Demons Crest is the Anime of the Year:

I had Demons Crest in my rankings well before it started airing, but now that I've seen its first two episodes I'm completely convinced this is the best anime of the year.  Surpassing Mao, Witch Hat Atelier, Sousou no Frieren and Oshi no Ko.  Surpassing the ending of Bleach.  The art style is magnificent, and the animation is as high budget as you'll see anywhere.  It looks so polished it could be a movie.  Also, the anime is true to the source work, and isn't afraid to show the 12 year old girls' skin.  It's a beautiful anime in all ways, shapes and forms.

Demons Crest, by Reki Kawahara, is another take on Sword Art Online.  In both series the game becomes 'real,' you can't logout, and if you die in the game you die in real life.  Both are Virtual Reality Massive Multiple Player Online Role Playing Games.  The differences between the two series are minor -- Demons Crest features younger children as the main cast -- and in Demons Crest the fantasy has interfaced with regular Earth as opposed to being transported to a whole new fictional setting.  I don't consider the differences extreme enough to treat Demons Crest as a separate anime from SAO.  In the same manner, there are so many parallels between Mao and Inuyasha they may as well be the same work.

This means Demons Crest simply bolsters SAO's #5 best anime ranking as opposed to claiming a slot of its own.  But it's still a wonderful and meaningful addition to the whole.  Like how Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave is a huge contribution to Fire Emblem's overall worth.

Speaking of Fire Emblem, I finished Dietrich's route and have started on the last remaining flame lord, Cai.  Cai's route is also really good, fleshing out the story and providing a lot of details the other routes miss.

As for manga, '9999 Nandesukedo?!' has reached its conclusion, adapting the full original novels.  It was never that great a series, but everything that's translated from start to finish is welcome.  For years it looked like the translation had been abandoned, but then it all came out at once.

The election went about as I predicted, except worse.  Who would have imagined Republicans could lose Mississippi in the heart of the South?  It was the worst result for Republicans in a century.  And it all came about due to Trump alienating young voters, who universally revile his slavish attachment to Israel.  This is not a racial divide -- young white men all voted Democrat this election too.  Every young person voted Democrat, while boomers actually voted Republican harder than before.  This is a generational divide.  The stupid boomers took up their ancient grudge with Iran from 1979, while young people who weren't even alive back then thought this was stupid.  Because the election was solely about this Iran war, surprisingly, if J.D. Vance runs in 2028, who always opposed the Iran war, we could still win when it matters.  This watershed election for Democrats followed a watershed election for Republicans, which means the voters are responsive to what people actually do.  If Republicans offer an actually good program to young voters, they'll switch back again.  But never again can we take young voters for granted.  They aren't going to nod along and sacrifice themselves for boomers any longer.  That's the one lesson we can take from this election cycle.  Boomers, and boomer sycophants, out.  Not Juden Raus.  Boomer Raus.

Mari Snap Event Cleared:

The latest mini-event in Heaven Burns Red was a charming date between Adelheid and Mari.  I like both characters so their interactions are always welcome.  More importantly, the new event, along with the monthly refresh, allowed me to recruit the new powerful admiral Ruka.  I immediately used her in the score challenge, which was immune to non-elemental damage (thus my critical penetration squad was invalidated), and scored a respectable 2.1 million.  I had to kick Sumomo out of my ice squad to make room, which is sad, but my ice squad is getting pretty deadly with all these improvements.

Once I acquire enough protean shards I plan on replacing Inori in my critical penetration squad with maou Bon Ivar, but without paying money to the game my protean shard accumulation rate is going to be slower than before, so Inori can rest easy for a while longer.

More excitingly, the countdown to Chapter 5 Part 3 has been announced, so the first real content in a long time for the game is coming soon.

I finished Leda's route in Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, and have started down Dietrich's.  Dietrich's story has been my favorite so far, which is unusual because I usually prefer the female characters.  It just shows how well put together the plot is in this segment.  It also helps that Dietrich is a ridiculously good looking male, which is sort of like a female lead.

I've played Fire Emblem for so long and there's still more than half of the game to go.  Not to mention I bought the expansion pass so that will mean even more playing in the years to come.  This is clearly a great game with tons of content and highly addictive gameplay, as well as dozens of appealing characters to play as.  It's a step down from where Fire Emblem was before, though, because the music and the plot aren't as gripping as before.  I also think the engage bracelets were way more fun and cool than this game's blaze arts.  Fortune's Weave is certainly a powerful contributor to the franchise's overall worth, but not enough to surpass Heaven Burns Red or Final Fantasy, which still lay dearer to my heart.

