Blog Archive

Thursday, July 14, 2022

And the winner is. . . Extreme Hearts!:

After mulling over my options I've decided Extreme Hearts will be the replacement for Cue! in my top anime rankings.  I have a great deal of faith in the maker of Nanoha (who if you didn't know is the mind behind Extreme Hearts) and the first episode was excellent.  Between the two items of evidence I have every reason to believe the series will eventually merit inclusion in my top 200 list.

I sort of knew I was going to choose Extreme Hearts already.  If you look over at my anime/manga situational permapost it lists Extreme Hearts as the most exciting new series coming out.  That means I already valued it more than Prima Doll and Tokyo Mewmew in my heart.

When I change one thing I need to change many other things.  Cue!'s ranking was 141, but Extreme Hearts is a complete unknown and doesn't deserve to be ranked that highly already.  So I moved Spy x Family's ranking up to Cue!'s previous spot, 141, and that created an opening for Extreme Hearts to move into at #197.

Once I see the next cour of Spy x Family this fall I'll probably uprank it much further than that, but 141 is a fine provisional spot for a series in flux right now.  And once I see all of Extreme Hearts I suspect it will rise higher than #197, but that can wait at least until I've seen the final episode.

Ultimately I hope to have an accurate top 200 anime rankings right before 2023, once I've gotten to see Ken Tensei and Eminence in Shadow play out.  I'll update all my rankings for real then.  That will basically wrap up my anime rankings permapost, because by then I'll have a solid 200 entries that are long enough to qualify and good enough to not be easily tossed back out again.  Just as I've finally managed to fill out my top 75 manga permapost with solid entries yesterday, I can rest easy with a filled out top anime permapost at the end of the year.

This allowed me to edit out Gloria from '100 Waifus' with the new daughter named Hiyori, named after the protagonist of Extreme Hearts.  Because Hiyori is a unique name I'm still at the golden number of 800 unique names and 300 beloved franchises mentioned within the index.  It's been quite the balancing act to get these nice names and numbers all working together.

The biggest problem with Gloria is she's made out of clay, and claymation models are ugly.  Nobody wants to be made out of clay.  Hiyori, as a fully animated character, is much more fetching.  Also it's better to be the protagonist of a great anime than a side character in a mediocre game that overlaps almost entirely with Yuna from FF 10.  Gloria was an improvement over who she replaced, but she was always only a stopgap measure until the new anime season debuted.  She's now served her purpose and can be forgotten again.

Hiyori is a wonderful girl -- a singer, an athlete, a great beauty, and someone with a powerful passion that lets her work hard to achieve her dreams and never give up, no matter how hopeless things get.  You can't ask for more from anyone, fictional or non-fiction.  I'm proud to include her in the lineup of Christopher's daughters, she doesn't fall behind any of them.

Now once more all my top manga and top anime have representatives in my fictional character hall of fame.  '100 Waifus' is back to full power again.

The next challenge will be my music hall of fame.  What am I going to do once all the great music from Xenoblade Chronicles 3 becomes available?  My 5-star music hall of fame is already packed to the gills with perfect songs but somehow I have to fit in all these new entries?  It's going to be horrid.  I don't really want to dismiss anyone from the 1100 I have right now.  But somehow I'll have to, or the whole point of grading songs on a curve will fall apart, something I worked so hard to achieve over the past decade.  At least I won't have to deal with this crisis for a few more months, the soundtrack always comes out later than the game.

I'm working on the Mizuiro route of Summer Pockets Reflection Blue.  It isn't any good, which makes it hard to make progress on, but I do want to complete the game just so I can say I've completed it.  As a relief measure I've also started playing the Snow visual novel.  The girls don't seem very bright in this series but boy are they pretty.  At least the artists did a good job.  Also, Tomoe Tamiyasu is a voice actor for one of the heroines which is always something to look forward to.

I'm also reading the Rule Breaker manga, though that doesn't amount to much since only six chapters have been released.

No comments: