Yama no Susume and Higurashi get sequels:

The future of anime is bright.  Yama no Susume is the only great series that relies on short episodes.  Somehow it works for them but no one else.  This means the fourth season of the anime still won't cover much manga material, but every little bit helps.

Meanwhile, the convoluted story of how and why Rika is still being tortured in Hinamizawa continues this summer.  I suspect poor Satoko is going to get her comeuppance in the next season.  I sympathize with her, she likes the old Rika and thinks if she manipulates things well enough Rika will stay the old Rika, but really there's no solution.  If someone doesn't want to be with you, or be somewhere, or do something, you can't make them do it short of chaining and whipping them every day.  And by then they'll be so unhappy and resentful that the relationship is as good as dead anyway.

Jude the Obscure had a section about this, a wife who so loathed her husband that she would do anything to get away, and a husband who had the legal right to insist she remain his wife, but saw it was totally pointless to do so and instead let her go.  It was a very sad scene for everyone involved.  There's no solution.  The solution is to not let it come to that in the first place.  Rika's feelings are set, so at this point it's pointless to try to change her into what you want her to be, all you can do is give up and treat it as a failed investment like any other.  All Satoko is doing is causing endless extra grief while the result will still remain the same.

I guess next season Satoko will be persuaded and see reason to end this nonsense and let Rika go.  Since everything she did was out of love she should of course be forgiven and then both teenage girls can go pursue their own happiness separately.  Life still has plenty of good things even if this person or that person aren't in it.

The first day of March Madness already featured an overtime match and two games settled by 1 point due to a last second shot going awry.  That's about as exciting as basketball can get.  And it was only the first day.  Wow.