The Astrarium was tough this time, but not tough enough:

Heaven Burns Red presented me with a new score challenge and Astrarium challenge, but I aced them both.  The score challenge I handled with my critical penetration squad, but the Astrarium had a nasty trick up its sleeve -- the boss couldn't be broken by damage, only by fire or ice attacks in large enough numbers that they got through its shield points.  So it was up to my premier fire squad, squad 8, the imp Yayoi fire squad, to handle things.

Squad 8 is a really interesting squad in that there's no dedicated healer.  Isuzu can heal a bit while mainly debuffing.  Seira can heal herself while mainly guarding.  Adelheid can dodge a bit while mainly blasting.  And with this shoestring defense budget I go all-out on offense.  And I needed all the offense I could muster, because the boss insta-kills the party if you don't break it fast enough.

The boss had three bars and reset its shields each time I killed one of them with a higher count.  By the time I defeated it in ex mode level 3 my squad was truly at its limits -- I was fighting with broken characters and out of overdrives and out of exclusive attacks.  But I won and got all the battle season points available.  It was a glorious victory for someone not named my critical penetration squad.  Which is proof that building up my other squads really was necessary.  You never know when they might become the ideal squad for the situation.

The astrarium gave me the badges I needed to learn Yuki and Byakko's master skills, as well as lots of other nice loot like 2 eternal daphnes.  I got Mion's relic orb and two light-empowering necklaces.

As for recruiting, I got the newly available swimsuit Aina (she's really pretty, even though I don't like Aina's personality, so swimsuit Aina is a worthy addition.)  Her ability is pretty strong -- not only does it lower the enemy's defense and thunder defense, then do a thunder attack, but it also does massive devastation so she works as a blaster too.  As I was saying before, these days your seraph needs to be able to fulfill two roles at once or they'll fall behind.  She would fit in perfectly to a theoretical thunder squad, but not at her current level 0 limit break.

I also got base Karen up to level 3 limit break.  If I can get that up to level 4 it would raise unison Karen's stats by an extremely helpful 10%, further empowering my critical penetration squad.

The best part is I managed to do all this for free.

I did pay for an HBO Max and Disney+ subscription, though.  I wanted to watch the new season of House of the Dragon and Mortal Kombat II, as well as the new season of X-men '97 and Fantastic Four.  The month before Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave comes out seems to be the right time to get my streaming in.

Mortal Kombat II was decent but worse than all the previous Mortal Kombat entries.  It was too campy and didn't take itself seriously enough for a life and death, fate of the world drama.

House of the Dragon Season 3, on the other hand, was fantastic.  Basically perfect, the best Game of Thrones season in a long time.  The challenges of the Greens switching to unorthodox warfare to avoid Rhaenerya's strength of abundant dragons combined with the headache of actually running the government makes for a compelling narrative.  I like how she tries her best to do the right thing but every time things go wrong anyway.  She can't find or kill Aegon, or Aemond, or Sheepstealer, or anyone she sets her mind upon.  They all slip through her fingers as if by dark magic.  I can see why a season 4 of House of the Dragon was needed to actually resolve all these hanging plot threads.

Star Wars Visions Presents the Ninth Jedi:

Leave it to Japan to make a decent Star Wars tv series.  Anime is so superior to American dramas that even American stories are best left in the hands of Japanese.  The Ninth Jedi is a magnificent rendering of Star Wars, with all the nostalgic sound effects and musical tone, the lightsabers, the bounty hunters, the speeder bikes, the starships, everything is there.  But in addition to the groundwork that America laid, it has heart, and a cute girl who actually acts like a girl as well as a warrior.  She has a sidetail and wears pink eastern-style flowy martial-arts clothes.  She cares about other people and gets emotional.  She can be afraid, depressed, angry, the whole gamut.  She isn't a stone-cold know-it-all like Rey who can just pluck entire starships out of the air with the force.  She has to work hard over a long time to become the strongest Jedi by the end of the series, facing many setbacks and failures before then.

