Futamata Ren'ai read in full:

I'm now fully caught up with the English-translated Ren'ai visual novel series.  The first one I read, Karichaimashita, is still the best, all because of how adorable Hasumi is, but Futamata Ren'ai is the second best of them.  As expected, the individual routes were almost entirely sexual content with very little romance or plot.  I do think Yua's route was a bit more nuanced and positive though.  I grew to like her more during her specific route than I had during the common route.  The most important thing is I finished reading a visual novel I'd recommended to others, which makes me not a hypocrite.

Since the release of Tenpure! was delayed, my next visual novel will be Happiness 2, which has been waiting in my backlog forever.  However, I suspect Octopath Traveler 0 will take up most of my time and Happiness 2 will stay waiting.

The Release that Witch Chinese animation ended at the random number of 8 episodes, well short of the normal 12-ep runs that Japan sticks to.  I added a wish for a second season of it to my wishlist, and now the long wait begins.  If Release that Witch doesn't get a second season, I'll have to remove it from my rankings, because my rankings are for tv-series length anime, not movie-length anime.  But it can stay there for now until another great anime comes along that can reasonably surpass it.  Maybe the summer season will have a nice surprise like Witch Hat Atelier surprised this spring.

With some free quartz and free Golden Week celebration rolls, I got the unison Karen SS Memoria I've been waiting for, rococo Sumomo to limit break level 3, and two more mementos -- hacker Yuki and king Ruka -- to max.  I can't deny hacker Yuki and king Ruka's strength, since they scored higher against the dark element score challenge than my standard dark squad (which supposedly has a much higher rating).  So they deserve at least a little support.  The moment I got unison Karen I gave her an eternal daphne, maxed out her memento, and stuck her in my strongest squad, the critical penetration squad.  She's both a breaker and a blaster, and both her special attacks are critical penetration techniques.  This is the first blaster in the game with the critical penetration skill, she's an absolute necessity to my squad.  Imp Yayoi already made my critical penetration squad insane, but with unison Karen's help the sky is the limits.  Basically, in my experience, every squad needs a healer/defender/admiral (one of those), a blaster, a breaker, an attacker, a buffer and a debuffer.  Whenever you stray from that balanced lineup your damage starts going down and your resilience to the enemy's attacks also starts suffering.  All this time my critical penetration squad lacked a blaster, which is what allowed my plot squad, 31-A, my primary fire squad, to stay as my premier squad.  But now they've got some real competition.  If I got unison Karen and imp Yayoi some limit breaks it wouldn't even be close.

On my critical penetration squad, shrine maiden Risa is my healer/buffer, unison Karen is my blaster/breaker, imp Yayoi is my breaker/buffer/attacker, phantom thief Jamie is my buffer/debuffer/breaker, fox Miya is my buffer/debuffer, and samurai Inori is my pure attacker.  If there's one character I could replace with someone stronger, it would be Inori.  But samurai Inori is stronger than rococo Sumomo, another critical penetration attacker, so for now her job is secure.  It's just that these days a lot of characters can serve as two roles, while Inori is still only serving one.

All the money I spent up until now wasn't in vain.  The money I spent on unison Karen and imp Yayoi have now paid off in a miracle squad.

I now have 2 limit break level 3 Seira SS Memorias and I like them both, so I figured it was about time to promote her to my wonderful hall of fame.  Simultaneously, I like the new Heaven Burns Red song 'This Game Needs Guns,' so I made that Seira's personal theme song.  This gets my wonderful playlist up to 1812.  Seira is beautiful, strong, and I totally sympathize with her favorite hobby of 'shipping' various relationships around the base.  There hasn't been a Seira-specific event yet, but I'm sure it will be great when it happens.

Lunar 2 Remastered beaten:

Apparently there's postgame content but I just looked up the ending cinematic online because I can't be bothered to play this game any longer.  Beating Zophar and bringing world peace is good enough for me.  The trick to defeating Zophar is White Dragon Protect.  Zophar keeps pounding the party with magic attacks every turn, so the only way to limit his damage output is to put a magic-cancel barrier on every character every turn.  Then the healer can keep up with his physical attacks and your party stays alive.  The only way to keep up Dragon Protect on the party every turn for such a long fight is to equip Lemina with it, because she has the highest mana pool, and then give her a constant supply of silver lights which restore her mp to full whenever she's looking tired.  Luckily Zophar's hp is low enough that I still had some silver lights to spare when he croaked.

