Emergency top 20 anime rankings renovation:

Too much has changed in the last month to keep my old rankings.  The announcement of new seasons of Bakemonogatari, the bluray rewatch of Pretty Cure, the incoming episode of Wonderful Pretty Cure, my rewatch of Uma Musume S3, the elevation of Sokushi Cheat to my rankings, everything has changed.  My top anime rankings must change with them, so here is how the top 20 shuffled around:

Top Anime Rankings:

How to read these rankings:  Ranking - Franchise Name - Release Timeline - + indicates it is still in production, no + means there are no announced sequels to the franchise - Non-filler/watchable number of episodes/movies/specials to the franchise so far, ie, length -- story's source-- unique standout feature -- $ indicates it has a sufficiently high definition subtitled release, no $ indicates it does not have a release of this quality -- * indicates the original source material is finished, % indicates the original source material has been abandoned unfinished, & indicates the original source material is steadily being worked upon, @ indicates the source's main story is done but spinoffs of dubious worth continue -- # indicates if the anime has adequately adapted its source, no # means it's not adequately adapted

1. Fairy Tail (2009-2025+) (294) (manga/original/light novel) (Mages) $ & 

2. One Piece (1999-2025+) (515) (manga) (Pirates) & 

3. Naruto (2002-2024+) (297) (manga/original/light novel) (Ninjas) $ @ # 

4. Pretty Cure (2004-2025+) (863) (original) (Magical Girls Perfected) & #

5. Bleach (2004-2024+) (178) (manga) (Shinigami) * #

6. Dragon Ball (1986-2024+) (330) (manga/original) (Power Perfected) $ &

7. Sword Art Online (2012-2024+) (123) (light novel/original) (VRMMORPG) $ &

8. Fate/Etc (2006-2024+) (170) (visual novel/light novel/manga/video game) (Mythological Battle Royale) $ & #

9. Uma Musume (2018-2024+) (46) (video game) (Horse Racing) & #

10. Clannad (2007-2009) (48) (visual novel) (Romance Perfected) $ * # 
11. Little Busters! (2012-2020) (50) (visual novel) (Developing Character) $ * # 

12. Code Geass (2006-2024+) (68) (original) (Politics) $ & # 

13. Bake-(etc)-monogatari (2009-2024+) (99) (light novel) (Witty Dialogue) $ &

14. Kimetsu no Yaiba (2019-2025+) (57) (manga) (Demon Slayers) * #

15. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (2004-2018) (83) (original/manga) (Yuri plus Fighting) $ %

16. Inuyasha (2000-2022) (154) (manga) (Feudal Japan) $ * # 

17. Index/Accelerator/Railgun (2008-2020) (164) (light novel/manga) (Sci-fi Setting) $ &

18. Love Live! (2010-2024+) (114) (original) (Song and Dance) $ & # 

19. Utawarerumono (2006-2022) (88) (visual novel) (Revolution) * #

20. Cross Game (2009-2010) (50) (manga) (Handling Death) $ * #

This time I wanted to stress completely adapted enrichingly long series over anything not holding that status.  SAO dropped to #7 because it isn't fully adapted.  Pretty Cure shot up to #4 because it's enrichingly long.  Cross Game dropped to #20 because of its relative shortness, the same for Clannad dropping to 10th and Code Geass to 12th.  Bakemonogatari went up to #13 because it's going to be longer soon.  Uma Musume is going to keep growing from here and will soon be longer than Clannad, while being just as emotionally moving on an ep for ep basis as Clannad, thus meriting the #9 slot.  Fate/Strange Fake will soon be enriching the length of Fate/Etc. so it moved up to #8.

While I was at it I also updated Sokushi Cheat to its final status ranking of #194.  This is what it will be worth once all 12 episodes of this season are released.

It's difficult to get the top 20 right because things are constantly changing, but also because the top 20 are all nigh-perfect, so it's easy to consider the same show as either #1 or #20, and make a reasonable argument for that.  But it's my job to distinguish even those razor thin differences so that people can concentrate on the very best works first and most.

