The final episodes of SAO's final portion of the long, long, Alicization season 3 are now out at nyaa.si thanks to [mtbb]. Now people can rewatch all of War of Underworld, Alicization, or even the whole series in blu-ray. Whatever floats your boat.
Overall I didn't like this portion of the story, I thought Eugio reviving as some sort of guardian spirit that solves everything was dumb, but actually the anime pulls it off better than the books. It treats it like just one more incarnation power no different from shooting laser beams. Still, no matter how well you adapt a bad idea, it ends up looking bad. For instance, Suguha putting up with being tortured because she doesn't want to kill is madness. Everyone has the right to self-defense, especially when aimed against vile monsters like that mage. It's fun killing bad people even when not in self-defense. Eventually Suguha came around to the right decision but it still took way too long.
I like that Kirito and Asuna ended the season alone to spend some quality time together, but if you read Moon Cradle you'll discover that they don't act like a real couple even then. I guess they didn't want to attempt to reproduce using solely fluctlights for their children in such an unstable world, but as a result what seemed like such a great romance in season 1 is still ambivalent this deep in. No marriage, no sex, no children, no living together, still no guarantee that they'll live happily ever after. And with Laughing Coffin still around, still no guarantee they'll even live at all. This season really sucked as a conclusion. Hopefully a new season will come out covering Unital Ring, and hopefully Unital Ring actually does have a happy ending, because Alicization fell totally flat.
Speaking of anime I hope to see more of, I added a second season of Kami-tachi to my wishlist, now that the first season has ended. To make room I kicked out Tomoyo After Story, a Clannad spinoff. I figure Clannad has a solid enough anime as is so what we need now is fresh blood like Kami-tachi ni Hirowareta Otoko.
I hope they announce a second season of Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, but if they don't that will be joining my wishlist soon too.
One Pace released Post-War episode 7. Supposedly episode 8 is their final planned episode, which will have to cover 4 episodes of regular One Piece. I don't know how they'll do it but I wish them luck. Condensed One Pace is so much better than original One Piece.
The College Football Playoff has a reasonable 1-4. It's hard to leave out Notre Dame, who beat Clemson, simply because they then lost to Clemson. In cases like that all you can do is go to best 2 out of 3, which is what happened. I would prefer a much better system for college football, though. I propose a 7 game season where you start with 128 teams in week 1, 64 teams in week 2, 32 in week 3, 16 in week 4, 8 in week 5, 4 in week 6, 2 in week 7. If you lose your season ends, if you win you survive and advance. The whole season is just one giant playoff. This way there's one true champion left on the field and everybody has an equal chance. Right now we've got three undefeated teams not allowed to play for the championship -- Cincinnati, San Jose State and Coastal Carolina. Who knows how good they are? We'll never know now. Even if you had kicked out Clemson and Notre Dame and put two of those teams into the playoff it still wouldn't be fair. There would still be a team left, undefeated, that isn't allowed to play for the championship. Only my model gives everyone a shot.
If teams that have lost want to keep playing games for whatever reason they can always set up a losers' bracket and have a ball. The point is this is the only way to determine a true winner each season. Anything short of this becomes a popularity contest which is the exact opposite of what sports should be. Sports are supposed to be objective, that's what makes them sports.
The NFL has 14 teams going to the Playoffs this year out of 32. It's not very likely that the 15th best regular season record team could actually be the best and win the Superbowl, but I'm already looking at the possibility of a resurgent Ravens team not getting into the Playoffs when they very well could win the Superbowl based on how they've been playing these last two weeks. So even when you take the top half of teams and put them in a playoff there's a sense of unfairness. It would help if slots weren't reserved for division winners even when they have losing records. Free up those slots and the Ravens would definitely be in. But the NFL wants regional representation, probably to maximize viewers of the Playoffs, instead of actual merit, because it isn't a sport, it's a business.
Football could actually be about determining the champion, but instead it's about tv ratings, and everything distorts around that. No one would watch a national championship between San Jose State and Coastal Carolina. They don't have big fan bases. Guess who does have a big fan base? Notre Dame. A famous college beloved by all the Catholics of the country. So Notre Dame gets in, and San Jose State sits around.
Bowl season is always fun and there will be competitive, high quality games. But it galls. It really galls.
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