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Sunday, June 3, 2018

Gearing up for the World Cup:

'Victory!' from Radiant Historia was too repetitive so I took it back out of my music hall of fame.  As a result the total is back down to 5273 songs, 909 of which are newly added since January 1st. (or 17%).  Of those 900, at least 700 are brand new songs I'd never heard before.  The discovery of so much high quality music and the subsequent savoring of these new conquests defines this year in my life.  Nothing else is remotely as significant an achievement.

I'll have even more music to brag about by the end of the year, but not at the breakneck pace that's been the case hitherto.  After scouring the discography of Yoko Shimomura I wouldn't even know where to look next for anything more.

Just because these songs are latecomers to my music hall of fame doesn't make them below average.  These songs are frighteningly good.  The reason I hadn't included them yet is simply because I had never come across them before.  These are games I never played, so the nostalgia factor isn't in their favor, but aside from that they're almighty.

11.9 days of continuous music, with me listening to around 8 hours of music a day, translates to on average hearing the same song twice only after 35.7 days.  Over a month of uniquely good music per play-through sounds a lot like what paradise could offer.  At this point, could paradise even beat my itunes music?  Rivers of milk and honey just aren't going to cut it. . .

Of course, this means it will take even longer to listen to everyone 100 times, but that's okay, there's no rush.  At the rate modern medicine keeps curing cancer and other illnesses, for all I know I'll live to 100.  As someone who engages in zero vices and has zero sources of stress the sky's the limit.

For now my goal is to listen to all my new Shimomura music 6 times.  Everybody else in my music hall of fame has already crossed that threshold so it's imperative the newbies catch up a little.  Once everyone's on the same starting line I can go back to my month-long-randomizer-extravaganzas.

On the manga front, Angel Beats: Knocking on Heaven's Door's translation has resumed.  Unfortunately it skips some chapters so it's not actually readable yet.  Until the donut hole is filled back in we're still at an impasse, but any movement at all is a good sign.

This reduces the number of series that haven't been translated at all this year but still need translating down to 14.  I was panicking a bit ago when that number was 33, but a lot of progress has been made in the meantime.  Slowly but surely scanlators are getting their jobs done.

Everything takes longer than one might expect.  There's serious risk that the SAO anime could finish adapting Alicization before the light novel fan translation is done, which would render the entire fan translation moot.  I could have just waited for the anime and never read any of it and ended up better off.  >.<.  To add insult to injury, Reki Kawahara has added yet another SAO mainline and Progressive novel onto the stack of things-that-have-not-yet-been-translated.  We're just falling further and further behind, even though theoretically it should take far less time to read a book than to write one.

Six months after starting Imouto Paradise 2, I still haven't finished it.  Well, at least I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Ririna's route is almost over, and after that is just the bonus harem route.

In a sense I'm glad no new good visual novels have come out all year.  I'm still trying to catch up on my backlog of Imouto Paradise 2, Hatsukoi 1/1 and Muv-Luv Extra/Unlimited.  But in another sense I wish a new visual novel would come out already.  The ones I'm reading aren't at the same level as Da Capo or Majikoi, and I'd drop them in an instant if it meant I could go back to the level of material I was reading last year.  I'd be fine with Da Capo III Platinum Partners or Majikoi A-3 coming out, but even Tenshin Ranman or Dracu Riot would do.  I just want to remember why visual novels are so great and stop piddling around with these second raters already. . .

Likewise, I'm making steady progress on the Mageborn series, which I started months ago, but I'd drop it in an instant if only something better would be translated already.  Hai to Gensou, Papa Kiki, Unlimited Fafnir, anybody, save me. . .

Mega Man 11 is slated to come out October 2nd, but I'll probably just ask for it for Christmas and worry about playing it next year.  No other games of note are slated for release this year, so I'm all caught up on the video game front.  It would be nice if the new WoW expansion ever came out, I haven't played that game in ages.

Television will soon become a viable option again.  The World Cup is just two weeks away.  Shortly after the World Cup football season resumes, so all's well on that front.

I'm pretty ambivalent about how anime has turned out this year.  It's great that SAO and Fairy Tail will be returning, but that's only in the very last season of the year.  It's great that FMP returned, but it ended up only being 12 episodes long.  etc.  I think when the year ends I'll feel like 2018 > 2017 in anime, and I guess that's all one can really ask for.

As expected, SAO is still the highest selling light novel series at the half year mark for 2018.  Read it and weep, haters.  SAO is the greatest story ever told and everyone agrees with me on this.

Strangely enough, everyone seems to be agreeing with me on politics too.  Austria, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Slovokia, Russia, and America have all elected right wing governments recently.  I'm feeling a little less urgency about the end of the world when so many people are beginning to see sense simultaneously.  I predict a blowout victory for the Republicans in the coming midterms, too.  The ridiculous Alabama result notwithstanding, all the trends are in our favor.  A strong economy, Democrats embracing open borders (in opposition to 80% of Americans who want immigration law enforced), a favorable re-election map in terms of whose Senate seats are up for a vote this year and gerrymandering at the House level, the ever-more-transparent ridiculousness of Russiagate, etc, etc, are priming Trump for a huge victory.

Trump isn't going to lose any elections, because Trump is in line with the average American's views about practically everything.  The only way they're going to stop him is if they kill him, which I expect will be their next move.  And when that happens, the backlash is going to be glorious.  We might be able to retake all of America in one fell swoop.

Everything is looking up.  Waiting for the World Cup to start feels like crawling through molasses, but soon the year will swing into high gear and it will be nonstop entertainment all the way to New Year's.

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