Amagi Brilliant Park volume 6 available:

While Index NT volume 22 Reverse continues to be translated (we've now reached the epilogue), another nice book has arrived, Amagi Brilliant Park volume 6.  Hopefully a pirated copy will appear like what happened for volume 5.

Meanwhile, I reached another milestone in my music listening project.  The ultimate goal is to listen to all my favorite music 100 times to prove how good the songs are.  Though that still hasn't happened, at least now every single ranked song has reached the 40 listen-through threshold.  I'm well on my way to victory.

Though you'd think that if a song is good enough to be listened to 40 times, it should naturally be good enough to listen to 100 times, I actually grow tired of many songs well after that number, so it's by no means assured every song currently in my music hall of fame will make it to the end.  Sometimes even songs I've heard 100 times end up on the cutting room floor.  That's why it's important to carry through with this project to the finish line.

Meanwhile, I went ahead and downloaded all available episodes of One Pace, replacing as much of One Piece as possible.  This shrank the series down yet further, as well as shrinking my overall great anime total episode count.  New One Piece comes out weekly, but at the same time new One Pace is always coming out and shrinking One Piece down, so it's hard to say whether this series will add or subtract episodes from here.  It depends on how diligent One Pace's makers are and if they can keep up with the animators over at Toei's schedule.

There's still a lot of junk filler and recap that could easily be replaced if One Pace has the energy to do so.  Enies Lobby is a complete mess due to the amount of recap and pointless focus on minor sub-characters.  I would really like to have a One Pace version of this arc, which should be one of the finest in the series, if it weren't so sabotaged by animators trying to slow the series down.

I find myself preferring the thriller bark arc, which has been fully covered by One Pace, over the One Piece version of Enies Lobby.  That's just how bad the situation is.  A fan edit for the whole series, like what we got with Dragon Ball Recut and Naruto Cut to Manga, is an absolute must.  At least from Thriller Bark on, most of One Piece has been converted into One Pace's shorter and better version.

Between One Piece's ever-expanding storyline thanks to the endless manga, and One Pace's ability to continuously improve the original product by compressing it, I find its ranking as the 4th best anime accurate.  It may not deserve that rank right now, but my rankings take into account all known future prospects, and One Piece's future is bright.

The Kyoto Animation arson attack was deplorable, but it's been a long time since Kyoto Animation was a good studio that made good anime.  For instance, it's currently working on Kono Oto Tomare, a series so bad I couldn't even sit through the first episode.  This studio actively chose to animate crap like this instead of good series that still needed additional content that they'd already started on like Haruhi Suzumiya, K-On!, Full Metal Panic! or Lucky Star.  My sympathy for people who seemingly embrace crap in favor of their own older masterpieces is limited.  Kyoto Animation lost its way long ago.  The only great series they've produced in ages is Hibike! Euphonium.  I hope this fire doesn't permanently cancel the planned new Hibike movie, but other than that, nothing of value was lost.

Another complaint I have with the situation is the arsonist was already confirmed as both a convicted criminal and a diagnosed madman.  If the country had a decent law code none of this would've happened.  In an ideal society, a criminal is immediately executed, not unleashed back into society where they can work additional mayhem.  The same for insane people.  They're immediately euthanized, not unleashed back into society where they can work additional mayhem.  Japan invited this upon themselves when they let a ticking time bomb, known to be a ticking time bomb, in two different ways!, walk among them due to the democratic laws they agreed upon beforehand.

Meanwhile, Precure Miracle Universe, the latest all-star Precure movie, is out subbed in blu-ray, thanks to [Overtime].  Good work guys!

I watched Shazam! and it was pretty terrible.  I thought the D.C. cinematic Universe had turned things around, but I guess it's completely up to chance.  Some movies, by some scriptwriters, are good, and others are trash, just like before.  There's no centralized authority overwatching it all and evening things out like Kevin Feige over at the MCU.

Speaking of the MCU, a new slate of movies has been announced for Phase 4.  I'm especially interested in the new Thor: Love and Thunder movie.  Natalie Portman inheriting Thor's role is a pretty cool idea that follows the comics and ties back to the first two movies, so I'm looking forward to seeing it.  But I'm excited for practically any MCU movie.  More Doctor Strange, Black Widow, The Eternals?  Whatever, bring it on.  The MCU is the only good thing going on in the West, the more the better.