Kara is the heroine of this series, and she's a great heroine.  She immediately enters my wonderful fictional characters hall of fame.  'Yoda's Theme' now becomes her theme song for the purposes of my wonderful playlist, because she actually is a wise and powerful Jedi, unlike Yoda who's just a psychopath: 'rejoice in the death of your wife I do, and you should too!'

This follows a pattern of Japan taking over and improving American franchises -- before it was Terminator 0, and then Isekai Suicide Squad, and now The Ninth Jedi.  Each time Japan made the franchises work after America had butchered them.

The animation and art style in this series is perfect.  I've never seen such fast and furious lightsaber duels.  They really looked like the superhuman athletes they're meant to be.  Kara is gorgeous and has such compelling eyes.  The villains of the series aren't jokes like Kylo Ren or ugly old men obviously well past their prime.

Anyway, I encourage everyone to watch this new Star Wars anime.  It's wonderful.

Release that Witch is still in my halls of fame as a movie-length anime, because that's what it ended up being.  It still had an amazing first eight episodes.

Sousou no Frieren S2 is out in English subtitled bluray, so that's a nice pickup for archival purposes.

The NFL resumes today, albeit it's just the preseason.

A Princess Principal bluray special, "Fabulous Platypus," is now available with English subtitles.  Also the final short episode of Boku no Hero Academia, 'I am a hero too,' is necessary viewing.

Tucker Carlson put out a list of ten things he wanted America to be -- 'Honest,' 'Fair,' 'Decent,' 'Optimistic,' 'Healthy,' 'Wise,' 'Beautiful,' 'Sovereign,' 'Productive' and 'United.'  It was interesting because so many of his talking points addressed the same things I've been talking about all along.  Like how I wanted to get Americans off all mind-altering drugs and return them to a decent weight class.  And how people need to have kids or they become detached from caring about reality and the future.  And how beautiful things are innately good.  And how fake the current economy is in that it doesn't actually make anything of value.  And how debt should be banned as pernicious.  There really wasn't much in there I disagree with.  Tucker Carlson seems to have evolved into the best political pundit in America, and it's really nice that such an articulate speaker for my cause has such a vast audience.  I hope he keeps pounding these points moving forward.  Who knows, maybe he can change America from its current nightmare hellscape.

I will give credit to Trump where credit is due, though.  Not only has he stopped illegal immigration into this country, he's stopped illegality altogether.  The murder rate in America is at an all-time low in its 126 years of data-tracking.  That's amazing.  He delivered on his promise of law and order in a way nobody thought possible.  Beating the idyllic 1950's for peace and quiet.

Nevertheless, America still has one of the highest rates of child abuse, and sexual child abuse, in the developed world.  We're nowhere near the safe and orderly country I could make things if I were in charge.  But it's a big change from where we were under Biden.

Imp Yayoi level 3 limit break:

I've started playing my next PS5 game, Fantasian.  I have nothing but gripes for this game.  The fights are too difficult.  It takes too long to move around or find quests.  All the treasure chests are unopenable.  There are too many random encounters -- yes, dimengeon feature included.  The main character, Leo, is the typical amnesiac, like apparently all rpg protagonists.  The music is awful.  The weird diorama backgrounds look terrible.  The only bright spots are the deep turn-based combat mechanics and the cute sister princesses.  Since I bought the game I have no choice but to play it to the finish line, otherwise it would be a waste of money, but it's like Phantom Brave: Lost Hero, a chore rather than a pastime.

Fantasian was so annoying I decided to play the modded Ogre Battle instead.  The mod re-balances the classes in the game to be more viable, especially large monsters, and introduces all new classes like the evolved witch class, the banshee.  I've played Ogre Battle many times, but never this cool new modern Ogre Battle, and it's basically the perfect game.  It's challenging and fun and the music is beautiful.  The contrast between Ogre Battle, a true classic, and Fantasian, is like heaven and Earth.  SNES graphics producing a great game far surpass PS5 graphics producing a mediocre game.  The lack of importance of graphics could not be made clearer when playing these two works side-by-side.