A new Koujo Denka volume has come out, volume 0, which is a prequel to the main story.  I'll get around to it when I find the time.  Volume 21 is coming out at the end of the month.  So Koujo Denka will continue going strong in the month of November as well.

Since every premier college football team has been upset, we're essentially back where we're started, leaving the rankings the same as before.  It's rather ironic.  The only new kids on the block are UCLA and Utah, still undefeated, who I still can't quite believe are actually good.  Let's see them beat Georgia and then I'll take their records seriously.

Somehow, despite my light posting, my blog hit a new record for views last month, 532,049.  Over half a million views.  That sounds like the big leagues to me.  Odds are this trend won't continue, though, as it had no reason to begin in the first place.  Still, it's a gratifying number.

I Guess Bleach Really is Over:

I half-expected an announcement at the end of the Bleach anime -- the Bleach Hell Arc manga begins.  Then there was the chance that the Shuhei-centered light novels would be adapted.  But neither of those events happened.  The story ended, the anime took a bow, and it was all over.  Bleach is really over, and the anime did a bang-up job from start to finish adapting the Thousand Year Blood War.  That's good enough.  It's nice to have at least one finished artistic masterpiece in the world.

Most of all, the ending where Orihime gets with Ichigo and Rukia gets with Renji isn't changed.  '100 Waifus' wasn't wrong to count the Orihime-Ichigo pairing as one of the best relationships in fiction.

In Heaven Burns Red, I got the Persona 5 guest character Violet into my army.  As a bonus she starts already at limit break level 1.  As another bonus she's the prettiest character from the crossover.  And as an extra bonus I managed to do it with free quartz.  Now that my critical penetration squad is at full strength, I don't feel the need to spend further money on the game.

Jun Maeda is at death's door with throat cancer, and I'm happy the thousands I spent on the game went in some part to pay his medical bills.  But it's over now, he's in hospice with no hope of recovery, so further contributions won't change anything.  Jun Maeda has finished writing and composing the rest of the main story, so it's up to his team to deliver the finished product in the years to come.  Luckily the best game of all time will get an appropriate ending like Bleach has.  51 is quite the early time to go, but Jun Maeda accomplished so much in those 51 years that he can't complain.  It still amounts to a wonderful life, and he'll forever be immortalized by the stories and songs he left behind.  Most people would take that deal if offered at birth.

A thoroughly researched Finnish study shows the Ukraine to Russia casualty ratio is around 10:1.  This is why Russia doesn't seem particularly rushed in how it conducts the war -- it knows how it will end eventually.  Generally speaking, once a country loses 10% of its population in a war it surrenders.  Ukraine can last longer because Europe is paying its bills, but with a 10:1 casualty ratio lasting a bit longer won't matter.  All it means is that Ukraine will find it yet harder to recover after the war.  The longer Russia fights the war now, the less Ukraine will represent a threat to Russia in the future, so they have every reason to keep the war going indefinitely.  Not winning too badly is actually a devious tactic to encourage Ukraine to keep feeding men into the grindery.

I hope to live past age 51, so I can see Russia eventually triumphant.  I'd also like to see the ending to One Piece, Dragon Ball, Xanth, Index, Bakemonogatari, Fate/Kaleid Liner, MIX, Saki, Kimetsu no Yaiba, Oshi no Ko, Berserk, The Red Wheel, Fairy Tail, Sword Art Online, Heaven Burns Red and Final Fantasy 7.  After investing decades of time and thousands of dollars into these franchises I'd like the payout to be commensurate.  Those of us who don't have world famous works of art should at least be allowed to enjoy the world famous works of art of others, and that means living long enough that all those lazy or overly ambitious creators finally cross the finish line.

I Voted straight ticket Republican, but the polls are grim:

The polls say Iran is the least popular war in American history, that Israel is the least popular country in the world, and the economic impact of the Iran war is blamed entirely on Trump and his Republican compatriots.  In the headwind of this foreign policy disaster, domestic policy has been entirely drowned out.

Nobody cares anymore about Trump's successes -- he's reduced affirmative action and LGBT+ identification, cut crime to literally the lowest in American history, increased the real median income to the highest in American history, completely halted illegal immigration, deported millions of criminals, and halved legal immigration.  He's deregulated businesses and allowed the energy sector to thrive.  He's cut prescription drug prices and reduced inflation.  Drug overdoses in America under Trump have gone down 40%, saving tens of thousands of lives a year.  It's such a stellar domestic record, we're so much better off than we were under Biden.  But it doesn't matter, because Trump started the least popular war in US history.