Only Max Heart, Heartcatch and Tropical Rouge Precure aren't in bluray now:

I'm enjoying my new, blu-ray intensive rewatch of the entirety of Pretty Cure.  I have the bluray, 1080p, huge gigabyte per episode versions of all the seasons but three.  And I expect Max Heart will come out in bluray before I need it, since I have to rewatch all of Futari wa before I can even start on Max Heart, a direct sequel to Futari wa.

There are 16 great seasons of Pretty Cure -- the first 13 are all great, a seemingly dauntless juggernaut of quality destined to be the #1 anime of all time.  Then it slips for two seasons.  But confidence in the show is restored when seasons 16-18 are all great -- Star Twinkle, Healin' Good and Tropical Rouge -- only for the next two seasons of Precure to suck again (including the recently ended Hirogaru Sky).

This next season, Wonderful Precure, will be the make it or break it moment for the series -- was the 16-18 one last gasp, one last flickering of the candle before the wick goes out?, or was season 19-20 the anomaly and Precure will return to form?  We'll know in a few days, but I suspect Wonderful Precure will also suck, and it will be time to look only backward, not forward, to Precure.  (The key to Precure F's success was its shameless backward looking towards all the best moments of Precure past).

In particular I love seasons 8-10 of Pretty Cure.  This was the Suite, Smile, Doki Doki trilogy that really cemented Precure's claim to fame.  If Pretty Cure is too long for you just concentrate on these three seasons and you'll get most of the value of the series in a much denser format.

Every time I see one of my Precure waifus onscreen I'm reminded why they were chosen.  They're all such beautiful, valiant and bright girls -- Honoka, Mai, Nozomi, Urara, Haruka and Riko are all so well characterized and valorized.  Pretty Cure is so long, which gave these girls more time to be characterized than virtually any other character in anime, and every second around them is a pleasure.

To be fair, if you subtract out repeat animation and overlapping themes (like 'have confidence in yourself, have the courage to chase your dreams', etc.), you should probably half the length of Pretty Cure in terms of total great episodes.  This would give it a more reasonable length of 431 eps of great anime (eps that would be on par with eps of Fairy Tail, SAO or the like, using this definition.)  However, even with this halving, Pretty Cure still looks amazing compared to its competition.  Only one series has more episodes than that, #3 One Piece.  So that would imply, just mathematically, that Pretty Cure should at least be ranked #4 in my rankings.

Nobody has to watch the bad seasons of Precure, so there's no real reason to count them against the overall worth of the series.  Each season of Precure is an independent story so you don't have to watch the bad seasons to understand the good ones.  I don't hold filler arcs against Bleach so I shouldn't hold bad seasons against Precure, they're equally dismissible.

Meanwhile, the 49ers had a hard-to-believe comeback to win the NFC championship, while the Chiefs created two turnovers in the endzone to stymie the high-flying Ravens.  Now we're looking at the same Super Bowl that was played four years ago, 49ers vs. Chiefs.  It's a shame, I wanted a new team to win a Super Bowl, not two dynasties going at it yet again.  But now that we're here I'll cheer for the Chiefs.  Go Republicans beat Democrats!

What they're doing to Trump with all these specious lawsuits and criminal cases is a disgrace.  It deeply angers me that injustice is so rife in America.  I'm reminded of the most disgusting aspect of pre-civilized England that Hume reviewed so contemptuously, the arbitrary use of law to destroy your political opponents instead of as a protector of the powerless.  We're right back to that level.  Or the last days of the Roman Republic, which also saw law weaponized against anyone who stood up for freedom or integrity.  But I still believe that Trump, who is leading in the polls, will prevail against all these gadflies.  He will win his 2nd term and turn the tables on all these people, and soon they'll be going to jail for all the enormities they've done to him and the Republic for the last 8 years.  The professional misconduct and malfeasance, the malicious prosecution, is in fact illegal under the law, and all those double standards will no longer be ignored -- like Hillary's mishandling of classified documents, or Biden's, or Hunter's bribery schemes, suddenly all of it will be back on the docket and we'll start seeing real justice.  No one will be above the law, not even Democrats, one year from now.  Their favorite catch phrase when referring to Trump will suddenly come baying for them like a pack of unleashed hounds.  I'm excited for November.  I can't wait for that moment on election day when Democrats all across the country realize the jig is up and they're about to meet their maker.  The look of horror and realization that Democratic operatives and politicians are about to be hoist on their own petard, the poleaxed look of the butcher Zelensky as he realizes his dictatorial days of warmongering have come to an end, there will never be a more satisfying day than November 5th, 2024.

