Kanata event cleared:

There's little hope an event in Heaven Burns Red will be good if it's about Kanata and Mion.  But the scenario writers made the best of it by including cool scenes with Isuzu and Irene.  Isuzu and Irene badgered Tenne and commander Saki into revealing the truth, that all the seraphs were actually narby impersonators of dead people.

The problem with this bombshell is narby impersonators are perfect, they maintain the looks, personality and memories of the original.  The only difference is they have heightened combat powers and eternal youth.  It's all upside.  So learning the truth of your nature should only make you feel lucky.

Alongside the event there was a new score challenge, a new astrarium, and lots of loot.  I got a bunch of limit breaks but most of them weren't useful.  The only good thing that came out of all that loot was getting swimsuit Erika to limit break level 3.  I got magicat Tenne to level 4 limit break, but I don't like Tenne so. . .  I'm close to getting unison Karen to level 4 limit break which is actually important, but I'm not quite there yet.

Meanwhile, I've read volumes 8-10 of Koujo Denka no Kateikyoshi and am working on volume 11.  The war continues, and now Allen is spending all his time with Lydia, practically the only girl in the series I don't like.  I have no idea why the author is favoring this least likable girl in the series as his main heroine.  It's a total waste.  You could say it's because Lydia is older than Allen and therefore not a taboo romance, but Stella and Caren are also around his age, and either of them would be infinitely preferable.  So it isn't just the age issue at work here.  The author is simply making bad decisions.

It's a long series, so maybe he'll spend future volumes with other girls, but the problem is Lydia is clingy and jealous so she monopolizes all his time.  There's no way to spend time with other girls so long as he tolerates her.  And what are the odds Allen will finally grow a spine and tell Lydia she's a nuisance and he wants to date other women?

Lydia reminds me of how Ginko ruined Ryuuou no Oshigoto.  Of course the series is still elite, but it's never been as good as the first three volumes.  That's true of both series and it's such a waste.

The economy is doing well for most Americans, median household income has reached a new inflation-adjusted high, except for the effects of the Iran war -- higher diesel prices are driving up inflation, which drives up interest rates, making the US debt unservicable.  This one decision by Trump has undone all the progress he's made in all other fields.  Trump without the Iran war would have been such a great presidency.  Too late now.  The aftereffects of the war will drag on for years even if the war ended tomorrow.  The food and fuel shortages are here to stay.

Americans may not be the primary sufferers of these shortages, maybe the fuel will hurt Europe and the food will hurt Africa, but that's no excuse.  We're talking billions of people damaged or outright killed for the sake of a completely pointless, unwinnable war.  It's a blight upon our reputation.

So much to do, so little time:

Through a lucky roll, I got the new cook Charlotta SS Memoria.  I used my delimiter to give hacker Yuki her first limit break, and I gave eternal daphnes to hacker Yuki, king Ruka and swimsuit Erika, empowering my dark squad.  My dark squad got 1.8 million in the earlier score challenge, so they're actually competitive.  My new thunder squad got 2.57 million in the current score challenge, higher than my critical penetration squad got, so they're also impressive.  This got Hisame to title rank 13, and others like Ruka and Charlotta to rank 12.  I used the score challenge points to buy the permanent power upgrade relic orbs for a few characters I'm not currently using.  But maybe someday they'll come in handy.

I've read volumes 4-7 of Koujo Denka no Kateikyoshi and am working on volume 8.  I've already entered this series into my 'good books' hall of fame, kicking out Jim Kjelgaard to make room.  Currently it's ranked below Spice & Wolf, but we'll see how it fares once I've read all the books.  Allen and Caren have impressed me mightily in the volumes I have read, which is why I invited them into my fictional characters hall of fame.

