(Preliminary) 2018 in Review:

Only two great new anime appeared this year, when previously twelve wasn't out of the ordinary.  No new visual novels of note were released throughout the entire year, whereas previously the likes of Majikoi, Da Capo, Clannad and Little Busters! were coming out regularly.

Mega Man 11 comes out this October, which is nice, Dynasty Warriors 9 came out near the start of the year, and Star Ocean 5 was magnificent, so I guess video games held par.  Legion was an amazing World of Warcraft expansion, but Battle for Azeroth was correspondingly terrible, so again it only made par on the whole.

So far this year, only Avengers: Infinity War was a good new movie.  The World Cup and the Winter Olympics were both phenomenal.  College football, the NFL and March Madness all delivered plenty of excitement.  There wasn't any good fictional live action tv, but sports more than made up for it.

Manga has bounced back from its bottom at the end of last year.  Eden's Zero and Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest leads the way with the return of Hiro Mashima.  Hinowa ga Yuku and Akame ga Kill! Zero by Takahiro are spectacular.  In December, we'll finally get to see the conclusion to Kimi ni Todoke.  Btooom!, Kyoukai no Rinne, Kiniro Mosaic, Angel Beats and others have received bountiful additions.

All in all, I'd say 2018 has been serviceable in terms of movies/tv, manga, video games and books.  Anime will be weak in terms of quantity, but it did okay in terms of quality once SAO, Fairy Tail, Index 3, Zokuowarimonogatari, etc, are taken into account.

The only entertainment medium that really dropped the ball this year was visual novels.  For many years visual novels have been a dependable addition to the world's treasures, but this time we came up empty.  In a sense that's an encouraging sign for next year.  If Dracu Riot, Tenshin Ranman and Aiyoku no Eustia are still being translated this year, that makes 2019 look a lot rosier in terms of what it will be getting.  But I certainly could have used some more good visual novels this year.

We won't know the final verdict on 2018 until the results of the midterm elections come in.  If Republicans keep the House and the Senate, well and good.  If they lose either, boo.  It shouldn't be possible for false negative press coverage to hoodwink the electorate so thoroughly that they think the maniacal open borders, open prisons, free everything party should be anywhere near power.  If it is possible, then democracy is a failed governing system.  If the media really can make people believe the exact opposite of the truth and vote accordingly, then the media are the true rulers of this country.  I'd rather have practically anyone else in power than the media.  A dart board would provide better results.  Which means democracy had a good run, but due to the all powerful influence of modern media, it just no longer works.  If Republicans can oversee an enormous economic boom and still get voted out of power due to nothing but media lies, democracy needs to be replaced by responsible adults who aren't fooled by the media and know what is best for the country.  And the first thing those responsible adults should do is crack down on the media, so this travesty never occurs again.