Americans are easily misled, but they're deeply moral.  Every time in the past America went to war, we were told we were fighting in self defense, or defense of another.  Elaborate false flags or deliberate provocations were constructed before every war so that we could point to the other side attacking us first.  This time we openly pulled a 'Pearl Harbor' and bragged about it being a 'Pearl Harbor.'  We started an aggressive war based on vague allegations that Iran might misbehave a dozen years from now, so it's better to destroy them now, which could justify any war anywhere.  Americans didn't buy that ridiculous argument, and they feel deeply revolted that we killed a bunch of school girls for absolutely no valid reason.  Every time Trump doubles down on the Iran war, and even more infuriatingly refuses to apologize for killing those school girls, America renews its resolve to punish the Republican party at the midterms.

It's such a bitter pill to see my country thrown away, losing its soul to anarcho-tyranny, due to a completely voluntary war with Iran which no one, not even Republicans wanted.  In a two party system, you can either vote for the riots occurring in France coming over here, or you can vote for bombing hundreds of innocent little 12 year old girls just going to school.  There is no other party to vote for.  There's no other option.  I voted against the riots, but millions of Americans are going to the polls to vote against mass murder, and I can't criticize them for doing so.  It was such a horrendous, evil, unforgivable act, that maybe America does deserve to burn down as penance for it.  That's essentially what voters are choosing to do, to destroy America, in order to punish America, for being unapologetically evil.

I've been calling America evil for its foreign policy for a long time now, and said the destruction of America is well deserved for a long time (we've killed 30 million people since World War II!  Almost all civilians!), and the polls are now saying most Americans feel the same.  They don't care that under Biden life was awful or that under Trump life is great.  They just want to punish evil, which is us, which is ourselves.  So I guess America is in for a time of chastisement.

That, or all the polls are wrong and Republicans will win. . .and maybe pigs will fly. . .

Meanwhile, I finished the Airi and Masaki routes from Amairo Islenauts.  The personal routes are rarely as good as the common route of any visual novel, but they were still great.  It followed the routine romantic trope -- 'boy gets girl, boy almost loses girl, boy gets girl back' both times.  I also finished Theodora's route in Fire Emblem, and am working on Leda's route next.  I've played Fire Emblem for over 100 hours and barely accomplished anything.  It's fun, but I do feel the game could have been a bit more streamlined.  Not everyone has as much free time as I do.

College football had a legendary weekend with virtually all the top ten teams losing.  That was really fun to watch -- let chaos reign.

And Bleach delivered a satisfying final fight with Ywach, though I still think it could've been better.  (Why didn't Aizen use his bankai?  Where were Ichigo and Uryuu's parents during this crucial moment?) All that's left is the ending episode where everything is wrapped up in a pretty bow.  We're days away from an epic series reaching its rightful conclusion -- something we didn't even get from Naruto because sequels keep being announced.  This is actually the first conclusion we're getting.  (Unless they announce a Bleach sequel next week. . .)  I've been waiting all my life for these shonen jump series to reach their proper ending, it would be nice for it to at least happen once.  Not even the series from the 80's and 90's, Dragon Ball and Rurouni Kenshin, are finished yet.  How long does it take to reach one definitive ending???

Amairo Islenauts is a Masterpiece:

I've rarely laughed so much from a visual novel.  Airi is the most hilarious of the characters, but the fellow teacher Tia is almost as good.  Like usual for Yuzusoft works the art is sublime and full of fan service.  The setting is ingenious:  Suddenly a sky island appeared over Japan with resident animal-eared girls and elves as well as normal humans.  It had a lower level of technology but compensated with some magical artifacts, and the intelligence and conscientiousness of the natives was above ours.  The island is small, around 10,000 people live on it, and they only allow a small number of Japanese to live there or visit as tourists, so that they can maintain their way of life.

Among these small number allowed to emigrate to the sky island is teachers, because the natives need to assimilate to their new host nation.  And that's where our leading male enters, a regular Japanese teacher invited to teach at an all-girls' school in the sky.  Students from Earth can also enter this school if they pass a rigorous entrance exam, and lots of girls across the planet do so for the opportunity to live in such a unique environment.  Among the transfer students is the teacher's own younger cousin Airi, who is arranged to live with him since they're strangers in a strange land together.

They're lodged at an inn that serves both meals downstairs and lodging upstairs, and the daughter of this establishment is Masaki, a wolf-girl with cute animal ears and tail.  She's also a student of our lucky teacher and works as a waitress after school.  As a result, the teacher lives with two beautiful girls at home and then goes to work to teach a gaggle of additional beautiful girls.  It's a dream come true for any man.

