Blog Archive

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Rimi:

The 1,811th wonderful character in my hall of fame is Rimi from History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi.  Rimi is a minor character, the same as Renka, who only appears in a small section of the manga.  However, there's a big difference between a minor character and an inconsequential character.  Renka is an inconsequential character, if she were taken out of the manga no one would notice.  She never mattered to anyone else in the series and she never changed the flow of events in the plot.  Rimi appeared on the scene like a supernova and became Miu's biggest rival, Ryuuto's lover, and Kensei's prized disciple.  She caused Ryuuto and Kenichi to fight Kensei, severing Ryuuto's ties with his master, and she taught Miu how to master her dou ki, an important powerup for her.

Every scene with Rimi in it was lovely.  She has the best character design in the series (a very long series with a lot of characters).  Her gothic lolita black dress is popping.  But she's constantly cosplaying in other outfits with the delightful reason that 'she thought [whichever man she's addressing] would enjoy it.'  And of course we, the reader, do enjoy every last cosplay.  She looks great in everything.  Her golden shoes used as training weights make for a delightful joke as Miu's greed always comes to the forefront around them.  Her open and all-powerful love for Ryuuto is the best among all the girls in the series.  That she keeps a blog of her own with delightful pictures of herself posing for the camera makes her an idol on top of everything else.  And her fights with Miu are the best fights in the series.  Her dedication to beating Miu and stopping at nothing to do so is on par with any heroics Kenichi showed in his fights.

Because Rimi was a minor character I'd forgotten all about her until I reread the manga, but I won't forget her again because she was a consequential character.  Because Rimi was a fast and intense warrior who awakened her latent potential through severe training, she receives the fast-paced and intense theme song 'Awakening' from Final Fantasy 11.

Nothing else of consequence has happened recently.  I finished Tales of Xillia Remastered -- it's so buggy that the game crashes against the last bosses and the arena bosses, making the game a pain instead of a pleasure, but you can get around the game crashes by setting the difficulty to 'easy' and beating the bosses instantly, before the bug occurs.  It's totally unacceptable that a game with such large bugs is on the market being sold as a finished product, especially since it's been a year since it was released, but at least I got the Japanese audio features I was listening for.

Trump's would-be assassin is a typical Democrat reciting the typical Democrat talking points.  I'm sure most Democrats consider him a hero who unfortunately failed.  But Trump can't really complain if he's assassinated because he himself ordered the assassination of Khamenei (along with the gratuitous murder of his granddaughter and other innocents in the vicinity) (alongside the massacre of 168 innocent schoolgirls and the massacre of over 100 unarmed sailors on a diplomatic trip to India).  Live by the sword, die by the sword.  My complaint is in a different trajectory, that the security was barely sufficient to stop one determined gunman from rushing the front door.  What if it had been five?  Why wasn't everyone checked for weapons at the entrance to the hotel and stopped right there?  It's absurd that lone gunmen can get that close to the President without any resistance.  Yet again the Secret Service totally made a buffoon of itself.  I am sick of the deep state intentionally not doing their job and making it so easy for these 'lone gunmen' to try their luck one after the next.  Everyone in the Secret Service should be fired and replaced by actual bodyguards who honestly want Trump to live.

In a recent Tucker Carlson interview, an ex-CIA guy admitted they supported Afghanistan's heroin cultivation because the drugs mostly went to Russia and Iran, harming the people of those countries.  This was considered a 'win' because they were our enemies.  Note this was done in 2001-forward, long before Russia 'brutally and unprovokedly invaded Crimea' or Georgia or any other imagined crimes.  Proving America has a blind hatred and genocidal intent towards Russia that has nothing to do with Russia's behavior.  Proving every conflict Russia gets into, from Chechnya forward, was in fact a shadow-campaign proxy war of America on Russia, and that America has always been the aggressor.  It's like we just can't accept winning the Cold War and want to punish Russia more.  Now we're supporting jihadis in Mali because this will destroy a Russia-friendly government.  Nevermind the chaos and carnage that will come to Malian citizens if jihadis take power.  All that matters is hurting Russia.  The reason we bombed Serbia under Clinton also takes on a new tint when you look at matters this way.  Were we really concerned for the poor Muslim minorities in Yugoslavia, or were we just destroying a historic ally of Russia with a throwaway excuse?

