I knew the day was coming soon, I'm just so glad it's here. I've been basically glued to my computer so that I could keep listening to itunes songs and get this thing done as soon as possible. Now there's no rush, I can take my time and do other things (that involve sound, since I don't have to reserve my ears for music listening). I've made my point, I've proven myself. I didn't include any of those 5515 songs lightly, I paid for them all in time, great deals of time, 100 listens worth of time to prove I was serious about each and every one of them.
The last song I kicked out for not being good enough on umpteenth listen was months ago, so technically after that no further listening was actually required to correctly sort everyone, but there was no way to know that until I was actually finished. Besides, all songs equally passing the same strict standard of 100 listens is the only fair and trustworthy way to conduct this test.
If a remix really did survive being listened to 100 times without me identifying what it was remixing, then all I can say is the remix must be very different from the original to the point that it may as well be an original song, and therefore I can honestly attest that all 5515 melodies in this hall of fame are unique to themselves.
Some of the final songs I cleared had been in my playlist forever -- Tales of Legendia, Xenosaga, Final Fantasy 8, Chrono Cross -- and some of the songs had only been added lately, like Rolling Star from Bleach or Octopath Traveler, which is what you would have expected to be remaining. It's crazy how stubbornly some of these albums held on and refused to be finished after six years of trying though. But eventually time and mathematics overcame even their absurd shuffle luck.
This 100 song filtering process was designed to ensure there were no bad songs and no remixes, and it has done so. Still, there's a question of how good these songs really are. Simply saying all 5515 songs are equally great is unserious and unsatisfying. Within this enormous compilation of music there is still a gradient of poor to mediocre to outstanding. The next step is to correctly identify where all these songs fall on that gradient, the 'final exam' if you will. But since we're talking 12.5 days of continuous sound to get through this soundtrack, the 'final exam' won't be finished any time soon. I've already begun it, but when it will end nobody knows. Making sure there's an even division of songs into each category of 1-5 stars is going to take forever.
I've been looking forward to judging my music and sorting it for a long time now (6 years, actually). So even though I'm free of my music-listening shackles and I have fulfilled my quota, I'll probably be choosing to judge my music most of the time anyway. I do have other things to do, like my One Piece and Dragon Ball rewatches, or Bravely Default II, but none of them have as high priority as this moment which I've been eagerly anticipating for the last six years.
One other project I've been making progress on is my great blu-ray anime series being rewatched. Today I finished rewatching Non Non Biyori and Strike Witches: Road to Berlin in blu-ray.
Strike Witches blu-ray was particularly important because it was uncensored. Now the third season is a breasts-with-nipples bonanza, just like the first two seasons, in line with its legacy. That's a massive improvement to the series and makes it feel more like it belongs as one coherent story than the previous times I'd watched. I'm not saying all anime needs nipples to be great, but all Strike Witches anime does.
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