So far the story has taken a violent turn into world war, but luckily the bad guys who instigated the war are much weaker than the good guys (Allen and friends) who are winning the war.  However, there are shadowy forces behind this war which might be stronger than the Kingdom's current foes, so I assume this war is going to continue for many more volumes.  What this war does is allow all our heroes to shine on the battlefield.  While they were fighting each other they didn't look very special, but when facing these weak opponents they start taking out tens of thousands of foes individually.  It turns out they were quite strong in abstract.  There's also lots of sickly sweet romance, except it's all one-sided because Allen has no intention of dating anyone.  But there's still a lot of romance in the air when 7 different girls all love the same guy and are competing for his approval.

In the end romance and war are the most popular topics in stories, so it makes sense why I'd like this story, and why it's such a popular novel series in general.  What's original about this author is his willingness to include young girls into the romance and war, which is why I particularly like this series.  He includes mainstays of popular literature to sneak in the fringe taboos.

I still have endless volumes of Koujo Denka left to read, and now Index GT volume 16 has come out and is being translated.  There's also the 'Another Eden Begins' video game that comes out tomorrow, and the Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave game that comes out on the 21st.  Next month FF Resonance comes out.  And I still haven't finished Happiness 2 or Tenpure!!, and I haven't even started Amairo Islenauts.  I still have to beat Fantasian too.  Obviously I can't do everything, so I'll save some of these projects for next year and try to at least finish some of the stuff I've already begun this year.

To top it all off football season has begun, and that means there are games to watch on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.  >.<.  With football occupying half the week, how on Earth am I supposed to get anything done?

And let's not forget that the new fall anime season debuts in October. . .

Kojo Denka no Kateikyoshi light novels 4-20 are available in English:

I've long lamented the lack of an anime sequel to Kojo Denka.  There is a bevy of adorable girls in this series and I like the magical setting.  The manga adaption hasn't reached where the anime adaption ended, so it's useless.  However, the light novels have been translated far beyond the anime.  The anime covers volumes 1-3.  The English translated light novels already reach 20.  I know what I'm going to be doing this month. . .

Speaking of Koujo Denka, this is a good time to induct its protagonist, Allen, into my wonderful hall of fame.  He receives the energetic and resolute 'The Fire-Powered Ship' from FF5 as his theme song.  His doting imouto (non-blood-related wolfkin) Caren also enters my hall of fame with 'The Four Warriors of Dawn' from FF5 as her theme song.  

Before this windfall I was reading Fire Emblem manga.  It's all very good, but none of the manga fully covers the games, so it's also pretty frustrating.  Fortune's Weave is coming soon, so getting hyped with the older Fire Emblem content made sense.

I also discovered that the Release that Witch manhua has been fully translated, it's just that the manhua didn't fully cover the web novel, which is why it ends at such a random point.  Apparently the web novel gets worse and worse over time so we didn't actually miss much.

As for Shikkakumon, the last chapter of the manga came out today, and it fully covers the light novels.  It's an open-ended ending with Matthias and his friends promising to go on more adventurous battles deep into space together.  Not exactly what I'd hoped for from an ending -- Matthias and Lurie never officially get together, and it's unclear whether their homeland is even in peril anymore, or whether they're just fighting for fun at this point.

The startling aspect of this manga is that the anime covers 37% of it in only 12 eps.  Two more seasons would have been enough to fully cover the story.  But I do understand the problem, the remaining story arcs are just 'more of the same,' with no real character growth, so what's the point animating the rest?

Futsutsuka na Akujou is only slated to run for 11 episodes, so it might not qualify for my top anime rankings after all.  If it doesn't get a sequel announcement I'll have to replace it with Demons Crest and make it one of my top ranking movies instead.

Sena route read:

It was embarrassing for Sena from Tenpure!! to be in my wonderful hall of fame when I hadn't even read her route in full.  If I liked her that much, why wasn't I trying to get to know her?  But that hypocrisy is over because now I've finished her story.  She was as charming as ever in the additional content, asking to be Sora's wife and asking to have his babies.  She's very proactive, she was also the first to confess.  It certainly makes life easy for the boy.