It now appears that America never stopped waging war on Russia, it immediately started plotting how to hurt it further the moment the USSR disbanded.  Why else would it expand NATO when the USSR no longer posed a threat to Europe?  Why did it support the Chechen terrorists and the Kosovar terrorists who were ethnically cleansing Serbs out of Kosovo?  Why did it convince Georgia to make a suicidal attack on Russian peacekeepers?  Why did it overthrow Ukraine's admitted-by-Wikipedia freely and fairly elected government in a coup when new elections were scheduled later that year?  It's famous how we stirred up Jihadis in Afghanistan to lure Russia into an unwinnable war there, but now it appears that didn't stop with the Cold War, we just kept on doing it all the way to the current war in Ukraine.  What is this inveterate vendetta about?  Russia has traditionally been an ally of America.  The only exception is the USSR, when Russians weren't even in control of their government (Stalin was Georgian, Kruschev was Ukrainian, as was Breznevh).  But even then, in the most important war, the USSR was our indispensable ally in WWII.  So whence does this hatred of Russia come?

I got all my seraphs in Heaven Burns Red to their max unit level.  But there's still a long slog of getting their memoria levels to max.  I suspect by the time I could manage that the level cap will have grown again, making the goal ever-elusive.  I also maxed out everyone's skill levels.  And I got base Risa's exclusive skill to introjection level.  It feels like a hollow victory when I failed to recruit the two new SS Memorias and lost my claim of owning every SS Memoria in the game, but I guess I'll take what I can get.

Witch Hat Atelier continues to impress, proving my rating of it as a great anime true.  Every episode is a visual spectacle, and the apprentices have all the virtues you could ask for -- courage, compassion, creativity and cognition.  I already knew Mao would be great from reading the manga so the Mao anime being great comes as no surprise.  But my eye of judgment when it comes to instantaneously recognizing great art remains unfailing.

There isn't much going on this upcoming May, the release of the Tenpure!! visual novel has been delayed, so I'll have to finally work on my video game backlog.  But this June it'll be back to sports via the World Cup.  Then in July there will be a new anime season featuring the conclusion of Bleach, and with August we're right back to football season.  When it comes to entertainment value, I have no complaints with 2026.  And in 2027 we'll probably see the conclusion to the epic FF7 Remake trilogy, one of the capstones of my entire life.  If so, I won't have any complaints with that year either. . .

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Samurai Spirits:

I don't remember ever actually playing Samurai Showdown (Samurai Spirits in Japan), so my admiration of Nakoruru was very shallow.  It was based just on her looks and the vague knowledge I picked up on her via the internet.  She's in my wonderful hall of fame, though, so I endeavored to find out more about her by watching the Samurai Spirits movie and oav's.  It turns out the movie is trash, and best forgotten.  Nakoruru barely gets any characterization at all in the movie.  But the three oav's are almost entirely about her and they're all amazing.  Not only did my initial impression of Nakoruru get fully justified, but I also learned to love her kid sister Rimururu.  Of course, I knew about Rimururu before, and liked her based on her looks, but the oav's also show her personality which is splendid.  Since Nakoruru and Rimururu are sisters and share a lot in common, I decided to combine them into a single wonderful character hall of fame entry:  Nakoruru/Rimururu.

Harumi Ikoma gives life to Nakoruru with her beautiful voice, and the ova art shows off her incredible character design in full fashion.  Her initial fighting game character design is one of, if not the best, of all time, and the anime faithfully renders it in a more fleshed out way than the low graphics capable games of the time ever could.  Harumi portrays Nakoruru in both the oav's and the games, this is Nakoruru's true voice.  I wish more anime were done in this art style, bare breasts included.  I feel like the 90's and 2000's got things right and 'innovative' new versions of anime girls have all been inferior.  For instance, the original Da Capo art is superior to Da Capo Retuned, which changed it out for no reason.  And of course I can't forgive the censorship present in the Ranma 1/2 remake that was absent from the original.

Besides her looks and voice, I love how Nakoruru cares for others, especially her sister.  I love how thoughtful and conflicted she is, to the point of having a split personality that is constantly chiding her for being too pacifistic and hesitant.  She has a deep and tumultuous inner life, but she bears that burden herself and doesn't let it affect others.  I love how strong she is when she gets serious, which is rare because she's always trying to deescalate when violence does occur around her.  I love her courage and her grace and her kindness and her beauty and her friendliness and her joyfulness and everything about her.  I even love her pets and how she fights alongside them, which is of course referenced in my choice of theme song for her -- Attack Team.

