Twinkle Stars, Sho Hayami:

One new song to my music hall of fame:  Twinkle Stars, the Star Twinkle Movie theme song which I rewatched and 're-noticed' a couple days ago, and one new seiyuu to my anime voices hall of fame, Sho Hayami.

Twinkle Stars is amazing, starting as an a cappello whisper and turning into a universe spanning grand orchestral crescendo.  It's not just a song, it's an experience.  Of course it's better when accompanied by the visuals in the movie, but even on its own the song is great.

Sho Hayami is, most famously, the voice of Aizen Sousuke.  He actually stars everywhere, all the way back to the original great anime, SDF Macross, as Maximilian Jenius.  But what brought him to my attention as a great seiyuu was his performance as Ferdinand.  Honzuki no Gekokujou wouldn't be the same without his calm, strict voice.  He completely carried the season.  To make room I kicked out Tetsuo Goto, who didn't have many important roles and those he had were comic relief, not main character stars like Sho handles.

Rewatching the Star Twinkle movie allowed me to 'discover' Twinkle Stars, and rewatching Honzuki allowed me to 'discover' Sho.  It just goes to show that you can notice a lot more the 2nd time through.

For lack of anything better to do, I've begun re-reading the Wheel of Time.  (I can listen to my music hall of fame while reading, so two birds with one stone.)  The only problem is my old copies of the series are falling apart or have gone missing entirely, so I've had to order four replacement copies from Amazon.  Luckily they're an affordable $10 each.  All hail mass market paperbacks.  While I was at it I purchased a $7 mass market paperback copy of Ender's Game.  I still have all the other books in the series but inscrutably the most important one went missing ages ago.  One of the best books ever written for $7 is a steal.

Honestly I should have replaced more of my worn and battered copies of Wheel of Time, but I figure they're good for at least one more read-through.  I can always replace them later when they're well and truly dead.