Zophar has a hand that sucks away at your mana supply, but it can be quickly chopped off with Hiro's triple slash, so that's the first priority in the boss fight.  The second priority is to kill the hand that keeps casting all that devastating magic, but sadly it's only vulnerable to magic attacks, and Lemina, the magic attacker, has to stay busy casting Dragon Protect.  Which meant Hiro had to deal with this hand, too, using super cyclone, an ability that's hardly his forte.

I lost to the boss multiple times before I won, he's not an easy encounter at level 51.  In fact I lost to most of the bosses in the game before I worked out how to win them.  The whole game wasn't forgiving.  The bosses in Lunar 2 all come after long and grueling dungeons that sap away at your mana supply and you never get to restore your mana before boss fights.  The same was true of Zophar, I used 14 star lights (mana potions) just to get my mana back before the boss encounter.  And you can only hold 20 in your inventory.

On another bright note, it turns out Hikaru Midorikawa (the voice of Kyosuke in Little Busters!) is the Japanese voice for the protagonist, Hiro.  The Japanese audio feature of the remaster keeps paying dividends.  I also learned that Noriyuki Iwadare was the composer of Lunar 2, not Isao Mizoguchi like I had long assumed.  Isao was a lowly underling while Iwadare did the real creative work.  It makes sense because the music of Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 is very similar in style and tone.  It turns out it was by the same composer, so of course it sounded similar.  This means Noriyuki gets all the points credit in my music hall of fame for Lunar 1 and 2, suddenly making him my 11th favorite composer of all time with 444 points in all.

It took years to beat these two remastered games from the time I bought them.  I always had something better to do, until now.  I finally found some time in my schedule to stroll back down memory lane.  I love the anime style of Lunar 2, it's the same 90's style I was praising in Samurai Spirits.  Studio Gonzo did the animation, a studio that went out of business long ago, but was legendary during its time.

My main complaints with the game are how pointless and repetitive the dialogue with npc's was, and the gameplay.  It's never made clear what your equipment or spells do.  In fact, you aren't even allowed to know the stats of equipment in stores until you buy them.  And there's all sorts of hidden drawbacks to spells that are never included in the tooltip, like that your attack and defense buffs gradually wear off over time.  How much time?  Nobody knows.  It's never made clear how long the buffs last.  How can I plan around spells when I don't even know what they do?  Heaven Burns Red gives detailed descriptions of what every ability does down to 1% changes, with clear descriptions of how many uses they have or how many turns they last.  It's just an infinitely better turn-based combat system.

One ability, Blue Dragon Rise, literally in the tooltip says 'unleash your fighting spirit.'  It doesn't buff any known stat, so nobody knows what it actually does.  And yet it costs 14 mp and a turn to cast.  A buff that nobody knows what it buffs.  A mystery that's lasted 30 years since the game came out and still nobody knows.

Oh well, everyone knows Lunar isn't about gameplay, it's about the anime cut scenes and music.  And those were splendid, just as I remember them being.  Now I can play Octopath Traveler 0 which I'm sure has a much more modern, complicated, yet well-explained combat system.

I also finished Kirame's route, so all the girls I included in my wonderful hall of fame, I've now properly done their content.  I don't endorse things I'm not willing to do myself.  There's only one route left in Futamata Ren'ai, Rui's route, a girl I really don't care for, but I'll do it just to finish the game.

Miko Event Cleared:

I spent around $300 for the new SS Memoria that came out this weekend, and I still didn't get them all.  It's a good thing I'm rich because otherwise Heaven Burns Red would bankrupt me.  I don't have to get every single SS Memoria they ever release, but I at least want all the Squad 31-A memorias, a record I have maintained for years.  These are the plot-related memorias.  I got funeral Tsukasa but I still haven't gotten unison Karen.  Luckily there's still 26 days left to acquire unison Karen, so I'll get it sooner or later.  Unison Karen is so awesome.  You get to play as both Karen and Karrie at the same time, switching modes at will based on the situation on the battlefield.  It isn't just strong, it signifies her spiritual growth that occurred in Chapter 5 Part 2 Act II.  She's finally melded her two personalities into one lethal whole.  I love the new Karen, and her whole story arc.  I just have to own the avatar of that metamorphoses.

