Heaven Burns Red takes priority:

Heaven Burns Red has a lot of limited time only bonuses that mean if you don't play the game now, it will be a much harder grind to play later.  All the free resources you get for playing now means you can focus on the core plot experience instead of the rather simple and dull combat and leveling parts.  The core plot experience is as good as any other key visual novel.  Jun Maeda's comedy and sentimentality is as strong as ever.  His music is as good as ever.  Honestly, with nuclear war on the horizon now that Biden is allowing Ukraine to shoot long range missiles into Russia (which require US satellite guidance and are thus actually US missiles being fired directly into Russia), I'd rather spend my last days playing a Jun Maeda visual novel than Dragon Quest 3.

Will the world end tomorrow?  Probably not, since Putin knows America voted for Trump and peace, and this is just an evil old man lashing out in a temper tantrum of no future consequence.  But Russia would have every moral right to end the world tomorrow, since it warned America not to do this and then we went and did it anyway, and we're the aggressor as clear as can be.  I absolutely despise Democrats.  I said a vote for Democrats was a vote for Skynet and here's your proof.  I said Democrats were the party of death and here's your proof.  At no time during the Cold War did anyone ever propose shooting missiles at Russia.  Ever.  No matter what Russia was doing, which included invading Poland, Hungary, Afghanistan, and many other foreign countries.  Which included rendering aid to Vietnam and North Korea who were directly at war with America.  Which included setting up nuclear weapons in Cuba only a few miles off America's shores.  But now Democrats are doing just that, without fanfare, without debate, without a care in the world, and without a Congressional declaration of war.  Just a 'hey, wouldn't this be neat!'

For the same reasons it was unwise to lob missiles at Russia during the Cold War, it is still unwise to do so in the present day.  This is a nation with 6,000 nuclear warheads and hypersonic missile delivery systems we have no means to intercept.  They can kill us all whenever they desire.  Russia is still the 4th largest economy on Earth, it hasn't actually fallen far from its Soviet Union days.  A lot of the nations that left the Soviet Union were deadweights Russia had to subsidize at their own expense.  The fall of the empire was like a giant pile of albatrosses being lifted from Russia's neck.  The idea that we won the Cold War so now we can shoot missiles at Russia because they're broken losers doesn't actually fit the facts of reality.  Their military is the strongest it's ever been and probably could beat ours in a conventional war, given the headstart in industrial production and veteran troop experience they now have.  The actions of the neocons behind Biden are the most reckless in the history of mankind.  Intentionally trying to provoke a nuclear war with a stronger opponent.  It makes no sense morally or pragmatically.

To make the situation even more comical, Ukraine recently answered in a poll, for the first time, that 52% would prefer peace now over 'fighting until victory,' which only 38% supported.  Which means Biden is attempting to escalate a conflict nobody wants to nuclear war.  The unelected dictator of Ukraine is fighting a war against the will of his people, and the defeated in election Biden is supporting him against the will of the American people.  This is the nuclear war we're going to fight.  A war no one wanted.  We're going to make God cry.

In Heaven Burns Red I have my 'power' squad of all SS-Rare memoria girls who handle the difficult fights while also playing with my 'plot' squad, the original six characters from squad 31-A when the plot allows.  I wish my 'plot' squad had the chance to become strong by becoming SS-Rare themselves, but the luck hasn't been with me.  I had to cobble together a team with the girls they did provide, and it's actually a pretty sweet team.  I've got three sisters from a group of sextuplets who work really well together, all pumping up each other's fire techniques, a tiger, a girl who playacts as a cat (goes well with the tiger), and a gothic lolita tank/healer.  Is this the perfect, ideal shape of a squad?  I don't know.  I don't have enough SS-rares to really compare fairly who would theoretically be stronger.  But I do know they're good enough to get the job done.

Hallelujah! Heaven Burns Red and Death March S2:

Good things come in pairs!  Yesterday saw two huge announcements.  The first is that Heaven Burns Red is now available with English subtitles to play for free.  It takes a while to download and install, and you have to submit your email for a code that will allow you to log in, and then the game itself is a little wonky with no save or load menu and no way out of the game except to press the windows button on your keyboard, but whatever!  It's a Jun Maeda game, subtitled in English, for free!  It's basically the best thing that could ever happen.