Rimururu also shines in the oav's.  Her admiration for her sister, her similar beauty (though none can match Nakoruru), her similar great voice (though none can match Nakoruru), her ice elemental 'pet' which is a unique take on Nakoruru's abilities, her courage and loyalty and, how shall I say it, her impudence are all so charming.  The fact that she stews over how nobody is coming home to eat her stew even though it's so good, and then gives in to temptation after thinking about how good it is for too long and eats it all herself -- that's the perfect combination of girl and child.  The girl part is a great cook who's looking after others, the child part can't resist eating the marshmallow set before her, looking out only for herself.

It turns out that even the weakest of my wonderful entries is well deserving of her place, more deserving than I ever imagined.  That says a lot about the rest of my 1809 entries, who got in on a more legitimate basis.

This excludes Renka, who didn't get in on a legitimate basis, but just because I needed a Kenichi character for a Kenichi song.  As such, I've moved the Kenichi song over to Hermit, also a Kenichi character, and replaced Renka with Yanagi, the main heroine of Flame of Recca.  Yanagi gets Algus as her theme song, a beautiful, peaceful theme that perfectly fits her healing type.  It turns out Renka is too minor a character to deserve a slot in my hall of fame.  The manga can go hundreds of chapters at a time without her showing up, and even when she does show up she's too weak to make a difference.  Yanagi, meanwhile, is ever-present in her series.  She's more important than Akari in Hikari no Go or Sakuno in Prince of Tennis, who are already in my hall of fame (also the main love interests of their respective series' protagonists).  She's beautiful, faithful and kind.  I can't go wrong with her.

Playing Tales of Xillia clued me in to two problems in my '100 Waifus' book that needed editing.  The first is that Rowen is spelled Rowen, not Rowan.  The second is that Teepo is a girl, not a boy.  Teepo thinks of herself as a girl, and Elize thinks of her as a girl, but I had Teepo listed as Elize's son.  This is an unacceptably large plot hole, so I gave up on having Teepo as a child entirely and replaced Teepo with Gilbert from Unicorn Overlord.  I know for a fact Gilbert is a boy (a prince no less, the most boyish of boys).  This forced me to edit a few other sentences in the book that all had to do with Teepo, making the book slightly shorter than before.  Playing the game again, it's clear that Teepo doesn't really have a separate personality from Elize and therefore shouldn't be treated as a person anyway.  It was always a mistake, even ignoring the misgendering.  In my wonderful hall of fame, Teepo is now listed as just a part of Elize's character, like how Nakoruru/Rimururu are matched.  Hubert inherits Teepo's theme song, "A Merchant Town Full of Life."

Overall, I find Elize and Leia as charming as I remembered them being, and don't regret naming them as two of my 100 waifus.  Elize makes clear early in the game that she dreams of becoming a bride, so her affection meter is maxed out like I imagined.  Leia makes clear all the time how she feels for Jude.  And they're both such beautiful, great girls.  They're the reason to play Tales of Xillia.  And they're the reason Tales of Xillia is around 1/3 the worth of the entire Tales franchise.  (Cheria and Sophie from Tales of Graces are also worth 1/3 of the franchise, also mai waifus.  And Rose from Tales of Zestiria, plus all the other games, make up the remaining 1/3, also mai waifu.)  The only surprise to me, playing through the game this time, is how solid a character Milla is.  I don't really like Milla because she's a doroboneko who steals Jude's heart away from Leia where it belongs.  But if you look past that, she's a genuinely good girl.  Of course, Milla was already in my wonderful hall of fame, I understood she was a good girl from the beginning, but she's a lot better than I remembered.

Sunday, April 19, 2026

Karigurashi Ren'ai completed:

I made it through Hiyori and Kyou's routes for a full clear of Karigurashi Ren'ai.  Ayaka ended up being the only girl I really liked in the game, but at least the remainder weren't annoying.  After giving up on Ren'ai 0 Km, it's nice to actually finish a visual novel for a change.  There isn't much other than sex in these Ren'ai games once you get past the common route, it's kinda sad.  The common route is the best part of the game, and the individual routes are more like chores. >.<.  And I've already completed the common route of Futamata Ren'ai, so all that's left is the chores.

Another problem with the Ren'ai series is their reliance on running gags.  Every conversation is the same, it feels like the visual novels could be 1/10 as short and still have the same amount of content.  It's very different from '100 Waifus,' where every conversation is the most passionate and loving moment in their lives.  I miss meaningful dialogue like that.  The initial joke is funny, so hearing it a hundred times isn't that bad, but still. . .

Limelight Lemonade Jam was so much better than these games, and Little Busters! is so much better than Limelight.  I feel like my past self was so spoiled compared to what I get to play now.  But all that will change once Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave comes out.  Then my past self will envy me.