I still have several more PS5 games sitting on my bookshelf, and Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave is coming out soon.  This year has never had a shortage of things to do.

In Heaven Burns Red, I kept fiddling around with my critical penetration squad's equipment and strategy until I got my score challenge score up to 2,229,000, which netted me all the loot on offer.  That was fun.  Heaven remains the greatest game ever.  I also unlocked the rest of my master skills.  Irene actually got her master skill, but the others will have to wait for new items to get theirs.  I've gotten everyone's skill levels to max.  I now have a record 34 SS Memorias stuck in the limit break limbo of 2.5 or 3.5.

Most importantly, I gathered the necessary 20 protean shards to upgrade imp Yayoi to level 3 limit break, and actually get stronger (able to take down score challenges I previously couldn't.)  I also gave her 10 reversions so she'd hit that little bit harder while enjoying an extra skill slot.

I still had my Peacock subscription going from the World Cup, so I watched the new Super Mario Galaxy movie.  It was hilarious, reinforcing my inclusion of Mario and Peach as wonderful fictional characters.  In the end it's still a kids' movie, so it can't really move me emotionally, but it certainly achieved its objective, which is indulge in Nintendo nostalgia, like Star Fox barrel rolls.  I also watched The Sum of All Fears, a Jack Ryan movie, who is also in my wonderful fictional characters hall of fame.  It was okay.  And I watched two World War II movies, one a true story and one fictional, 'Pressure' and 'Fury.'  'Pressure,' the true story, was a lot better.  I had no idea that a meteorologist saved the day at D-Day by postponing the launch date one day until calmer weather.  I was also extremely impressed with Dwight Eisenhower putting aside his personal ego and plans and biases and deferring to the expert.  Not many people can do that, which explains why he became such an excellent President afterwards.

My humble blog received a new record 81,514 pageviews in July, even though I'm not posting that often and nothing I'm discussing is that special or important.  It's certainly a curious phenomenon.  But a lot of the pageviews aren't about my current posts, but my older ones, which actually are special and important, so maybe people are finally noticing that.

Senren * Banka anime greenlit:

Wonderful news!  The first anime adaption of a Yuzusoft visual novel has been announced for 2027, Senren * Banka.  Senren * Banka is my favorite Yuzusoft visual novel, my 7th favorite visual novel of all time, so it's no surprise that they chose this one to animate out of their vast catalogue.  It goes to show that my taste in art is accurate, yet again, as the popular will backs my 'anime wishlist,' which featured Senren * Banka prominently until today.

Now that my wish for a Senren anime has been granted, I replaced it on my wishlist with a wish for a new season of MIX.  I think that might happen someday too, once the manga is completed, if Mitsuru Adachi lives long enough to complete it.  MIX very much deserves a continuation, it's an amazing series, second best of Adachi's works only to Cross Game.

There are two ways this could go down:  1)  The anime adaption is perfect and brings renewed enthusiasm to all Yuzusoft works, resulting in a giant anime adaption spree of Riddle Joker, Tenshi Souzou Reboot, Cafe Stella, Limelight Lemonade Jam, Dracu Riot, etc., all of which join my top anime rankings.  2)  Senren * Banka gets the equivalent of Rewrite's anime adaption and fails miserably, everyone hates it, everyone assumes Yuzusoft works are bad when actually only the anime is bad, and Senren doesn't make my top anime rankings (like how Rewrite didn't, despite being my 4th favorite visual novel.)