While I wait for the rolls to go my way with unison Karen, I did accomplish some other useful things with that whopping $300.  I got base Yotsuha and base Misato to max level 4 limit break.  I got base Hisame to level 3 limit break.  I got swimsuit Mari to max level 4 limit break.  I got wedding dress Seira to level 2.5, sorceress Seira to level 3, motorcycle Mion to level 2, idol Ichigo to level 2, base Ruka to level 1, tuxedo Yuki to level 1, brewfest Adelheid to level 1, and a bunch of memorias to 2.5.  I'm now in the unfortunate position of having 14 2.5's all waiting for their protean shards.  I think I've cleared out all the 3.5's, I got all of them to level 4, but the 2.5's just keep proliferating.  I also got some mementos to max -- now everyone with an eternal daphne also has a max power memento.  And I got an additional eternal daphne and a lumen crystal which can max out a memento in the future.  I think I'll use one of them on unison Karen once I get her, and the other I'm still preserving for the eventual release of admiral Nanami.  I also have a mountain of paid quartz waiting for releases in the future.  I might have to actually waste my paid quartz to get unison Karen, but I'll only do that as a last resort 26 days from now.

I've restored everyone's memories except for Squad 31-B.  I got Risa's and Mari's new skill evolutions.  I got everyone credit for beating Skullfeather first form.  This was the toughest hurdle, because you can't hide in the background against Skullfeather first form, they have to actually beat either the head or tail section themselves.  31-F and 30-G honestly beat their half, after a lot of hard fighting.  For 31-D I mixed the half that hadn't beaten Skullfeather in with Squad 31-A (my strongest squad), so they fought but they had help.  As for my Angel Beats collaboration characters I again mixed them in with Squad 31-A so they could get some much-needed help.  But one way or another everyone now has that title badge achievement.

I beat the latest score challenge with over 1.3 million points, enough to get all the available loot in the challenge.  The score challenge was weak to dark, but my dark squad only got 1.2 million.  It was my critical penetration squad that got over 1.3 million.  Critical Penetration is such a broken ability it's better than exploiting elemental weaknesses.  I'm trying to integrate funeral Tsukasa into my ice squad, but as of now all I've done is weaken my ice squad by replacing a max limit break admiral with a level 0 limit break newbie.  But I think eventually funeral Tsukasa could surpass admiral Aoi.  Her buffs to ice damage are tremendous.  At least I did squeeze in swimsuit Mari into one of my three fire squads.  It would be ridiculous if I got swimsuit Mari up to max limit break, an eternal daphne and max memento level and then couldn't even use her.

Despite all the limit break increases, I've managed to keep all my unit levels maxed out.  I'm also slowly chipping away at the memoria levels.  Unfortunately the new recruits mean my skill levels aren't maxed out anymore.

As for the event itself, I've never much liked Miko Tenne.  She did have a good backstory.  It turns out she had a brain tumor which was causing her to lose her memories, and she started working in pharmacology (which she playfully calls alchemy) to cure herself.  Unfortunately she ends up killing herself with an imperfect treatment, but that leads to her second life as a seraph where she's back to full health.  Now she's using her medicinal knowledge for treating memory loss on Yayoi, who has a similar problem (due to head trauma, not brain cancer).  But a good backstory doesn't change her annoying personality and subpar looks.  The new song that came with the event is also good, titled 'This Game Needs Guns.'  It isn't super amazing, so I rated it 3-star in my hall of fame. I guess I'd rate this event 3-star too -- worthy of note but not special.  The potion mixing is fun, but it takes forever to gather the ingredients, and each time you restart the event your ingredient count goes back to zero, so it's really frustrating.

The reason I bought Lunar Remastered is I wanted the authentic Japanese audio option.  Now that's paid off because Megumi Hayashibara (the seiyuu of Ranma girl-type) is the real voice behind Lemina, the blonde-haired, green-eyed beauty and scion of magic capital Vane.  Now it makes a lot more sense that I promoted her to my wonderful fictional characters -- of course she's wonderful with Megumi as her voice.  Once I beat Lunar 2 I can play Octopath Traveler 0.

I've beaten Miyako's and Yua's routes in Futamata Ren'ai.  They both did a great job validating their entry into my wonderful list too.  I'm most of the way through Kirame's route and she's validated her place in my wonderful hall of fame too.

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. . .

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.

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?

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.