Tales of Xillia Remastered is basically useful for one thing, the Japanese audio option.  I also like that you can turn off random encounters and get extra experience from boss fights to stay strong enough to keep winning and move the plot along.  It really speeds up the game, and there's no point beating the same enemies with the same moves over and over again.  But I already played Tales of Xillia three times in my youth, so this is a plot I'm very used to.  I love the game, but I loved it so much I've already played it into the ground, so this fourth time only feels a little nostalgic and nice.  I suspect playing Final Fantasy Tactics Remastered would feel the same.  That's another game I've already played way too many times, and now they want me to play it again?  >.<.  But I would like to play it again, just to see what's new.  Oh well, I still have plenty of time to do everything I want, with Xillia coming first.

One thing that makes Ren'ai fun is turning off its bgm and using my wonderful playlist instead.  This beefed up 1810 strong song collection is absolutely mesmerizing.  It has every 5-star song and every 4-star song I want to listen to, and there are so many it never gets old.  By the time I hear a song again I'm already feeling lonely for it, so every time it starts I get excited.  The hard work preparing the list before is paying off now.

No matter how much we impoverish Iran, it will still have enough money for missiles and nukes.  Look at how poor North Korea is.  Iran's weapons only cost them $8 billion a year.  Out of a country of 92 million, that's only $87 per Iranian.  Everyone can afford $87.  There's no country on Earth where people couldn't pony up that kind of money.  Threatening to impoverish Iran unless they surrender their weapons doesn't work.  Countries would rather be impoverished and feared in the world than rich and enslaved.  Supposing we somehow did manage to completely eliminate Iran's economy, China would happily donate the $8 billion out of 'humanitarianism' and we'd be right back where we are today.  None of America's wars ever work.  The only wars we won in the last century were WWI and WWII, and all those victories did is ruin western civilization.  Nothing good ever comes from American warmongering.  I wish we would just stop already.  Trump should admit our military can't achieve anything and go home.  Then we could slash our military budget by a trillion dollars a year and use that money to pay down our national debt.  Or at least stop bleeding our deficit ever higher.  We could start using our money to take care of ourselves instead of Israel.  This war has always been so pointless.  Iran was never a threat to anybody, they haven't waged an aggressive war in centuries.  We could walk away at any time and there would be peace again.  Why not just walk away?  There's already a ceasefire.  Here's our chance.  Instead of resuming bombing on Tuesday we could scrap our military and never war again.

Here's a new touchstone to work off for all future wars:  If you aren't instantly going to use nukes, don't go to war at all.  This would keep us out of all trouble on Earth.  The moment Trump announced he wasn't going to nuke Iran the war was already lost.  We should have walked away right then.  Everything after that is just a waste of time and money that can never achieve anything and will never achieve anything.  What did we achieve against Yemen?  Against Afghanistan?  That's right, nothing.  Why don't we ever learn?

Friday, April 17, 2026

Futamata Ren'ai Delivers:

As expected of a 'ren'ai' game, Futamata is also excellent.  I don't really get the protagonist's problems.  He achieved the school romance of his dreams, befriending the girl sitting in the desk next to him.  But then his father and her mother divorced and remarried each other, making them step-siblings.  This somehow psychologically destroyed both of them and they stopped going out, even though it shouldn't have made any difference.  Their parents are their parents, their romance is their own.  How does anything their parents do interfere with what they do with their own lives?

In any case, that meant Nao wanted to get a new girlfriend in order to shove away any prospect of renewing his relationship with Miyako.  But he accidentally, in his earnest efforts, managed to get two at once.  Thus the title, 'two-timing romance.'  But really you could call it triple-timing, since Miyako still likes him and they still live together.  Anyway, there's a great deal of humor involved with him trying to juggle two girls at once without having them discover each other.  The problem is magnified once the two girls he's dating become friends and the three of them go to parties together, all while still not knowing.

One of the girls he's dating is a blonde bombshell with big breasts, Kirame.  She's the typical girl who's clumsy and bashful and excited about all the 'firsts' she's going through.  The other girl he's dating, Yua, is this cynical composed girl who treats dating like a game.  I like Kirame, as I figure all boys would, but Yua does have some justification for her standoffishness.  Her father died and her mother remarried and had a new daughter, making her feel like an accident or an obstacle to her mother's 'dream family life.'  She hated how her mother completely fell out of love with her father and in love with someone else, making all talk of 'love' seem cheap and phony.  To be fair, Yua is being irrational here.  Her mother didn't kill her father, he died of illness.  Her mother still had a long life ahead and it doesn't make sense to dwell in the past forever.  But those are Yua's feelings, whether they came about fairly or not.