I have no idea which route this anime will take.  There have been fantastic visual novel adaptions like Clannad's, and terrible ones like Rewrite, so it's anyone's guess.  But if they follow the source work as closely as possible (given the amount of sex scenes I understand and accept some level of changes), this is a shoe-in for my top anime rankings.  The soundtrack to this game is far and away better than any other Yuzusoft visual novel, it's almost as good as a Key work.  The male protagonist of Senren * Banka, Masaomi, is actually likable, his cousin Koharu is cute as can be, his grandfather Genjuurou is a genuinely wise mentor, and his lover/sword Muramasa is a unique heroine everyone can root for.

I haven't been this excited for an anime announcement since Summer Pockets.  I thought the anime industry would never treat Yuzusoft with the respect it deserves, looking down upon it as glorified porn.  But if you actually read these visual novels, there's a deep and heartfelt story, with a plot, setting, romance, action, everything you could desire.  Yuzusoft visual novels are not porn, they're art.  The same as Little Busters! or Da Capo.  And someone in Japan with deep pockets has finally realized this.  Finally!  Senren * Banka came out in 2016, 10 years ago.  It's about time someone noticed it was a masterpiece.

Fall 2026 anime preview:

Now that Bleach has aired, the entire summer lineup is airing.  So now it's time to look forward to the great unknown, next season's lineup:

Continuing Series:

Juukishi

Uchi no Outouto Sumimasen

Meitantei Precure

Returning Series:

Ranma 1/2 Remake

Ao no Hako

Ken Tensei

Aoashi

Chitose-kun wa Ramune

Mahou Shimai LuluttoLilly

Shin Prince of Tennis

Tensei Kizoku, Kantei Skill

Good Debuting Series:

To Aru Anbu no Item

Magic Knight Rayearth Remake

Demons Crest

* * *

With a bunch of other series that might be worth watching.  That already gets us to 14 shows, though, so autumn will be fine either way.  Not as good as this summer season, which includes amazing shoutbacks to the far past like Bleach and Nanoha, but still excellent.

Meanwhile, I've set to work unlocking Irene's master skill.  I collected the items I need, and the unlocking process will be finished tomorrow.  My critical penetration squad is so much better than all my other squads, I'm planning on concentrating my powerups on it until it's maxed out.  That means the next 120 protean shards I collect should all go to my critical penetration squad.  >.<.  Obviously that's going to take a while (years?).  But it's sad watching my 'level 4 limit break across the board' squads lose to enemies my level 2 limit break critical penetration members have no problem with.  The critical penetration skill is so overpowered there's no point playing with anyone else.

I used my last remaining eternal daphne on swimsuit Miya.  She has a great exclusive passive skill that gives a wide variety of buffs to all fire element seraphs.  If the entire squad is fire element it gives a rewarding buff for that too, so she fits in perfectly with idol Erika's fire squad, as she also only rewards fire element users with her ability.  Swimsuit Miya is also beautiful so she's fun to play with.

The new 'battle season rewards' loot table includes eternal daphnes, so if I ever need more I can buy them with the tokens I  get from beating score challenges moving forward.

I completed the Monaca event.  The basic setting is a flimsy excuse to get everyone from Squad 31-A and Squad 30-G in swimsuits.  (Sadly not Hisame, she wasn't around for this event.)  It also allowed Monaca to meet the dead Satomi again, as well as her even older dead friend from Squad 28-F.  But I don't mind because I love swimsuit clad beauties.  Especially since they all did a humorous turn at serving customers at a beachside cafe.  They also played tennis and volleyball in swimsuits, which was very rewarding to the eyes.  In the case of beach volleyball that's actually authentic.  For a Monaca event, it could have been worse.  By spreading out the plot between 10 different characters, most of them not Monaca, it became a lot more fun than I expected.