Latest survey says 28% of Gen Z is LGBTQ:

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/nearly-30-gen-z-adults-identify-lgbtq-national-survey-finds-rcna135510

I'm not making this stuff up.  Essentially 1/3 of all children in America have been murdered, as it's impossible to live a fulfilling life while stuck in dead-end sex-based (instead of child and family based) relationships.

Nor am I making up the unenviable position of LGBTQ'ers.  On their own surveys they say they're more depressed, more mentally ill and more prone to suicide.  There is a direct correlation between engaging in unnatural and unproductive sex acts and unhappiness.

Nor am I making up LGBTQ'ers risks to others as well as themselves -- obviously they are trying to spread their ideology to vulnerable children, who will also become unhappy if convinced -- but putting that aside these people are 10 times as likely to be sex predators and 100 times as promiscuous, which then leads to the spread of novel dangerous diseases to everyone via bisexuals.  They are a public danger and a public health risk.  Australia decided it was okay to round up all the unvaccinated and put them in camps because they might spread Covid, so it stands to reason that LGBT people, who might spread STD's, should also be rounded up and put in camps.  After all STD's are far more damaging and deadly than Covid ever was.

This gay wave is the biggest problem in the first world right now.  Everything else pales in comparison.  Suppose I were to say that a mysterious disease has spread among the youth, sterilizing 1/3 of them.  Wouldn't that be the biggest issue in America today?  And yet a mysterious mental fad which makes people choose to be sterile is met with total silence and apathy.  Sometimes mental viruses are more damaging than physical ones.  When they produce effects this dramatic quarantine measures are more necessary than we already have for tuberculosis.  Anyone can see it.  The logic is simple.

A culture that cannot replicate itself is evil and destined to fail.  The very first requirement of any belief system is that the people who hold it can survive and reproduce into the future.  Any morality that results in death, whether immediate or 100 years from now, is a priori false.  Morality is meant to guide humanity down a path of flourishing, with more and better life than what came before.  If it can't do that it can't be called morality.  If a system is guiding people towards their own unhappiness and death that's called Satan, and anything pertaining to that system is called Satanic.  We have now created the Satanic States of America and schools are nothing but Satan clubs for kids to learn how best to become servants of Satan.

Meanwhile, the nation's youth struggles to afford basic amenities like food, rent and utilities.  They are behind on utility payments more than ever before, and a larger percentage of their income goes to rent than ever before.  Forget about owning a house, that dream is more out of reach than ever before as well -- if you compare annual salary to the price of a home, it was easier to own a home at any time in our past than it is today.  So the children are being squeezed from all sides.  On one side is the economy which suits the old and the entrenched and the rich and the powerful and on the other is the media/schools which preach a deathstyle to them starting at age 3.  Of course, crime is also way up, which also tends to hit 20-somethings harder than anyone else.  And of course drug overdoses are at all time highs, which also impacts the same youth group.

If the country were trying to genocide Gen Z it wouldn't be doing any better than it is doing today.

Precure F available:

The latest all-star Pretty Cure movie is out over at nyaa.si, the 3.3 gigabyte version being preferable due to not having annoying Chinese subtitles obscuring the view.

I've watched and rewatched the movie already and added it to my great tally.  There wasn't a single episode of great Pretty Cure in 2023, but the anime is back in my chronology as of 2024.  Maybe this is a good sign and Wonderful Precure will be great too?  I guess we'll know soon enough.

