Yama no Susume S3 Rewatched:

13 episodes only 12 minutes in length are pretty easy to rewatch, even if it were a bad series.  But Yama no Susume S3 is the best the franchise has ever been, the difference maker that elevates the franchise into not just the top 200 of my anime rankings, but the elite top 100 from among those.

Everything is beautiful, as expected of a hiking anime, and the Hinata-Aoi interactions are almost transcendental.  Rarely do I see such a realistic depiction of human emotions that nevertheless comes from a place of affirmation.  The final two episodes are especially special.  And of course their karaoke session. . . it goes a bit better than the cynical but hilarious Haganai version of the same.  Sena and Yozora could learn a thing or two from Hinata and Aoi.

2019 has its own fair share of good anime, but I'm really going to miss Yama no Susume.  I wish they'd make a fourth season, but I don't even know if there's enough manga to support such a project.  The ending of season three said 'see you again,' so perhaps they do have a fourth season planned once there's enough source material to justify it.  One can only hope.

Now that Eromanga Sensei's ova has been released (and translated over at nyaa.si) with no announcement of any further anime, I put the series back on my anime wishlist.  I kicked out Tales of Vesperia to make room, which no longer needs an anime adaption now that the PS4 English edition is available for playing.  When is Eromanga season 2 coming?  Oreimo got a season two so this shouldn't be an impossibility.  Maybe after the final book is released. . .

Nanoha Reflection's manga ended without the announcement of anything else.  So this is officially the end of the Nanoha franchise.  Force still isn't back from hiatus, so nothing new is coming out.  'Luckily' for us English speakers, Vivid still hasn't been fully translated, so we can still enjoy Nanoha far into the future, but unluckily for us no new chapters of Vivid have been translated for a long time, so there's no telling just when we'll get to dive back into this series.  I would say the lack of a Nanoha Vivid translation is the most frustrating thing in the world right now, given the fame of the franchise and the fact that 23,000 other manga are being translated just fine as we speak.

The Nanoha Detonation movie should be coming out in blu-ray this year as well, and that at least will receive subtitles.  So our journey with Nanoha can proceed hand in hand just a little bit longer.