime getting destroyed by the vaccine in the same single day.

Anyone who dies of suspicious causes that make no sense died from the vaccine.  That's the only explanation for this sudden uptick in sudden deaths.  Japan is losing its best because they believed lies that anyone should have been able to recognize were lies.  Gullibility is a sin and the punishment is sudden death.  It would be better for the world if everyone who took the vaccine hurried up and died, because then the only people left on Earth would be immune to something much worse than Covid -- government lies.  Once governments lose the power to lie to their subjects peace and justice would instantly subsume the world.

Meanwhile, the free SS Memoria ticket I got for logging in during the Chapter 5 Part 1 release celebration netted me wedding dress Mari, a girl I very much wanted to have based on looks alone.  But she might also be useful in my ice squad, since that squad is quite weak right now and wedding dress Mari could use both her introjected Diamond Dust ice field creating ability and her new wedding dress ice attack at the same time in this form.  It's all theoretical though because characters without limit breaks are no match for those with limit breaks, and a brand new SS Memoria of course means she starts with 0 limit breaks.

What's important is through blind chance I got pretty much the best possible result, which is pretty darn gratifying.

I also finished maxing out my rings with every element now having sufficient +4 (max level) rings to equip the whole squad.  Since all my seraphs are equippable using the same equipment improving equipment is actually much more useful than improving a single seraph.  I also taught Tsukasa the same 'skillful means' ability Tama has, joining a very select club.

I'm already swamped with things to do but the football season has resumed, which means Saturday and Sunday are already booked for the next six months.  ^_^.  It's a miracle I get anything done.

Noble Works read:

I finally finished the Maya route, and with it the entirety of Noble Works, and with it the entirety of all English-translated Yuzusoft published visual novels.  Thank goodness.  I've been struggling with this subpar visual novel and the subpar video game Phantom Brave Lost Hero for months.  I respect Marona and Shizuru so I couldn't give up on either work -- I can't praise a character as part of my wonderful characters hall of fame and at the same time diss it by not finishing the works wherein those characters appear.  Instead I just chiseled away at them bit by bit until finally I reached the finish line.

Noble Works is better than Hatsuyuki Sakura, but the Maya route in particular was worse.  This last route was torture.  Now I can put it all behind me and think happy thoughts.

I still have so many things left to do -- Lunar Remastered, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Fantasian, Sea of Stars, Happiness Sakura Celebration, Akai Hitomi, Mega Man 11. . .  Index GT volume 13 is being translated as we speak.  With Noble Works done I can finally start something else.  Perhaps my highest priority should be rereading '100 Waifus' for the 50th time to make sure there are no further errors in need of redress.  That could put a bow on that project once and for all.  I at least want to say I finished my book this year, since last year fell through.

My new Magic cards arrived, so I also look forward to playtesting my corrected deck designs and finding out if the synergies I was excited about on paper actually translate to the real world.  I believe FF cards won't lose to anybody, but they're currently only being tested against the weakest of my older decks.  They have to prevail here before there's any use in fighting tougher foes.

Putin and Trump said their summit was a success, so we'll see what happens in the weeks to come.  I'm hopeful a reasonable peace deal can be made swiftly.  This war, with the risk of nuclear annihilation, has already dragged on too long.  Mostly because Putin tried to win it on the cheap, but also because drones are the great equalizer (as America learned when fighting the Houthis).  There's no fast and easy way to defeat an enemy armed with millions of drones.

Heaven Progress Continues:

I spent all day playing Heaven Burns Red and got a few more projects done -- I defeated Nihil Rectus and Sinister level 4, which allowed me to unlock the 'skillful means' skill orb skill for Tama.  Now she can use the skill even without equipping the skill orb, which potentially means she can use two skill orb skills at once.  I tried to fight the boss fairly for hours and hours, but I never quite beat it.  So I gave up and farmed some damage down bracelets first then pulverized it.  Damage down bracelets seem to be a necessity for all Orb Bosses these days, not just Orb Boss III level 3's.

Ideally everyone should have the 'skillful means' skill because it's so useful.  That extra 2 sp is usually the difference between being able to cast an exclusive skill and not.  And when you can't cast your heal or buff or debuff or whatever on time, generally what happens next is you die.  Since orb boss fights also grant a healthy amount of experience, I can see transitioning from my gem harvesting (which was for the sake of my earring equipment) to orb boss harvesting.

I got my attacker earrings to +6, max level, so this is a good gem harvest stopping point.

I did a lot of dungeon crawls in order to get all my fire rings to max level (+4).  Fire is my main squad so at least they should be adequately equipped.  This also gave me the resources necessary to fully upgrade all the new SS Memorias I got over the past few days.  That's the easy part.  The hard part is getting their introjections and limit breaks, which basically I never manage to do.  I'm close to having a full set of +4 thunder rings as well, because thunder is my second best supported squad.  It was actually my thunder squad that defeated Nihil Rectus level 4.

Snow White Yuki can create a dark field (actually base Iroha can too, but Snow White Yuki is much stronger).  This means I now have the ability to change the battlefield environment to any field I want, pivotal in fights against orb bosses.  Snow White Yuki is now a proud member of my dark squad, whilst Spanish Dress Yuki joined my light squad.  I have to admit Yuki is strong, whether I like her or not.  Chapter 5 Part 1 made me like Yuki more, but still not enough to add her to my wonderful hall of fame.  But enough to let me use her without compunction wherever she's useful.  She's always been one of my main members of my fire squad, so that's 3 squads out of the 5 elements in the game.  (She's only missing from ice and thunder.)

Dungeons are also a great way to increase the skill level of all the new skills I got via all these new recruitments.  My skill levels are still a long ways from max, but they're a lot better than they were yesterday.