In other wonderful hall of fame news, I added Robin Hood back in, represented by a new theme song, 'Fight it Out!,' which is much more fitting than his previous one.  Robin Hood isn't really a historical figure, no more so than Rhett Butler from Gone With the Wind, at least.  There was no reason for me to be so harsh on him.

I also gave Mikuru a new theme song, 'Warren Report,' which is a much more sonorous song than her previous 'Hare Hare Yukai.'  Hare was demoted to a 2-star song and thus ineligible to be in my wonderful hall of fame.  This demotion also means my music is back to 5 balanced tiers of 1100 songs a piece, like it should be.  The new 'Amore' song was given a 5-star rating, and every other tier demoted one song to keep things balanced, with 'Heaven's Door' from Front Mission Gun Hazard being kicked out entirely.

'Fight it Out!' and 'Warren Report' were the last two 4-star songs from Tactics Ogre, and Ogre Battle in general, that didn't have a fictional character attached to them.  Now this wonderful repository of music is fully mobilized.

The first full weekend of college football was super fun, with close games between ranked teams for three days in a row (Oregon vs. Boise State, Ole Miss vs. Louisville, and SMU vs. Florida State).  Georgia Tech vs. Colorado on Thursday was also close and fun.  It doesn't get much better than that.  I enjoyed the World Cup, but football is the one true spectator sport.

Tomorrow it will be the NFL's turn to dazzle.

Minori Event Cleared:

Heaven Burns Red released a new event and score challenge, this time with Minori as the focus character.  The event itself was a tearjerker, about how Minori as a child tried to send a letter to her dead mother's grave in a faraway town by attaching it to a balloon, only for people across space and time to slowly get it physically to her grave, where she found it as an adult.

I moderately like Minori, she is in my fictional character hall of fame, and this was a moderately good event.  Most of the bar scenes were dumb, but the one where Ichiko insisted all five of her little sisters marry her and that she would make all of them happy was hilarious.

The score challenge was tough this time.  Two enemies, who continuously sap your sp with their attacks, and both of them have an e-shield that only takes chink damage from light or dark element attacks.  My light and dark squads are hopelessly too weak to handle bosses like these, but that was okay because my critical penetration squad has an answer for this too:  Unison Karen has a special ability, when she's in psycho-killer mode, all of her attacks count as successful chinks of e-shields.  So I used Yingxia's ability to give extra multihits to psyscho-mode Karen and she would break the enemy for me.  From there cute-mode Karen would get their devastation rate up and imp Yayoi would finish them off.

It also helped that fox Miya's radiant arrow happened to be a light attack, so she worked with Karen to break the opponents while lowering their defense and giving everyone extra sp.  It was the same for Inori, her base exclusive ability is a dark attack, so she also came in handy when it came to breaking the opponent's e-shields.  The versatility of my critical penetration squad is not to be underestimated.  At first I could beat the boss but not get the score I needed for the full rewards, 2,200,000, but I used the loot from my initial victory to get unison Karen to limit break level 3, and then used that new power to push me over the top, and fully won after a few more tries.  Unison Karen level 3 is amazing.  Someday I'll get her to level 4 and be even more amazing.

I got the last nordstrom crystal I needed and completed all the enhancements for all my characters.  That sure took a while.

It goes to show that all the money I've spent is just barely letting me keep up with these score challenges, though.  I can never relax on my laurels, I'm only ever barely strong enough.

I rewatched Witch Hat Atelier, which now makes it officially qualified for my top anime rankings.  It's definitely a great series, with amazing art and animation, and a fully fleshed out setting.  I came away from it liking Qifrey, Coco's sensei, more than before, so I added him to my wonderful hall of fame.  That gets me to 1840 characters in all.

Now the only great anime I haven't rewatched is the anime that's still currently airing.  I'm fulfilling my promise as closely as possible.

