'Sen no Hatou, Tsukisome no Kouki' is the latest visual novel by August, the great people who brought us Aiyoku no Eustia among other treats. The game just came out in Japan but it's obviously a classic, even though I have no idea what they're saying or doing in the trailer. The art and music speaks for itself. Alongside Harmonia, Utawarerumono 3, Tayutama 2 and Da Capo III With You, this is a loaded month for visual novels. It doesn't get any better than this -- key, Leaf and Circus releasing games within a week of each other? And now August jumping in with its own masterpiece too? Man.
While I'm bogged down with Hoshizora no Memoria and Majikoi S, game developers continue to churn out brilliant works one after the other, faster than anyone can read. I've noted this before, but visual novel makers haven't slowed down their pace or quality since the beginning, whereas video game makers have pretty much run out of ideas and only make a new game once per console generation at best. If you want to look at entertainment's growth potential, it's all in visual novels. The other genres are actually fading off as VN take a larger and larger share of the pie.
Meanwhile, Trump had to debate both Clinton, Twitter, and the Moderator simultaneously in the latest mainstream media attack event, and still came out ahead. What a miracle it will be if he can really turn this country around against these kinds of stacked odds and deep state powers being wielded against him. It will mean democracy isn't an entirely worthless system after all.
Meanwhile, I'm done with volume 10 of Unlimited Fafnir. He's charmed every last girl in his classroom and now has a completed harem, so I'm not sure where the story can go from here. A massive orgy? (I would be totally down with this!)
I've moved from 3/4 done with my Tales of Symphonia listening project to 4/5 done. Baby steps.
Macross Delta finished, leaving my current anime watchlist at a mere four entries. The fall season starts in a few days so hopefully that number will shortly start climbing back up again. It was a fun series from start to finish, but it never really touched me emotionally. I'm not sure if it was even as good as the original Macross, much less Frontier. It was a solid addition to the canon though, and helped the franchise rise greatly in my overall rankings.
'The First Olympics' is a charming remake of the 1896 origins of the now fantastic world event. But when you do research into the Olympics' early history, there were so many organizational problems and so few athletes and events that it was nothing like the Olympics as we know it today. I would say the first true Olympics was the 1936 one at Berlin, which was put on at a scale and with a sense of grandeur never before seen. There were a full three times as many athletes competing at Berlin as the previous 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. You could make an argument for Paris 1924, which was also well attended, but the 1936 Berlin Olympics had that massive, fully attended, 100,000 seat stadium full of screaming fans, the first movie documentary showing off the athlete's skills, and the first tv broadcast of the Olympics. In every sense it was the first modern, 'real' Olympics that resembles what we have today. The fact that the documentaries don't begin until 1936 on Youtube is no problem at all. Trust me, you weren't missing anything from the amateur hour performances of the first 40 years.
In contrast, 'First', the documentary for the 2012 Games, is just awful. A complete waste of money. Everyone speaks in really slurred accents and there are no subtitles available, so it's impossible to even know what the hell people are saying in their interviews. Instead of focusing on the highlight performances, it chooses random dismal athletes to follow and just slavishly follows them. As such, the vast majority of the inspiring Olympic moments and performances just totally pass us by.
A much better documentary of London 2012 is available for free on Youtube:
'The best moments of the Golden Games.' That will get your adrenaline pumping and even tears in your eyes. 'First', for all of its official status, is just what you would expect from a college art project, by people who are totally self-absorbed, and could care less about what the audience wants to see whatsoever.
The lesson to be learned from this is never let your artists off their leashes. They'll end up making even the Olympics boring if you let them.
Non Non Biyori's latest oav has been subbed, making it the 35th addition to this year's total 'great anime franchises that aired this year' list. 2015 had 41 entries in all, so the fall season is going to be a real squeaker to see if we can surpass that level. I'm pretty confident that in the end, 2016 will be a better year for anime than 2015 was. Dragon Ball Recut is just such a huge burst of added value from out of left field that it's hard for the previous year to compete.
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