Love Live! Nijigasaki Rewatched:

This was one of my favorite shows of last year.  It only aired a few months ago, so I was hoping to save its rewatch for a bit later, but I'd already rewatched everything else in my rankings so it was time whether I liked it or not.

All the girls are cute and their song and dance sequences are impressive.  Nevertheless, personality wise, Kasumi steals the show by leaps and bounds.  Her magnetic personality is always the funniest, strongest, and best contribution to every scene.  It helps that she's also the most beautiful girl in the cast by far.  That's probably why they devoted an entire ova to Kasumi and no one else, because everyone loves Kasumi and for good reason.

Kasumi is such a masugu girl, she knows what she wants and she knows how to get it.  I have so much respect for her unwavering way of life.  After rewatching the series, I knew I had to include her in my '100 Waifus' fictional character hall of fame.  To make room I kicked out Maki, who can't hold a candle to Kasumi in looks or personality.

Unfortunately this means there are now 2 Kasumi's in the book, but since Nico and Kasumi are both Love Live! characters, Kasumi being Nico's daughter clearly infers which Kasumi we're talking about, so there shouldn't be any resulting confusion.

Speaking of confusion, Fate/Heaven's Feel Spring Song left me with quite a lot of it.  How did Illya destroy Angra Maiyu when so many previous attempts, like in Fate/Zero with Excalibur, failed to do so?  When was Sakura acting of her own will and when was she being controlled by Zouken or Angra Maiyu?  For that matter when was it Zouken controlling her and when was it Angra Maiyu?  Obviously Sakura does not normally eat people for fun, so that wasn't her -- but then who was it and why?  Why does Sakura feel guilty for stuff she obviously wasn't doing of her own will?  And why did other characters keep blaming her for stuff she obviously had no control over?

Why could the 'shadow', whatever that was, so easily swallow and destroy servants, when it couldn't even beat Rin with a flashy dagger?  How did Saber retain her personality unlike all the others, and what was Saber up to given that she was still herself?  Why was she doing all those evil deeds then?  Why did Kotomine die at that exact instance when he'd already been corrupted by Angra Maiyu for ten years?  What was the proximate cause?

Why were blades growing out of Shirou's body every time he used Archer's mana to cast impressive spells?  That certainly doesn't happen when Archer casts the spells, and Shirou is supposed to be Archer, so why can't he do anything Archer can do?  In fact, in Unlimited Blade Works he fights with equally impressive spells against Gilgamesh, as Shirou, and there are no bad side effects.  So why this time?

What was the point of Kotomine killing Zouken when he didn't actually die and was still embedded inside Sakura?  Why didn't Kotomine go hunt down the true Zouken and kill that portion too?  Why did Assassin disappear and stop fighting Kotomine when Zouken was in fact still alive and Assassin was still actually fine and could have kept fighting?

How does the materialization of souls remove sin from mankind?  Isn't sin something that originates from our souls in the first place?  You can hardly blame bodies, which are just tools of the mind, for anything.  How does getting rid of bodies change anything?  What's the point of this stupid magic?

Can the grail actually grant wishes or is that just a big lie to lure in spirits and masters to contribute mana to this materialization of souls magic?  But if the grail can't grant wishes, how did it grant Angra Maiyu's wish and make it this all powerful evil force?  Furthermore, why did the grail grant Angra Maiyu's wish when it quite clearly says in the rules that only the last spirit and master standing get to ask a wish of the grail, and it quite clearly said that Angra Maiyu was easily defeated early in the grail war?  How did it jump the queue and get to make a wish in the first place?

It's too jumbled.  Perhaps the movie had to cut corners to fit the entire contents of the visual novel into a reasonable movie-length timeframe.  Or maybe the original visual novel was a mess and never made any sense from the start.

I guess the proper way to watch this movie is to throw out every single complicated concept and concentrate solely on how cool and splashy the fights are, how exciting the music is, how cute the girls are, etc.  If you judge it solely by 'ooh! wow! whoa!' it's a perfectly good movie.

Oh well, most of my love for the Fate franchise isn't based off of the original visual novel, but the Kaleid Liner spinoff anyway.  Heaven's Feel was always just bonus.

Next up on my 'all great anime must be rewatched to prove it's great' list is Shingeki no Kyojin Final, the last thing to air last year or earlier that I haven't already rewatched.  I'm closing in on my goal of a 'full clear.'