And simultaneously, an anime I never thought would receive a sequel, which had been on my anime wishlist forever, got a sequel announcement -- Death March Season 2!

I can't believe it!  This was one of my biggest gripes about Japan!  That they made so many terrible series but wouldn't continue making Death March that was so much better.  And now that complaint is gone!

Death March is probably the best isekai story ever.  It's also one of the first isekai stories ever, which every other series is based off of.  It's very long, so a second season won't do it justice either, but if there's a second season there's a chance for a 3rd, 4th and 5th season too.  I'm so fond of Death March that six of its characters are in my Fictional Character Hall of Fame -- Satou, Tama, Pochi, Sera, Arisa and Lulu.  That's one of the most represented franchises in fiction.  I can't wait to see Sera animated for the first time, and for the other girls to come back into my life again.

Now that my wish for Death March has been granted, I put in a replacement wish for an Irotoridori no Sekai anime, which I know will never happen, but boy would it be nice if it did.

How bizarre is it that Heaven Burns Red got a translation before Rewrite Harvest Festa or Kud Wafter?  The order of Key works is all wrong.  But whatever, I'll take it.  The problem is I'm slated to receive Dragon Quest 3 in the mail tomorrow so I have no time for Heaven, but rest assured I'll enjoy Heaven in due time.

If that wasn't enough good news, simultaneously Uma Musume S3 got an English subtitled bluray release at nyaa.si.  This release follows the trend of the episodes actually being smaller filesizes than the original broadcast versions, meaning there's zero drawback to replacing your archives with this new version.

My Disney+ subscription has yielded some nice benefits.  I watched the ending to X-men '97, The Marvels, Raya and the Last Dragon, Deadpool and Wolverine, Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3, Secret Invasion and Inside Out 2.  Nothing is spectacular but it's all quite watchable.  I tried out Loki S2 and Agatha all Along but they were garbage.  I'm now caught up on all the MCU films.  I foolishly got the bundle deal that included ESPN+, only to discover that ESPN+ carries basically no good football games, but other than that I'm pretty satisfied with my decision.  It did a good job escorting me to my Dragon Quest future.

Republicans win the House:

Finally.  It's all over.  Republicans have won all four governmental bodies -- the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the Presidency.  There's only one problem -- Trump has nominated multiple House republicans to his cabinet, which means suddenly we won't have the majority again.  I assume Republicans have some plan to deal with this, but if they don't that's really stupid.  No matter how good a cabinet official they may be, it isn't worth losing the House majority over.

We won all branches of government for now, but only by a tiny margin.  Democrats are still a popular force in America and can seize power back at any moment.  The only way to stop them is to deliver peace and prosperity in the next two years like Trump promised.  With all four governmental bodies there are no excuses, Trump must deliver.  It's make or break time.  Afterwards, if he succeeds, we can have a permanent majority in government, like the President of El Salvador enjoys, where the people love him and he coasts to reelection because he's done a good job and it's obvious to everyone.  Democracies are not actually supposed to be this swingy, with completely opposite political platforms winning every two years, switching everything back and forth endlessly.  Open borders followed by mass deportations followed by open borders again is insane.  Building a wall and then tearing it back down because it's 'racist' is insane.  Entering the Paris Climate accords, then leaving them, then rejoining them, then leaving them again is insane.  Signing a nuclear deal with Iran, then reneging on the deal, then trying to get the deal back, then reneging on the deal again is insane.  Someone is supposed to win and keep winning because they're obviously right.  This 50/50 stuff is an anomaly.  For long stretches of American history a single party held total power for decades and everything worked like a charm.  If you deliver results winning reelection isn't that hard.

Trump couldn't deliver results last time due to the release of the lab engineered Covid virus and the stupid, endless Russia-gate investigation.  This time there's a smooth runway.  If Republican ideas actually work then we can prove it once and for all.