Dragon Quest II defeated at normal difficulty:

There's still some extra dungeon content I could do, but the end credits have rolled and the last boss is dead.  Dragon Quest II 2d-hd was much better than III or I, namely because all four of the characters in the party were real people with personalities and backgrounds.  I like all the characters in my 4-person prince/princess brigade, but Matilda stood out from among them.  Matilda is the final character to join the party, and the youngest member, and she approaches everything with a refreshing directness and honesty that her older compatriots are too embarrassed to mimic.  She gets angry with the villains and trash talks them before every boss fight, it's great.  Plus she is a beautiful blonde princess with a giant ribbon in her hair and a long regal cape, a striking figure.  Her voice actress is also great, with a cute piping energetic voice that is always encouraging her compatriots onwards.

Mostly what I enjoyed about Dragon Quest II was the classic turn-based rpg combat.  I struggled with the later bosses and it took clever tactics each turn to eventually win.  And this is at normal difficulty.  I shudder to think how it would have gone at draconian difficulty.  But the dialogue between the two princes and princesses was also fun.  It's also great that they're all one big family.  Caradok and Matilda are brother and sister to each other.  Perona and 'main character who you name yourself' are cousins to each other and to Caradok and Matilda.  So it's a very loving environment.

I used to think Dragon Quest XI was the only great Dragon Quest game, but DQ II not only is great, but it also elevates 1 and 3, which all connect to 2, to be part of one large great game as well.  Matilda was elevated to my wonderful hall of fame and received the Bjork song New World, because it's as hopeful and adventurous as she is.

Meanwhile, a new event came out in Heaven Burns Red.  I promptly spent $160 getting all the new SS Memorias I wanted.  I finally got my missing light Ichiko and the new swimsuit Miya SS Memorias, but I'm still missing the beachside Niina and swimsuit Satomi Memorias so my collection isn't totally complete.  Still, owning all but two of the SS Memorias in the game is pretty impressive.  I also got limit breaks for lots of other SS Memorias, but most of them fell into the limbo of 2.5 or 3.5, so didn't actually help me much.  The only upgrades that really stand out is wedding dress Ichiko reaching level 4 and admiral Mion reaching level 3.  I now have a record 28 SS Memorias stuck in the limbo of 2.5 or 3.5.

There were also upgrades like lightning Yuina reaching level 3, but thundercat Byakko is level 4 with an eternal daphne and also a blaster, so lightning Yuina is totally useless.  There's lots of problematic overlaps like that.

Now my imp-Yayoi fire squad has all level 4 limit break holders aside from imp Yayoi herself.  I used it at full power and got 1.8 million in the new score challenge.  I also used my critical penetration squad against the same score challenge and got 1.86 million, which is functionally the same.  Imp Yayoi fire is pretty darn good.

Beating the score challenge gave me access to three new accessories called 'relic orbs.'  They give +1,000 dp (your basic shield health points in the game), which is massive.  It's like suddenly getting +20% to health.  And as fate would have it, all three relic orbs were for characters in my critical penetration squad -- Yayoi, Karen and Yingxia -- making the squad even more dominant than before over all my other squads.

There's also a relic orb available for Mion but I don't have enough points to buy it yet.  I'll secure Mion's orb next month.  There's also new master skills available but I haven't gotten enough items or fulfilled the unlocking conditions for them, so that will also be a long-term project.  I'm most excited about Irene getting a master skill because she's in my critical penetration squad.

The new event is about Monaca, who I don't like much, so I haven't actually done it yet, but I'll get around to it shortly.  Yesterday I watched the new Assassination Classroom movie.  It was okay, I suppose, and moved the series into the elite category of top anime that has over 50 episodes of content and reaches its ending.  Tomorrow the first episode of the finale of Bleach airs, so I'm ricocheting from one great work of art to another in a nonstop whirlwind.

I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day is a great anime:

Two episodes is enough, I'm convinced this is the anime I've been waiting for.  Somebody had to replace Release that Witch, which is too short for my top anime rankings according to the rules, and so Dying Day stepped up to the plate.  It's the only series in the summer season that can make a reasonable argument that it's one of the top 200 anime of all time.  If not for Dying Day, I would have had to wait for Demons Crest to start airing and used it to replace Release that Witch months from now.  Thankfully now Demons Crest can stay paired with SAO as a single great entry, which makes more sense.

