Moving and memorable songs, in other words vocal songs, are preferable to instrumental songs whenever possible. So if an instrumental song shows the slightest hint of weakness I'd like to replace it with another vocal track. This also generally means replacing a game song with an anime song. That's the case this time. FF 10's 'Attack,' which isn't even by Nobuo Uematsu but one of his hired helpers, Masashi Hamauzu, is just the kind of mediocre, lackluster, unmemorable songs I was looking for.
On the other hand KANA-BOON's Silhouette is anything but forgettable. The song is catchy and zingy, it always hits the note you're hoping it will hit right after the previous note. I usually dismiss male singers out of hand, but this guy actually hits some pretty high notes, I guess he counts as an honorary female. This is one of the last Naruto openings so it also carries a lot of nostalgia with it. There's the 'moving' part.
In addition, KANA-BOON's other Naruto masterpiece, Spiral, which was made for the fighting game, is also moving and memorable. In fact, it's one of the few songs I've listened to ~1,000 times. I had it parked as a 4-star song because I'd listened to it so often I didn't really want to listen to it more, but duty calls. This song is a better representative than 'Evil Lord Exdeath,' which has some shrill synthesized opera squeals and violin squeaks which aren't suited to the highest honor of 5-stars.
Meanwhile, I finished my rewatch of New Prince of Tennis U-17 World Cup, Love Live! Superstar and Nijigasaki, which means I've rewatched all great anime that isn't currently airing. The latest season of Prince of Tennis suffers from the fact that no one is playing tennis anymore, they're all firing off lethal beam attacks at each other instead. It's over the top and ridiculous. Sadly I like the characters in the story and hot-blooded boys trying their hardest at something. The basic building blocks of the story aren't bad, the only flaw is in the execution.
Superstar was better in the beginning, but it was good throughout. Nijigasaki was more of a letdown, as it seemed to be about nothing, just adding in more and more girls and more and more songs. Sort of like a dump truck just dumping off a bunch of songs and dances on your driveway and leaving you to sort them all out. I feel like the first season of Nijigasaki had an actual drama, a conflict, something characters had to grow up to overcome -- and that was how to form a club of unique personalities who all wanted to perform solo. By the end of the first season they'd answered that question, so season 2 didn't serve any purpose. Nor did it present any new or different challenge. Very puzzling.
Luckily we're getting a third season of Superstar, not Nijigasaki, so the creators already agree with me. More of this, less of that.
Kuroha is the mangaka behind Kitakubu, but he's also written a lot of other manga. One that's currently serializing and being translated at mangakakalot is called Datenshi Ron. Only seven chapters are out yet, but so far it's been amazing. A mildly immoral angel falls from grace and is banished from Heaven, where she shacks up with a mild mannered regular boy in Japan. She tries to use her Bible logic and Bible verses and quotes to navigate life, but at every turn the regular boy slaps her with common sense which goes in direct violation of everything she's ever learned/been taught up in Heaven. It's like a giant commentary on why Christians are stupid, the funniest evisceration of the Bible ever written. And we're only seven chapters in. If the series weren't so short, it would be better than Kitakubu and reach my manga hall of fame.
Christians are the bulk of the Republican party, so they must be accommodated. If they say they don't want abortion, then we can't have abortion. They go along with us when we ask for our things, like a closed border, even though God told them to welcome strangers. These are people you can work with, unlike Democrats who worship Satan instead of God. Democrats don't just want to kill babies, they want to ban fossil fuels, castrate young boys and spay young girls, start a nuclear war with China and Russia, free all murderers from prison, open the borders to billions of Africans and instantly give them the vote, etc., etc. There is no point making any compromise with them. There can be no accommodation with liberals, they can only be hunted down and killed wherever you find them. Christians, on the other hand, are asking for an extremely simple and easy thing -- sexual morality, or at least safe sex, or at least an abortion in the first three months before the baby has grown into human form. Is that really too much to ask? No, it isn't. It isn't difficult at all. The idea that we must attract more Democrat voters by betraying our base, the Christians, is absurd. Over half of all Republican voters are Christians who want to ban or restrict abortion. Whatever trickle of democrats you get by switching to their position would be met with a tsunami of lost votes from the Christian side. If Christians can't ban abortion then they won't vote at all, after all, what's the use? There's no other policy that matters once a nation accepts the Satanic rite of 100 million dead children as a good thing. God's curse is upon the land so it may as well go to hell and end as soon as possible.
Over and over again I heard during the Trump years that they were voting for Trump because it was against their Christian religion to allow abortion. We got three Supreme Court justices because of the Christian Right. We had a moral defense for why we were voting for Trump during all those years because we could say we were just protecting babies' lives. Even after Trump got involved in so many scandals, was impeached twice, and attempted an insurrection (and then abandoned the poor fools who went along with his lies), we could say 'it's our Christian religion to vote Republican and save lives.' No matter what moral hissyfit the left threw, whatever accusation they made about the awful thing Trump was doing that day, we could say, 'at least he isn't butchering babies like you.' The moral high ground is with us so long as we're opposed to abortion, and it's the only moral high ground on the right.
Every other policy the right offers is cynical and nasty -- we drive away poor immigrants seeking a better life, we abandon foreigners to evil tyrants in the name of America First neutrality, we don't pay for people's health care or college education because we're penny pinching misers, we give severe prison terms and death penalties to criminals and support cops who summarily execute thugs the moment they get out of line, etc., etc. Every single policy on the right is mean spirited. We wouldn't have a single female voter in the entire Republican party if not for our one and only kind, gentle and loving policy, which is to not slaughter innocent babies.
Almost half our voters are women, do you think they're voting for low taxes and low spending? When they're the beneficiaries of the spending and don't pay any of the taxes? For whipping Haitian immigrants at the border when they're the ones holding up the 'Welcome Immigrants' signs? No, they're imagining screaming babies being ripped limb from limb by cold hearted monsters and they're hoping someone will save them. To them, that is the Republican party. To men, being mean spirited is necessary to deter evildoers -- invaders, thugs, freeriders, whatever. To us all our actions make sense, but to sympathetic, empathetic women, none of our arguments hold any sway. The only argument that matters to them is the sympathetic, empathetic one -- and that's being pro-life. On this one policy Democrats do not side with the weak victim, they side with the cynical mean spirited coldly calculating bitch who kills the weak victim so she can have some more casual sex at the next drunken party. The Democrats will make some coldhearted argument about how killing babies is good for the economy because it brings more women into the workforce, and the Republicans will say 'wow that's cold, I can't believe you just said that.' For once Republicans don't have to be the ones justifying why they're hurting someone, or not helping someone, for once it's Democrats who are on the back foot.
Pro-life is not a weakness, it is our strength. Combined with other policies which don't coddle immigration or crime or give out free handouts to the poor, we can easily afford to not abort babies. And it makes all those bitter pills palatable with one little dollop of kindness. So the next time Democrats argue Republicans have no love and no joy, just look at how every single policy is meant to punish instead of help, we can show them the picture of a baby. Mic drop. Boom.
No comments:
Post a Comment