I'll promote all three girls in the love quadrangle to my wonderful hall of fame.  Kirame can get Dimension Breach.  Yua can get Orphan Of Flame. (Fitting because she's a genuine orphan).  And Miyako can get Jellyfish Sea.  This completes the assignation of names to all 4-star and above Chrono Cross music, another soundtrack it would be a shame to miss out a single song on.

Owning every SS Memoria in the game was a short-lived dream.  Two new SS Memoria came out today and I failed to get either of them despite using all the paid quartz attempts to get them I could.  I guess it wasn't meant to be.  After spending so much money to achieve the goal once, it would be unaffordable to keep throwing money at the goal again and again.  I'll have to be satisfied with at least reaching that high-water mark once.  I did get a bunch of limit breaks and another eternal daphne, which is nice, but not what I wanted.  Most of the limit breaks were for memorias that don't matter and I don't use.  Dandy Misato got her first limit break, which is nice, but I still don't have a spot for her in any of my many fire squads.  That's how competitive the fire squad slots are.

I think I'll save this eternal daphne for a potential future recruit, perhaps admiral Nanami.  I've daphne'd all the characters I need to at the moment.

I got some nice new necklaces courtesy of the Astrarium, and two new master skills -- Yayoi's and Isuzu's.  Yayoi and Isuzu are strong, and thanks to these new skills they'll be even stronger.

Everyone's skill levels are at max except for kimono Akari.  I don't have to run dungeons anymore now that I'm this close to finished.

My ice squad aced the newest score challenge with a score of over 1.5 million.  Thanks to their efforts I'll be able to get shrine maiden Risa to limit break 3 in a few days.

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Rito Route Cleared:

I finally finished the second route of Ren'ai Karigurashi.  Rito is an unexceptional girl with no memorable traits.  Black hair, medium-sized breasts, a nice girl who tackles life's problems responsibly.  Inoffensive is the best descriptor.

Next up is Hiyori's route, which should be more fun, given that she's a twintailed blonde.

I bought Tales of Xillia Remastered, which is important because I've never actually heard mai waifus' Japanese audio voices -- Leia and Elize.  This is inexcusable considering how much I venerated them in '100 Waifus.'  To think I've heard thousands of other anime girls' voices before theirs, when they're the ones I wanted to hear most.

In Heaven Burns Red I'm hard at work dungeon crawling in order to up the skill levels of my newly recruited memorias.  I have seven memorias left with below-max skill levels.  Out of hundreds that isn't bad but I'm always aiming for full clears.  A new event could occur in a couple days, but I suspect it will be something milder than that, given that Part 2 Act II just came out.  They try to trickle out content, not blast everything they have at once.  Maybe a new score challenge or Astrarium or something.

The entire spring season has debuted, and I only ever liked Nigetsuri and Witch Hat Atelier out of the debuting series.  I don't think I've ever had such a miss to hit ratio as this one.  Which is funny because last season I had the highest hit to miss ratio ever.  In any case, here's the finalized spring weekly episode watch guide:

1.  Honzuki no Gekokujou S4
2.  Release that Witch
3.  Mao
4.  Witch Hat Atelier
5.  One Piece
6.  Isekai Nonbiri Nouka S2
7.  Star Detective Precure
8.  Re:Zero S4
9.  Tensei Slime S4
10.  Tsue to Tsurugi S2
11.  Otonari no Tenshi S2
12.  Nigetsuri
13.  Lastame S2

Thirteen shows isn't bad.  I've returned to watching One Piece because One Pace has dropped the ball.  They haven't finished the Wano arc or the Egghead arc and the Elbaph arc has already started.  They had six months to catch up with the Egghead arc and achieved diddly squat.  I'd rather watch One Piece than nothing so One Piece it is.

Sunday, April 12, 2026

$130 More:

In my fever to get imp Yayoi, I did 100 rolls.  In my desire to get wedding dress Charlotta and Seira, I did 110 rolls.  If you get to 150 rolls on a character, you can choose the SS Memoria you're aiming for and get it automatically for free.  I had already acquired the SS Memoria, but I could give them limit breaks if I got to 150, which in both cases was already most of the way complete.  So I decided at this point it was more efficient to go on rolling until I'd cashed in on the benefits of my previous rolls.  As a result of this further $130 investment, I got wedding dress Seira to limit break level 1, imp Yayoi to limit break level 2, an eternal daphne for wedding dress Seira and another one for shrine maiden Risa, who have recently proven their worth in tough battles, magicat Tenne to limit break 3, rococo Sumomo to 2.5, thunder Yuina to 2.5, shrine maiden Risa to 2.5, sheep Yotsuha to 2, and 5 protean shards, which gets me halfway to a limit break of my choice.