The girls in the school like to tease their teacher for all his faux pas, but they all like him.  When they asked if he could arrange for them to go camping he took care of all the details and delivered them a perfect weekend.  When a creepy tourist started filming Masaki he stepped in, manhandled the creep and deleted the pictures, protecting his students like a proper teacher.  His lectures on economics, governance and history are all genuinely delivered within the visual novel and are fascinating in their breadth and depth.  Seeing what a good man he is, all the girls in the class warm to him, and then as visual novels do, it's up to the reader which route to aim for.

I of course chose Airi for my first route.  Airi is a beauty akin to Shizuki, with light purple hair and blue eyes.  She changes her hairstyle constantly -- sometimes it's loose with a lacy white ribbon, sometimes it's up in twintails, sometimes it's gathered together in a side tail -- but it's always fetching.  She's terrible at conversations and often resorts to texting her teacher/cousin to tell him what she meant to say later.  Because she's bad at conversation, every other thing she says is nonsensical, overly dramatic, the opposite of what she feels, or far too revealing.  Half the time she ends the conversation by running away in embarrassment.  It's so absolutely precious and charming, on top of being hilarious.  It reminds me a bit of Sana, who was also a girl who constantly put her foot in her mouth while being a relative who eventually became a lover.  But Airi isn't a clone of Sana or anything, she's a completely distinct girl I've never seen before.

Airi and Masaki both have supreme seiyuu voicing them.  At first Airi's voice was so beautiful I thought it had to be Yukari Tamura's, but it was actually someone else.  But both are industry pros who have been featured in many other Yuzusoft works, as well as Grisaia, Majikoi, etc.

I haven't finished Airi's route, I only started playing the game recently, but it's already obvious this is a great visual novel and Airi, as well as Masaki, are wonderful fictional characters deserving of hall of fame status.  Airi received 'artificer's fancy' as her theme song, and Masaki received 'The Enterprise Goes Into the Sea.' (this completes all the Final Fantasy 3 songs that are rated 4-star or above as part of my wonderful playlist.)

Masaki is one of those innocent and honest types who instantly falls for anyone who is nice to her, never hides her feelings, works hard, plays hard, and is simply a delight to be around.  She's got big breasts and isn't afraid of showing off her nice body in revealing garb, which she says attracts more customers.  Her bright red hair, deep purple eyes and beastkin features make her an exotic beauty.  I'll do her route after Airi's.

The other two girls one can conquer are too eccentric to be good romantic partners, but their beauty can't be denied.  There also seems to be a deeper plot I haven't reached yet, concerning the teacher's traumatic past and the strange appearance of a girl with amnesia who literally warped in from nowhere.  There's plenty more to play.  For now, Amairo Islenauts can take the place of Koikari in my visual novel hall of fame, #19.

It's unfortunate that for whatever reason, the game only plays on my old, half-broken computer.  It means I'm not sure how many other people can enjoy this fantastic game.  But anyone who can play Amairo Islenauts definitely should.  This is way better than Koujo Denka.

Koujo Denka volume 20 read:

This was the last English-translated available volume of the series.  Volume 21 comes out next month, so I'll get to see a bit further into the plot then.  A lot of plot threads were resolved this volume, which made me happy.  Lynne and Caren finally got their reforged weapons which they'd been promised ages ago.  Ellie finally opened up the secret archive which she'd started opening ages ago.  The location of the final altar was discovered which they'd been searching forever for.  Basically the story started moving forward again, mainly because it didn't waste time fighting the apostles but focused on the interactions within the heroes instead.  It was also a blessing that Lydia was incapacitated in a magical coma, so everyone else got to be featured instead of the worst girl in the series.

Lydia looks to be out of the picture for at least the next few volumes as well, so things are really looking up.  The series should at least be ending soon over in Japan, though not for us English readers.

With Koujo Denka out of the way, I can turn my attention to other delayed projects, like Amairo Islenauts.  There is no lack of things to do, but it's satisfying to finish at least one thing out of those many.

With Yingxia powered up to her maximum potential, I took on the score challenge again and did slightly better, getting 2.57 million points.  That's just short of the 2.6 million which would have given me all the loot available for the challenge.  Meanwhile none of my other squads can do anything against the monster.  The game was nice enough to award me light Yuina's 4th limit break and vampire Charlotta's 3rd limit break for free though.  I'm strong enough now that it's going to take a lot to incentivize me to pay anything more for this game, which after all was originally meant to be free-to-play.  If even my full-limit-break-achieved critical penetration squad isn't good enough for this game, then nothing is, so throwing more money at the problem wouldn't work anyway.

