Btooom! Finished:

I read both the 'light friendship' and 'dark reality' endings to the series.  I actually prefer the light friendship version -- I like the happy ending where Ryouta and Himiko get married.  After all they've been through why can't they seize a little happiness for themselves?  But they were both fine and interesting so I don't mind forking over the $34 for both.

In the course of reading the Dark Reality version I learned for the first time that Himiko was just a nickname, and Emilia was our heroine's real name.  I updated '100 Waifus' and changed her name accordingly.  *sigh*  Just when I thought the editing was finally complete.

It took far too long to see the ending, but even with two volumes it still felt underwhelming compared to all the events that occurred up until now.  Like, 'that's it?'

Btooom!'s best parts were when Ryouta was using his bomb skillz to protect Himiko and getting to kiss her as a reward.  The ending had little time for that -- it felt like both Ryouta and Himiko were sidelined by the greater forces surrounding them -- so it fell comparatively flat.

Oh well, the important thing is another series is done.  Someday I'd like to see the endings to all my favorite stories and then my life could be complete.

Tomorrow comes the new SAO volume, Moon Cradle.  I've already pre-ordered it for my Kindle so in a few hours I can switch to reading that.

I found a bunch of dirty remixes in Valkyrie Profile -- Plume of the Covenant.  I thought for a bit they might all be remixes, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  Or if it is they're too sneaky for me to identify.  My music hall of fame is meant only for original melodies so they all had to go.  The new total is 5462 songs, 12.3 days in continuous play-length.  The more songs I cut, the more often I get to listen to truly premium tunes, so every subtraction is just as much an improvement as an addition.