Dragon Quest 3 comes out tomorrow, but since I get games from Amazon it'll actually arrive on the 19th.  I can watch football on the 16th and 17th, but that does leave three blank days on my schedule.  The election is over and the Red Wheel is over, so maybe now is a good time to subscribe to Disney+ and catch up on all the movies and tv shows I've been missing.

Using Audacity I edited another song, "Way to Go," deleting an annoying 30 second segment in the middle.  Now the song is much more worthy of its 5-star rating.  It's scary how good my music hall of fame is going to be once this is all over.

Oshi no Ko manga ends:

It was a sincere ending.  Aquamarine sacrificed his life to take down his mother's killer while not tarnishing Ruby's future.  Precisely because the conditions for victory were so difficult, nothing short of his life sufficed to get the job done.  It's a good thing Ruby is strong at heart, because she didn't waste her opportunity and went on to perform at the Tokyo Dome just like her mother Ai was slated to do before being murdered.  So Ai's son avenged her and Ai's daughter fulfilled her unfulfilled dreams.  That's some filial piety right there.

I don't see how the ending to this series could have been any better.  Everything developed naturally and couldn't go any other way.  I'm gratified that ultimately Aqua sacrificed himself for Ruby, showing he cared more about her than any of the other girls.  I too care more for Ruby than any of the other girls.  The author has good taste.

The Oshi no Ko anime is able to deliver the same story in a much more emotionally stirring manner, so I'm looking forward to when the anime reaches this climax years from now.  Oshi no Ko is by no means finished, there's still a lot to look forward to.

On another Oshi no Ko related front, I promoted 'As Fierce as Fire' from Fire Emblem Three Houses to 5-star (which it had been rated previously), demoting Necropolis from Heroes of Might and Magic 4 to make room.  'As Fierce as Fire' was one of the seven 4-star songs that justly should be rated 5-star, but this was the most justly deserving of a promotion, so the first opening I found it seized its chance.  Since my '100 Waifus' playlist had included every single 5-star Fire Emblem song, I didn't want to disrupt that pattern and promoted 'As Fierce as Fire' to be Aquamarine's theme song.  It's actually really fitting for his turbulent and violence-filled life.

While I was at it I promoted 'Be One with your feelings' to be Komachi's theme song.  Komachi has strong but reticent feelings so the theme song is perfect for her.  It also fits better as a Japanese song for a Japanese character than the previous choice.

I've listened to over half of my music hall of fame so far in my final round of music maintenance.  After this, if there are any new good songs, I'll just add them willy-nilly without demoting anything, and rate them whatever I please.  This beautiful, perfectly symmetrical hall of fame will be a thing of the past.  There are no further ditties I want to 'merge' into longer songs, no further remixes that need to be cut, and no further bad songs not worth listening to anymore.  Everything has been purged already, so from here on the hall of fame can only grow.

I'm up to episode 47 of my Precure rewatch, which means I've already finished rewatching Healin' Good Precure and Tropical Rouge Precure.  On the other hand, I haven't even begun rewatching Go Go or Max Heart, since those episodes occur chronologically after the ending of Yes and Futari wa.  This is a monstrously large project.  Hopefully I'll finish the rewatch as a whole sometime next year.

Harris could end up winning 74 million votes or more when all the counting is done, meaning there's no discrepancy between the number of votes she received and the number Biden received.  It was only an illusionary discrepancy because far left states like Oregon and California hadn't added up their votes yet.  The House still hasn't been secured for the Republicans due to the slow vote counting which drags this election turmoil endlessly onward.  As of now AP news says Republicans are still at 217, one seat short of a majority.  *sigh*

Red Wheel volume 6 read:

This volume covers March 23 to March 31 in the year of 1917.  Russia is done throwing out the old powers and running things how they like, only to find that nothing works anymore.  The soldiers don't want to fight, the workers don't want to work, the farmers don't want to farm.  Everyone wants more money for less labor.  When discipline is lost at the top -- when the government ceases to exist -- discipline is lost at the bottom.  The peasants are demanding free land that should be seized from the nobility, but as the minister of agriculture points out all this would amount to is 2 acres per farmer.  Meanwhile it would disrupt the grain supply in the middle of the war, where half the population is at the front and relying on the people in the rear to supply them their necessities.