Speaking of Pretty Cure, I think it's about time I rewatched all the great seasons of the series now that I have all these bluray versions.  By the time I've rewatched all the other seasons I'm sure Max Heart will come out in bluray too.  Is 15th too low a ranking for a show I used to rate #1?  By rewatching the series I'll have a better sense for its true worth, ignoring the multiple years of junk it's been lately.  Also the series is long enough I can fill up the void this terrible winter anime season has created.

Yet again Ukraine has shot down a plane full of innocents, this time their own prisoners of war.  Like usual Ukraine tried to blame Russia.  I don't believe Ukraine's argument that Russia failed to identify the plane as carrying prisoners to the border for exchange.  Russia has exchanged prisoners with Ukraine all the time and they've always managed to do so peacefully and successfully before, so why would Russia have failed to communicate this particular time?  It seems more like a) a boneheaded mistake by a particular anti-air crew or b) a cold blooded massacre of prisoners to let other Ukrainian soldiers understand that surrender means death by Ukrainian hands even if you temporarily escape death by Russian hands.

Either version of events paints the same picture of evil and incompetence we've seen coming out of Ukraine since its founding -- one of the only countries that became poorer after leaving the USSR instead of richer like everyone else.  And either version of events points to Ukraine being responsible for downing MH-17.  Like this time they tried to blame Russia for a plane they shot down.  Like when Ukraine blamed the missile that killed those two farmers in Poland on Russia.  Ukraine's go to excuse for everything is Russia did it, but it always turns out Ukraine did it.  Why would MH-17 be any different?

Meanwhile my governor, Abbot, is ignoring the ruling of the Supreme Court and saying he somehow has higher authority than the federal government, essentially that Texas is now an independent sovereign nation.  I don't understand how he can get away with this without being arrested for insurrection/sedition/treason.  This is so clearly illegal.  The Supreme Court is the supreme authority in the land, anyone who violates a ruling by the Supreme Court is in rebellion against the nation and should be cracked down on immediately.  The Supreme Court is the final judgment, there is no appeal to any higher authority, they are the last authority in the line.  It frustrates me that we seem to be sleepwalking into secession without any vote or referendum or even announcement that we're seceding.  How does this work?  What the hell is Abbot thinking?  And why doesn't Biden arrest him?  Abbot has clearly done what they are accusing Trump of having done, and they arrested Trump, so why not Abbot?  What am I missing here?  Is it now okay for everybody to ignore Supreme Court rulings they disagree with?  Is this the new norm for America?  Why do we even have a Supreme Court then?  Why did we suddenly become an anarchy and why did nobody tell me there is no more law in this nation or any ability to enforce it anymore?

I'm not exactly eager for Texas to secede from the USA when Texas is majority minority already (so what would be the point?  So we can rejoin with Mexico?), but at the least couldn't we see if Trump wins the next election before rebelling against a federal government which may soon be our ally?  Sure, let's secede if Trump loses, but put it on a ballot and let Texas vote for that themselves, don't just declare it out of the blue.  This is so messed up.  First off, shouldn't we find out if any other states want to secede with us, so we aren't just lonely little Texas but potentially most of the USA?  Wouldn't that be worth finding out?

It's so absurd for a cripple in a wheelchair to be waging war against nuclear armed, trillion dollar military funded USA. . .

Solo Leveling, Bang Bravern, Urusei Yatsura, Saikyou Tank and Mato Seihei no Slave dropped:

The winter season really is as bad as I expected it to be.  None of these shows are watchable.  Urusei Yatsura has been awful for a long time, but I hung on because it was a classic work by Rumiko Takahashi.  But there's no point torturing myself, what's bad is bad.

Bang Bravern wasn't what I expected, a simple Gundam-like story of good robots versus evil robots.  Instead it's some sort of gay pride thing, mixed in with humanity torturing its own savior for no reason.  That's about as bad as it gets.