There's nothing better than loli yuri in a dark mahou shoujo setting.  It's like Youjo Senki and Madoka Magica rolled up into one.  Its originality is one of the most exciting aspects of the show.  I've watched a lot of anime but this one keeps taking me by surprise.

To celebrate the new top anime, I added two new wonderful characters to my fictional characters hall of fame, the protagonists of the show, Sheena and Mimi.  Sheena received 'Pagan Poetry' and Mimi received 'Joga', both by Bjork.  The music of Bjork is slightly off-kilter and haunting, and that's the exact mood of this anime.  Also, the lyrics of Pagan Poetry, 'swirling black lilies,' is perfectly in keeping with a dark yuri series (yuri is lily in Japanese.)

This also added to my represented franchises list, getting me up to the 'silver 137,' so I updated that post as well.

As for the World Cup final, Argentina really tried their hardest.  They were well on their way to taking it to a penalty kick shootout, where they prevailed in the previous World Cup, so there's every reason to believe they would have prevailed this time too if it came to that.  Unfortunately, Enzo Fernandez ruined everything for Argentina by first picking up a pointless yellow card by arguing with the referee, then getting an unfortunate second yellow card due to a late challenge, which meant Argentina had to play for far too long a man down.  Argentina's defense and goalie had been like a stone wall throughout the game, but playing a man down on top of everything else all the way through overtime was too much for any team.  Even then, Argentina tried a desperate, valiant effort to equalize after going a goal behind and a man down, giving Spain quite the scare at the end of overtime.

It wasn't meant to be.

The game before the final had quite the different trajectory, with 10 goals scored instead of 1, all in regular time.  That was pretty crazy, but honestly the tension in the final was better.  The riveting entertainment of a close game is better than a goal bonanza.

Only 5% of the world's youth are white, so it's practically impossible for two white teams to meet in the World Cup final after this.  Even if whites are exactly as good, on average, as black players, since there are so many more eligible blacks than whites who can play moving forward, inevitably the World Cup is going to become blacker and blacker every four years.  This won't prove blacks are better athletes than whites, it will just prove what I've been warning about all my life -- that the fertility rate of blacks far exceeds whites, and we are dying out as a race.  We are being replaced by Africans and the World Cup is showing that with its black 'England' vs. black 'France' teams in the third place game.

Since no one heeded my warnings for the past 20 years obviously my warnings came true.  More's the pity, because Lionel Messi showed how beautiful the beautiful game could truly be for the last month and the last decade.  Whatever black stars emerge in the future as they beat other blacks in the black World Cup, none of them will ever be as good as Messi was, so what little interest I had in soccer will only drop from here.

Meanwhile, I defeated Dragon Quest 1 2d-hd.  The last battle was tough, I had to retry it something like 20 times, before I got lucky enough to win using the same strategy as I had the previous ten times.  It always felt like I was close to winning, try after try, so I was determined to just keep trying until I got the lucky dodges I needed.  The key to victory was equipping enough fire-resistant gear that I was immune to the Dragon Lord's fire attacks, while also preserving mana as much as possible by using Muster Strength and Reheal instead of anything extravagant and wasteful like Wild Side.

So far I'm dominating my opponents in Dragon Quest 2 2d-hd, but the game is yet young.  I like that in this game I have a party of nothing but princes and princesses who all have their own distinct strengths and weaknesses.  It's better than Dragon Quest 1 or 3.  Overall I'd say the entire trilogy of DQ 1-3 is deservedly among my top video game rankings.  These remakes have made the franchise much better than before.  Currently Dragon Quest stands in 15th place in my rankings, right ahead of Octopath Traveler which is 16th.  The franchises have a lot in common so it's no surprise.