Topping it all off, I downloaded 18 more Heaven Burns Red songs -- all the vocal pieces that have been released in Chapter 5.  Some are extremely good, while others are just decent, but I'll decide what to rate them after listening to them all 100 times.  Even when I'm not playing Heaven I can still experience Heaven via its beautiful music.  It's not only the best game ever, it also has the best soundtrack ever -- as expected of a game entirely composed by Jun Maeda.

In a few days I'll get a new free SS Memoria (a ticket gift for logging in during the Chapter 5 release party) and I'll get my delimiter up past 100%, which gives me the right to do a free limit break.  I think I'll give this limit break to Ruka, the long-suffering main character of the series who nevertheless is one of my weakest Seraphs.  I really should do something about that discrepancy.

Once I get my new Magic cards I'll have 77 decks, with 39 of them including at least one FF card.  So 51% of Magic is Final Fantasy.  The game has been releasing sets since 1990 and half of its good cards came out this June.  It's like watching a supernova.

Chapter 5 Part 1 of Heaven Burns Red defeated:

Heaven Burns Red continues to be the greatest video game ever made.  The new Chapter 5 isn't as good as Chapter 4 was, but nothing is as good as Chapter 4 in human history so it can be forgiven.  Chapter 5 Part 1 deals with Yuki and Ruka's past, as well as Seika's relationship to the rest of Squad 31-B.  It gets really intense near the end when Ruka is swallowed whole by a Cancer and it looks like another tragedy has ensued.  Luckily we're able to recuperate and rescue Ruka in a daring raid using the entire united force of the Seraph Butai.  There are so many Seraphs cooperating that you actually get to split your party into three full squads of 6 and fight with them independently as they move through the dungeon.  So now the game isn't satisfied with you having 2 max power squads, you're actually supposed to have cultivated 3 by now.  Luckily I've spent so much money on this game recruiting that I did indeed have an all-SS Memoria lineup of every member of Squads 31-A, 31-C and 31-D.  So I was able to conquer the dungeon while sticking to the intended plot of the story (the game allows you to assign characters who don't actually appear in the plot to the fight if you want, but I wanted the experience to feel fully genuine.)

The fight through the dungeon was tough mainly because Misato was the only useful character in 31-D.  The fight against the last boss was also tough because the boss hits really hard after you break its third gauge and I stupidly let my defenses down in an attempt to do more damage.  Nevertheless I eventually prevailed.  That's how a game should be -- challenging but rewarding.

By spending lots of money I also managed to snag all the new SS Memorias available until next Friday.  I realized that free quartz wouldn't be enough to get me everybody I wanted so I took the monetary plunge.  But as a reward I got everybody -- Snow White Yuki, summer Bon Ivar, and swimsuit Mari + Adelheid.  I actually immediately put swimsuit Adelheid to use and fought with her in the last dungeon.  She did pretty well too!

I also got Santa Misato and Akari, yukata Niina, base Shiki, base Seira, base Iroha and Spanish dress Yuki.  Santa Akari and base Iroha helped me in the last dungeon too, as did the skills I got from Snow White and Spanish Yuki.  It was the shortest ever turnaround from recruitment to actual combat.

I also got limit breaks to vulpine Miya, base Vritika, rocket Risa, base Misato (who I used in the last dungeon), swimsuit Mari and swimsuit Adelheid.  Vritika is now my third character to reach max limit break (level 4).  She joins Tama and Sumomo, even though I never particularly liked or wanted her.  But the rolls kept giving me more Vritika so here I am.  Now that she's gotten this strong I need to think about how to actually incorporate her into a serious combat strategy.

The game also gifted me a free eternal daphne which I used to strengthen shrine maiden Megumi.  The girls of 31-A are all daphne'd except for Ruka now.  Poor Ruka lags so far behind.

The story also explains the origins of the Narby alien species and why they showed up on Earth to fight the Cancer.  It turns out the Cancer were originally hunting the Narby and the Narby fled to Earth -- and the Cancer followed.  So it's kind of the Narbies' responsibility to save humanity if you ask me. (All Seraphim are Narbies who took on the forms and talents of exceptional dead humans.)  The Cancer feed off of intelligent alien species (just like the Orz did in Starcon), so the Narbies and the humans have a natural reason to cooperate to fend off this interstellar menace.

The game was so good I'm already counting the days until I can play Chapter 5 Part 2.  Apparently the next segment is going to delve into Karen's dark past.  Once she's covered all the main cast of squad 31-A will have gotten a dedicated story segment.  Karen's a great character so I can't wait to learn more about her.

I was able to acquire so many new SS Memorias because of the cool paid quartz offer where you could pick the 10 SS Memorias you wanted most and were guaranteed recruits from only that pool.  My strategy has always been to recruit as many trophy brides as possible and worry about their limit breaks later, so I went for all the Memorias I didn't have yet.  I'm especially happy about Santa Misato.  She's so beautiful.  But it does mean I'm underpowered compared to other players who have been dedicatedly playing the game all this time and putting all their strength into a single squad of 6 limit break 4 girls.  It's why I still can't beat some of the bonus bosses -- the game isn't unbeatable, but I keep getting distracted by the shiny new toys.

I also bought the new Edge of Eternities Magic cards I wanted.  They should be arriving in the mail within the next few days.  Mostly I'm still trying to power up my Final Fantasy decks by giving them better lands and filling in a few holes.  Edge of Eternities as a set doesn't interest me at all, unlike Final Fantasy which I spent my whole life playing and whose characters I love unreservedly.  After FF, it almost feels like Magic should just quit.  It can never top this set so why bother making more?  The sales figures agree with me.  Magic has sold more FF cards than like, its entire history of sales combined.  (yes, I'm exaggerating, but still. . .)  I'm not the only person out there who is loving FF Magic.  It's a worldwide phenomena.