Saikyou Tank is the same generic crap -- "I got thrown out of the hero's party but actually was the best member of it and now all the girls are flocking to me."  There's some sort of instinctual appetite of boys to think they've been underrated by the world and deserve more, and every single one of these series strokes that same fantasy.  But as Satono Diamond would say when Satono Crown wanted people to treat them with more respect despite having never won a G1 race -- "Stop.  Results are everything."  Instead of indulging in the fantasy that people will all suddenly change their minds about how great you are, stories should be teaching men how to be stoic like Satono Diamond.  Either keep trying until you succeed, at which point people can no longer disrespect you because your accomplishments are a matter of factual record, or stop seeking other people's approval and derive worth from your own self-evaluation and God's.  This third option doesn't exist, won't happen, and reinforces bad habits and thoughtpaths that will only depress the people who lean on them.

Solo Leveling is like Saikyou Tank except with a higher budget.  "Everyone thought I was weak and worthless but now I'll show them by becoming the strongest thanks to this cheat power I alone was given to dominate the world."  Another power fantasy that encourages bad ways of thinking because it will never happen in the real world.  Everyone operates by the same rules in the real world, no one is given a special interface that gives them special quest rewards and stat ups that give them a leg up in competitions with others.  If you want to beat other people you have to sacrifice more and work harder than they do.  If you aren't willing to do that then you need to become a stoic who isn't concerned with whether you're better than others or worse.  There is no third option.

Mato Seihei no Slave falls into a different error but an equally offensive one.  Under no situation should a girl doing sexual acts against her own will be depicted in a positive or 'hubba hubba isn't this sexy for the currently watching male viewers' manner.  Talk about encouraging bad habits and thoughtpaths, now we're encouraging rape and visiting prostitutes?  Kimetsu no Yaiba has an entire season in a red light district and it was great, so does DanMachi, but they never wasted ten minutes graphically showing a prostitute actually doing her job so that we could watch on and enjoy.  That would have been unthinkable.  Yes, rape and prostitution exist, no, we shouldn't enjoy watching it happen.  Not even Aiyoku no Eustia does that and the protagonist works at a freaking brothel.  But Mato Seihei keeps pushing this in our face, down our throats, it's like half of every episode.

Honestly I feel like I could drop even more series and lose nothing from it, but I should stop while there's still something left to watch.  At least give the anime a bit more of a grace period.  Saijaku Tamer isn't as good as I had hoped it would be either, though certainly not bad.  Aside from Sousou no Frieren and Sokushi Cheat this whole season is a dead space, three months of emptiness.

To up the irony, the coming spring season looks amazing.  It's not that anime can't be good, it's just that they spontaneously chose to schedule all the bad anime for this winter.  This spring we get more Hero Academy, Hibike! Euphonium, Kimetsu no Yaiba, KonoSuba, Spice & Wolf, Idolm@ster, Slime Tensei, Alya Sometimes Speaks in Russian, Yuru Camp, and some promising looking newcomers like Henjin Salad Bowl and One Room, Angel Included.  If we're lucky we'll also get to see new Code Geass and Uma Musume oav's.  The spring season is absolutely loaded.  I wish I could just go to sleep and wake up in April.

Veyle is so beautiful:

 

In other news, do the Chiefs stand any chance against the Ravens?  Do the Lions stand any chance against the 49ers?  I guess we'll find out next week, but I suspect the Super Bowl will be a clash of the #1 seeds.

Meanwhile, Russia is advancing swiftly in Avdiivka, which probably led to Ukraine's latest brazen slaughter of civilians in reprisal, this time using cluster rounds on a busy market in Donetsk, killing 25 civilians and injuring another 20.  Like usual the UN has formally condemned the war crime and even western news sites are acknowledging this really happened, without explanation as to why exactly it's okay for Ukraine to be doing war crimes using the weapons we provided them.  We are beyond the point of just denying all these events as Russian propaganda or Russian false flags, and yet no new narrative has been given to justify why we are still on the Nazi side of this war.  I wish they would at least come up with some dumb argument so I could then shoot it down, but apparently these events don't even merit commentary from any leading lights in the west, we're just supposed to swallow this as the new norm.  Of course Ukraine targets civilians and that's fine, they're still our greatest ally and beacons of democracy -- never mind Zelensky canceled all elections despite his original term being slated to end in March -- just never mind anything, I guess.  The important thing to remember is that Russia's brutal and totally unprovoked attack on Ukraine (not, for instance, provoked by similar shellings of civilians in Donetsk for the past 8 years) is bad, bad, bad and cannot be allowed to succeed.