The police have all been dismissed as agents of the old government, and the prisoners let loose from the prisons.  What we are looking at is less revolution and more anarchy.  The ministers of the various branches of government can make various edicts but none of them are enforceable.  The generals can make war plans but nobody is going to follow them.  Though the revolution was meant to bring Russia into the fold of liberal democracy like England, France and the USA, already they've banned freedom of speech and freedom of the press.  But it's an anarchy, you say?  No, like all anarchies, it's an anarcho-tyranny.  When it's easy to oppress you you're fully oppressed, but when it's difficult to oppress you you're let go to do whatever you like.  That's how every anarchy goes.

Hilariously, the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which is the driving force behind the undermining of the new government's authority, is itself bedlam.  With an overflow of over 3,000 legislators all debating what should be done on every minor issue and more people entering from exile and abroad continuously, there's no hierarchy and no way to settle disputes.  To make matters worse there's no money paying for all these deputies as they're not a formal body of any nature, just a group of people who got together and started making pronouncements, which means no taxes are going to pay their nonexistent salaries.  The only power the Soviet has is the newspapers.  Whoever they denounce in the newspapers the soldiers will gladly arrest (not that there are any prisons or even laws, so who knows what happens to these arrested people afterward).  And if the Soviet chose to denounce the government as a whole the soldiers would go arrest the whole government.  Why do the soldiers put so much faith in Soviet leadership?  Probably because the Soviets are the only ones calling for the war to end -- and they're right on this question.  The war was always senseless, absolute insanity, from the beginning.  The sooner Russia leaves World War 1 the better, and in fact the sooner all nations of Europe leave World War 1 the better.  Soldiers understand this best as they're the ones suffering.

It doesn't do you any good if you're the formal, legitimate government if you still don't answer to the people's wishes and common sense.  The reality is the old government, and the new one, were driving Russia into a ditch, and only the Soviets were saying 'stop!'  The revolution emerged spontaneously, from the people and the soldiers, it wasn't so that the parliament could wage the war instead of the Tsar, it was so the war could end.  If one revolution isn't enough to end a war, then naturally a second is required.

The economy is cracking under the requirements of the war.  The workers are tired, the farmers are tired, the soldiers are tired.  You can't whip any more out of them.  If the war ended the common man would no longer be required to maintain heroic levels of effort just to stay alive.  Then it wouldn't matter how disorganized or inefficient or lazy people were. There would be plenty for everyone if only the war didn't suck everything up into a black hole.  So far Russia hasn't lost a single inch of ground, the Germans have only taken Poland, which Russia has already agreed to let go after the war, and advanced a bit into the baltics, Belarus and Ukraine.  They haven't even reached Odessa.  Russia could end the war now and lose nothing.

If there's anything this book imparts, it's that war is senseless and the people who refuse to negotiate a peace are brainless butchers, who treat their country like a toy and war a game to be won for the sake of self-satisfaction, personal pride, rather than any noble overarching goal.  It would do Israel and Ukraine a lot of good to read this book and realize they're pissing away their country for nothing and can't possibly improve their situation no matter how long they delay the war's ending.

Utawarerumono Shiro announced:

The game features Karura, so it shares continuity with the other games.  I don't know how you could create a new exciting war in this world when all problems were already solved by the previous wars, but I'm sure they'll think of something.  The people behind this franchise are amazing after all.  The game is slated for release in the fall of 2025, but maybe that's only for Japan.

Aquaplus is also making a new visual novel called Jasmine, relying on the talents behind Air, Clannad and Planetarian.  That should be worth checking out.