In other good news, Zettai Karen Children is back to being translated.  It sure would be nice to get to see the ending of this super-long and super-fun series.

Larry Johnson made a good point today that Russia has now dropped more tons of bombs on Ukraine than America used during WWII, but the U.N. only reports 16k civilian deaths to show for it.  America, meanwhile, killed millions of civilians during WWII.  This shows the level of restraint and precision Russia has been exercising since the start of the war.  It's truly the cleanest, most humanitarian war in history.  On the other hand, it's a little numbing to think Russia has dropped this many bombs on its enemy and still achieved essentially nothing to show for it.  It isn't clear that being this nice actually works in war.  Russia has essentially made no progress on the front since the start of the year.  It now looks like the war could drag on for decades at this rate.  I've lambasted Putin about this lackadaisical pace for years now so there's no point repeating myself -- but really.  More bombs than World War II and they've barely gained any ground since the war began.  Clearly the Russian ministry of war aren't the brightest of bulbs.

Russia might take Dobropilla soon, a moderately sized town northwest of Pokrovsk, but the territory they've lost on the Lyman front more than makes up for that.  There's no way to frame this year as a military success.  Maybe things will be easier in 2027 once the Rosvat satellite system is fully operational.  I guess we'll see soon enough.

The midterms are another subject where it's easiest to wait and see.  The results will be available in a month, so no point predicting them.  I of course plan on voting Republican.  Trump's Iran war was a stupendous error, beyond that, a war crime because it was completely unprovoked and aggressive war is illegal according to the U.N. charter.  But Democrats want to destroy America, not Iran, which is far more pertinent to me as an American.  They want to stack the Senate with a bunch of fake new states, stack the Supreme Court with a bunch of fake new judges, abolish the filibuster, throw out the bill of rights, and take total power.  Then they'll institute their crazed agenda of wealth confiscation, open borders, open prisons, ending all sources of energy which fuel the modern standard of living, LGBT+, DEI, etc.  And due to stacking the Senate and the Supreme Court, it will be impossible to undue any of their changes in any future elections.  It will be the death knell of the country.

Luckily Trump can veto whatever the Democratic majority congress passes for the next two years, but what about in 2028 when Trump is out of office?  Senators have 6 year terms, so a Democratic Senator that wins today will still be there to work alongside a Democratic President two years from now.  We can never allow the Senate and the President to be Democrat simultaneously or they really will stack the Supreme Court, after which law will be creatively reinterpreted to mean whatever they want, and we'll just be their slaves.  So this election right now really does matter.  This is no time to 'punish' Republicans for a dumb war, not when the opposition is out to destroy us.  I'll gladly switch my vote to the Democratic party once they put forward a candidate like Andrew Yang or JFK, but now is not the time.

Fall 2026 Anime First Impressions:

The only great new anime this season is Suikoden.  I'm amazed at the character design, art and animation quality.  The plot and setting is immediately gripping and believable.  The three young heroes who all come from the same village are instantly lovable.  This is one of the most promising first episodes ever, and the series is already planned to run until the story's completion with two cours.  Suikoden has already reached my top anime rankings as #198, kicking out Imouto Sae Ireba Ii to make room.  Nanami, Riliu, and Jowy have already made my wonderful fictional characters list -- with Nanami receiving Steam Beat Roque Island as her theme song, Riliu receiving The Woodlands as his theme song and Jowy The Wildlands.  Conveniently, this includes every last 4-star rated or above Octopath song into my wonderful playlist now.  Octopath music is too good to leave out, like Lunar and Ogre Battle.

As for the rest of the debutantes, here are the ones worth watching so long as I'm also playing Magic:

Saikyou Soubi

Yowaki MAX

Kanata Kara

Psyren

Doumo, Suki na Hito

Nia Liston

Seikai Saikyou Majo

Shinja Zero

* * *

All together, combining debutantes and returning or continuing series, here is what the fall anime scene looks like in quality based on a week to week watching basis:

1.  Suikoden

2.  Ken Tensei S2

3.  Shin Prince of Tennis

4.   Ao no Hako S2

5.  Star Detective Precure

6.  Kantei Skill S3

7.  Aoashi S2

8.  Tensei Dai-seijo

9.  Mahou Shimai LuluttoLilly S2

10.  Chitose and the Ramune Bottle S2

11.  Ranma 1/2 Remake S3

12.  Magic Knight Rayearth Remake

Demons Crest will join this group in November, so not bad.