Bakemonogatari gets multiple new anime seasons:

I never would have dreamed, after all this time, and after the anime reaching what looked like an appropriate stopping point, that we'd be receiving new Bakemonogatari.  But the great news is we are, and the even greater news is that the books they're covering are better than the books that have already been covered, and the even greater news is that some of the books they're animating haven't been translated into English, so they will be all new content to all the English speakers of the world.  It's stupendous news.  The best thing to happen in 2024.  Legendary news.  It couldn't have happened to a better show.

I assume the series will air in 2024, but I can wait until 2025, the important thing is it's going to happen.  This is so epic.  It's like Sailor Moon Cosmos squared.

Since Bakemonogatari was on my anime wishlist, and that wish has now been granted, I switched my wish out for Dead Rock (Hiro Mashima's new manga).  Since Nisio Oisin was on my good authors list, but now his books are unnecessary because there will be a superior anime version of the story, I replaced him with Isaac Asimov.  I should also change my anime rankings to reflect the newly elevated value of Bakemonogatari, but I only update my rankings every once in a blue moon, and I just finished updating my rankings last month.  But my estimate would be it deserves rank #12 now.

In other news, I've rewatched all the fall season 2023 great anime in one fell swoop.  100 Kanojo, Kanojo mo Kanojo, Tearmoon Empire, The Eminence in Shadow, Uma Musume, Spy x Family, Idolm@ster Million Live, everything fell before my watchful eyes.  Uma Musume was still stunning the second time, I was basically in tears for the entire last three episodes, easily cementing its place as my 10th favorite anime.  The others were a bit tough to rewatch so soon so quickly but they still passed the hurdle.

All that's left to rewatch is Sousou no Frieren and Sokushi Cheat which are currently airing (making it kinda impossible to rewatch them).  I'm well on my way to fulfilling my promise of watching and rewatching all ranked anime in full, to prove they really are worth ranking.

Winter 2024 Anime First Impressions: Part 2

7th Time Loop:  A feminist story about how women don't need men and should forsake marriage for lots of exciting different jobs.  After seven lifetimes she's never once had a romance but just piled up job after job.  Now a prince has proposed to her but obviously even a prince isn't good enough for her, as she'd prefer yet another job in this 7th lifetime of hers, so I expect next episode she'll turn him down too.  After all, jobs are so very, very fun.  Fail.

Oroka Tenshi:  I gave up within the first three minutes.  Fail.

It's Time for Torture, Princess:  The only people being tortured are the audience.  Fail.

Akuyaku Reijou 99:  A generic villainess story we've heard a million times before.  Also a feminist story that insists there's no appeal in romance and girls should develop their job skills and education instead.  Fail.

Gekai Elise:  A ripoff of Tearmoon Empire except this time the girl had a life on Earth as a surgeon before returning to her childhood empress self.  Supposedly she was this godlike surgeon who could save thousands of lives but she still prioritized a random stranger over herself when they both had fatal injuries and thus died when she could have saved herself and let the stranger die, and then saved thousands of additional lives later with her godlike surgeon skills.  She clearly doesn't have a good grasp of math or utilitarianism.  Most of all I hate doctors because they created Covid-19, the lockdowns, the mask mandates, and the fatal vaccines which are now estimated to have killed 17 million people (and counting).  After all these incompetent mistakes or malicious acts of pure evil (I can't see into their hearts so I don't know which), they then refused to apologize and admit they were wrong about any of the things they did, and continue to insist that all power and money in the country should be handed over to them and they should be able to micromanage everyone's lives and even the DNA of everyone's bodies.  I don't want to watch any anime that glorifies doctors.  Fail.

