Hayate and Buttercup:

I expected to find a decent character to replace Lymle with from the new Star Ocean game, but it's a swing and a miss.  None of the characters from the new Star Ocean excite me or stand out.  The girls are certainly pretty, but they aren't outstanding people, they're all generic nobodies.

Nevertheless, I still found a way to improve '100 Waifus' a bit further.  Palom and Porom, the twins from Final Fantasy 4, are extremely minor characters.  They join for a short while and then die a short while thereafter.  Certainly their deaths were heroic, turning themselves to stone in order to stop the whole party from being crushed in a closing walls trap.  But lots of people have died heroically and not made my fictional character hall of fame.  (Of course, if you believe the PSP version of events, Palom and Porom are rescued from petrification, join your party, and help you fight Zeromus, so they don't even die tragically.)

The twins could be replaced by virtually anyone, so long as they were a main character of a series, and it would be an improvement.  So I decided on Buttercup, the Princess from Princess Bride, for the main character female to replace Porom with, and Hayate, the pilot from Macross Delta, as the main character to replace Palom with.

Buttercup and Hayate are both very attractive people physically, they've both braved death for their loved ones, and they've both fallen into true love and kissed their loved ones on screen.  They beat the twins in every field.  I didn't think much of Hayate until the latest movie came out, but once I saw Hayate fall in love definitively with Freyja, accept her death in his arms, and then raise their adopted daughter all on his own, I knew this was a man on level with Okazaki from Clannad.  Hayate became a much, much more impressive person when he had to go through the whirlwind of love and death, compared to his previous 'career trajectory' story which virtually everyone on Earth manages.  The fact that he could overcome all the disappointment in his life such that he could wear a smile afterwards, and most importantly such that his daughter was smiling next to him afterwards, is a spectacular testament to his worth.

Buttercup's finest moment was while asleep.  She had a dream about an old woman condemning her for throwing away true love like garbage, and she actually felt guilty.  So guilty, in fact, that she then proceeded to storm into Prince Humperdink's chambers and explain she would commit suicide before marrying him, a courageous and devoted step few girls would dare.  So a girl who actually feels guilty, has a conscience, and has the courage to change and do the right thing.  Wow!  Such a rare combination!  That's plenty right there to deserve mention.

While I was at it I took the opportunity to move Hermione over to being the daughter of Emily, so that her last name would match the canon source of Granger through pure coincidence.  That's a lovely little flourish that couldn't be ignored once I noticed the opportunity.  This also knocked the number of uniquely named characters down to a round number of 800 on the dot, through bizarre coincidence.  I expect more names will be changed in the future so probably that 800 number won't stay round forever, but for now it has to be accepted as an inevitable fate.

I also corrected the spelling of three more Utawarerumono names to their official spellings, 'Oshtor,' 'Rulutieh,' and 'Camyu.'  The way I spelled the names was the same phonetically but accuracy is always best.

In other good news, Uma Musume is receiving a third tv season, not some low budget net release or something, an actual third season.  Now we're talking.  Nothing could be as good as season 2, but I'd be perfectly happy with something as good as season 1.  That would still be great.

Also, Madoka Magica Gaiden is now out in full in blu-ray.  The blu-ray version can be found at nyaa.si, like everything else.  A little too late for me since I already rewatched the tv broadcast version, but always nice for my archives.

Like the Star Ocean characters, the music is generic and forgettable.  I won't need to update my music hall of fame for this game because there isn't any music worth mentioning.  Which is utterly bizarre, given that the previous Star Ocean game had one of the best soundtracks Motoi Sakuraba ever produced.  I really didn't expect this flop.

Now we all wait with bated breath for the election results.