SAO Progressive volume 9 read:

The latest volume of SAO Progressive came out in English recently, so I plopped down $9 to buy it for my Kindle and dug in.  Every SAO novel is a delight.  Reki Kawahara is by far the best light novelist in Japan.  Unfortunately, he's still a liberal, so one of the subthemes of this novel was about a gay dark elf and how sad it was that the fantasy society around him didn't support his lifestyle.  But that was a minor tangent, the main topic of the story was more adorable moments between Kirito and Asuna, the best heterosexual relationship in fiction.  Kirito and Asuna took a bath together, slept together, and Kirito announced he wouldn't want to outlive Asuna, which left her spluttering in embarrassment.  That's a lot of 'progression' for a couple that isn't even a couple yet.

There was no progress up the Aincrad castle, they actually went down some floors, and then the story ended abruptly in the middle of a cliffhanger.  At the rate Reki writes these books we'll die of old age before Kirito reaches the 20th floor.  Oh well, I'll take what I can get.

The real question is why Yen Press hasn't translated the 29th volume of the mainline SAO yet.  That's what I really want to read.

If Reki Kawahara could ever finish SAO and Demons Crest, and then it was fully animated, it could be the #1 anime of all time.  Unfortunately we all know none of those things will actually happen.  Instead we get these dribs and drabs.

Meanwhile, I finished Shio's route in Tenpure!! and moved on to Sena's.  Sena's very beautiful, with long pink hair and bright blue eyes.  But she's no match for Shio even on Sena's route.  As Shio is Sora's imouto, she's constantly interacting with him even when Sena is the official girlfriend, and I'm always more attracted to Shio than Sena.  It actually reminds me how the best scenes in every route of Tenshin Ranman were Sana's scenes, regardless of which girl you were dating.  Sana was also a brocon imouto no matter which route you chose, so the resemblance is to be expected.  Neither Shio nor Sana are blood-related, but in Shio's case she only recently moved in with Sora due to their parents' marriage, whereas Sana grew up with her onii-san, so there is a slight variation there.

Tenpure!! has a lot of erotic content and not much plot once you get onto a specific girl's route, so like the after stories of Happiness 2 my interest in the work has degraded.  Not vanished, but it does mean I have to leaven it out with other things -- such as SAO Progressive or Parchment & Wolf.

Amore:

I decided the opening theme to 'I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day,' 'Amore,' was a song worthy of my music hall of fame.  The moment it qualified for that, it automatically became the song most suitable for Sheena, the protagonist of the show, so it also entered my wonderful hall of fame.  I'll have to find a new candidate for 'Pagan Poetry' to get back in.  Speaking of 'I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day,' I decided to flip its ranking of #121 with Futsutsuka na Akujou, #180, because every week Futsutsuka delivers a better episode.  I can't defy the truth my eyes tells me every week.

Meanwhile, the monthly refresh in Heaven Burns Red got me some nice loot.  Among other things, I got base Hisame to max limit break level 4, base Tama to level 2 and maou Bon Ivar to level 1.  I really have gone 'all in' on Hisame, this was the last powerup she could get and now she has it.  Sadly it still isn't enough to get her a slot in my critical penetration squad.  If anything I would replace samurai Inori with maou Bon Ivar in the future.  Maou Bon Ivar has some amazing abilities, especially once she reaches level 4 limit break, which will probably never happen because it costs too much.  But anyway, she has a higher ceiling than Hisame.

Yesterday's monthly pageview count didn't include the pageviews that arrived during the 31st, so the actual new monthly record was 277,857.  I thought the 80,000 pageviews I got last month was impressive, and this is over three times that.  I don't expect this strange newfound popularity to last, because after all I'm not writing about anything important anymore, but it's fun to see while it lasts.

P.S.:  Okay, I've given 'Pagan Poetry' to Qifrey from Witch Hat Atelier.  He will be my 1840th wonderful character.  Cher from Cluesless will get 'I Still Do' by the Cranberries as my 1839th.