The two eternal daphnes are definitely the best aspect of this deal.  Now I have 31 SS Memoria with eternal daphnes.  These are the seraphs I can really rely on to take on the toughest opponents.  Bringing Seira and Risa into the fold gives me a lot of flexibility for future squad formation.  (Buffers and healers are useful pretty much anywhere).

But this doesn't do justice to what my $130 purchased.  Half of what I purchased is paid quartz that I haven't used yet.  This vast reservoir of paid quartz will get me many new SS Memoria in the future, so hopefully I can keep my 'all SS Memoria in the game collected' status for as long as possible.  (Wouldn't it be great if it were all the way to the end of the game?  What a dream that would be. . .)

I made a new fire squad to try and make idol Erika useful, and she was pretty effective.  The problem is the new squad was still weaker than my previous fire squads, which makes the whole effort sorta pointless.  But it did provide proof of principle that the potential I saw in idol Erika wasn't wrong.  It feels like only goddess Yingxia was a straight-out mistake.

Miya completed her training and got her new master skill, which awards +2 sp to the whole party every time she uses her exclusive skills.  Her exclusive skills cost either 14, 12, or 7 sp, based on various factors -- and the master skill generates a 12 sp benefit overall, so either Miya refunds the entire cost of her ability now, or even gives the party a profit for firing her arrows.  That's crazy good for a character who was already one of my strongest.  I used the extra skill slot Miya got for reaching title badge 10 to slot in her master skill without having to take out any of my previous skills, which makes her all the more overpowered.

I also unlocked Isuzu's master skill, which is cool, but I can't buy it for lack of shards.  If I did have shards I would get Yayoi's master skill bubble destroyer, since she's suddenly my most important character now, so it wouldn't help Isuzu anyway.

Love Live! Nijigasaki movie 2 came out and it was decent.  I don't like Nijigasaki that much, or the idols in this movie in particular, but Love Live! is such a solid franchise that even its weakest portions are worthy.  I've already watched the movie twice.

Thursday, April 9, 2026

Witch Hat Atelier is a great anime:

After watching the first two episodes of Witch Hat Atelier, I'm convinced this will go on to become a great anime.  I gave it the ranking of #180.  To make room I combined Demons Crest with SAO, since it's the same damn story -- kids playing a VRMMO get stuck in it and now it's like real life -- written by the same author.  At that point it may as well be the same franchise.

Now all my ranked anime have properly actually aired, which is how it should be.  Mao and Witch Hat Atelier have been spectacular and are sure to make the spring season enjoyable.  None of the other debuting series this spring have impressed me.  Nigetsuri is the only other watchable one.  The rest of the good series this spring are all continuations.

I made Coco, the heroine, a wonderful character and gave her the theme song of Star-Stealing Girl.  It's extremely fitting since the first thing she did was 'steal' the knowledge of how to create magic.

The art and animation of Witch Hat Atelier is top notch.  The way she moves is so natural, and I love how many small movements there are per frame.  You can tell the makers of this work wanted it to sparkle, like Kimetsu no Yaiba sparkles.

Spring season series are still debuting, but I don't have much hope for any of the remainder.  I'll go on trying and seeing though.

If I keep up the good work, I'll complete Miya's master skill training tomorrow.  I'm also making good progress on Isuzu's master skill training, but I don't have any spare shards for her even when it unlocks.  Similar to Gig Mode, I've now acquired all the available loot in the Clock Tower.  I did Hell Mode up to the point there was no further point, which is the same as completely clearing Hell Mode.

Israel is still bombing Lebanon and the strait of Hormuz is still closed, so it looks like the ceasefire has already failed.  It never made sense for there to be a ceasefire in the first place, as the two sides can't possibly come to an accommodation they hate each other so much.  Either Iran or Israel must cease to exist, because the Islamic Republic of Iran is too fanatical to accept any other result.  Israel needs to nuke Iran into submission.  This has always been the obvious solution from the beginning.  None of these talks will ever get anywhere until Iran fears Israel.  And nothing America or Israel is currently doing scares Iran in the least.  Therefore no talks can possibly succeed.