As votes continue to trickle in the gap between the number of votes Kamala and Biden got is becoming more reasonable and believable.  I didn't know there were still this many millions of additional votes left to count.  Kamala is going to end up with at least 72 million votes, maybe more, which is only 10% less than Biden got.  That can be explained through non-fraudulent means like Kamala being a bad candidate or the Gaza war depressing Democrat turnout or whatever.  Of course the alternative explanation is the real votes Kamala received ended days ago and everything we're seeing from here on is pure vote fraud, ballots chunked into the count after the election is already over made up by the vote counters.  So long as we rely on mail-in ballots it will be impossible to determine the legitimacy of any vote.

Since the House still hasn't been determined, this many days after the election, and the Democrats would love to steal the House to shut down all of Trump's agenda, I wouldn't be surprised if turbo vote fraud is occurring right now.  If Republicans win the House, though, it's likely the election was fair.  (No, this isn't hypocritical.  It makes sense to win the House when you win the Presidency and the Senate, it makes no sense to win the Presidency with 312 electoral votes, pick up 4 senate seats, and be leading in the House on election day, only to lose it weeks later due to ballots of dubious origin).

I wanted the House to be secured by now.  The fact that it isn't is extremely disturbing.  What is with our democracy that we still can't finish an election after an entire week has passed?  The rest of the world never has these problems.  It's just us.

My work is also slowly progressing -- I upgraded 'Wrong World' to 3-star, which let it qualify for being Nina's song in the '100 Waifus' playlist, the only song that can really represent her.  I also promoted 'Captured Phantom' (which I'd only demoted a couple weeks ago) back to 4-star, as well as Yuriha to 4-star.  Now all the songs that deserved to be 4-star have found a spot in my 4-star tier.  I'm finally content with my rankings when it comes to tiers 1-4.  I only wish I could fit more deserving songs into my 5-star tier.

I've listened to my new 21 songs 100 times.  It wasn't for nothing -- by listening to them the required amount of times I was able to rate them more accurately.  For instance 'Sailing Ship' went down to 2-star and Mugen up to 3-star.  It also proved that they were all legitimately good songs that are possible to listen to 100 times without getting sick of.  Now all these songs can officially join my music hall of fame as co-equal members.

Now I have the much simpler task of just getting the volume, start time and end time of my songs right again, and my music maintenance will be complete.

The Red Wheel book has a lot of pages and very small font, but I'm making steady progress.  I should finish it before this stupid election is finished.

I dropped Sayonara Ryuusei due to it lacking any originality.  With nothing of interest to say I don't see why I should keep listening.  It was a big mistake to sideline the cute redhaired loli, I was expecting her to be a major character and instead she basically vanished.  On the bright side Hamidashi Creative is being subtitled again so the total number of shows to watch hasn't changed.

Delicious Irony:

The United States were granted hosting rights of the World Cup and the Olympics in 2026 and 2028 because the international bodies at that time assumed Trump couldn't possibly be president by then.  It would be past his two-term limit.  However, by stealing the election last time (nothing other than fraud can explain the discrepancy in votes Biden got compared to Hillary before and Kamala after) Trump got a split 2 term presidency, and now he's going to oversee all these splendid patriotic displays.  Oops!

On top of that they made sure to delay the new moon landing to 2026 so Trump couldn't claim credit for it, but oops!  Now we're doing a patriotic moon landing with Trump after all.  Oh, and the 250th anniversary of America's founding?  That's now Trump's celebration too.

Watch us land on Mars under Trump too.

Meanwhile, KonoSuba S3 came out in bluray.  Again with a smaller filesize than the original, so no reason not to archive it.  I also continued my music maintenance, flipping a few more song ratings.  Two new Terra Wars songs got promoted to 2-star -- bgm_bg08 and bgm_sc_tb2_13.  I know, inspiring song names am I right?  And Battle with Seymour got promoted to 4-star after I edited away the bad portions of the song with Audacity.  I demoted The Nightmare's Beginning, also by Uematsu, to make room, so Uematsu's total worth as a composer doesn't change.  Battle with Seymour is a lot better song now that the annoying parts are gone, it might actually be worthy of a 5-star rating now, but it'll have to be content with 4-star.

I'm a good ways into the latest Red Wheel volume, obviously the election news has been taking priority though.