Metallic Rouge:  In the far future people will be living on Mars alongside fully sentient robots, but everything will still be poor, crime-ridden and awful.  Working conditions will suck, everyone will be drinking, smoking and on drugs, crime rings run everything from the shadows, etc.  If this is the future I don't want it.  Fail.

Sengoku Youko:  This appears to be a mix between a comedy and action series, where a Youko goes around Sengoku period Japan and makes jokes while fighting malign spirits and bandits.  The problem is the jokes aren't funny and the action is 'monster of the week' type meaningless.  There is no prospect that after winning a fight the world will actually improve or change direction.  It's just fighting and joking forever.  Fail.

Majo to Yajuu:  A hard-boiled slightly faggoty smoker carrying around a coffin accompanies a girl who's actually a boy inside the coffin and they go around killing witches who do atrocities for fun.  I don't like any of the characters, actually I detest them all, so. . . Fail.

Saijaku Tamer:  Another slime tamer, another isekai reincarnation, how could this show be any good?  Well, by taking the entire episode to monologue the young girl's stream of consciousness, which characterized her pitiful situation and strength of will and steadiness of mind to navigate it better than any first ep anywhere.  The monologue was accompanied by beautiful art and animation that looked more like a movie than a tv series.  The music was also swell.  Far from another lame disposable copycat story, this might actually be a great anime.  Pass.

Yuuki Bakuhatsu Bang Bravern:  A traditional mecha anime with the slight difference that the enemy is alien invaders and there's only one cool mech in the world to fight the invasion off with.  Actually reminiscent of Kuromukuro.  The art and animation are high quality enough to make the action pop.  I'm not sure how long pure action sequences can keep the story alive, but it's fine for a first episode.  Pass.

Buchhigiri:  An unbelievably delinquent school in Japan starts bullying this normal looking guy.  However, he fuses with an annoying genie and becomes a master martial artist and beats the bullies up.  That's as good an ending point as any for this show.  Fail.

Meiji Gekken:  Another story about the upheaval surrounding the rise of the Meiji Restoration.  It has a lot of similarities to Kenshin but also a lot of differences, making it a worthwhile watch.  I like all history-based stories.  There should be more of them.  Pass.

Here's the good anime that's currently airing this season and is worth at least a try, in the order of how exciting each episode is week to week (not in the order of how good the series is overall, which would favor older/longer series too much):

1.  Sousou no Frieren

2.  Sokushi Cheat

3.  Saijaku Tamer

4.   Solo Leveling

5.  Meiji Gekken

6.  Synduality Noir

7.  Saikyou Tank

8.  Dungeon Meshi

9.  Urusei Yatsura

10.   Hirogaru Sky! Precure

11.  Mato Seihei no Slave

12.  Tsuki ga Michibiku

13.  Yuuki Bakuhatsu Bang Bravern

Two great series and thirteen series overall is better than I expected.  I'll take it.

flowers and eternal heat:

The first two new songs to enter my music hall of fame for 2024 are 'flowers' and 'eternal heat.'  Both songs actually came out in previous years but I acknowledged them now.  Flowers is the song for the Fate/Grand Order memorial music video, and it's a doozie.  I promoted it all the way to 5-star.  It sounds a lot like Suzume's theme song which is also 5-star.

Eternal Heat is my favorite song from Star Ocean the Divine Force.  It's a sort of religious chant that plays in the background of a particular zone in the game, with a full vocal chorus.  So I guess a Shinto chant instead of a Gregorian chant.  I left it at 1-star.

To make room I kicked out 'Shiver' from Valkyrie Profile and stitched together two FF4 cantrips, 'Fanfare 1' and 'Inn.'  Even stitched together the new song is only 10 seconds long, so clearly the previous songs didn't deserve to be 1-star songs each individually.  Basically nothing of value was lost.  I also demoted a song from each other tier to keep everything balanced at 1100 songs a tier.

Afterwards I stitched 'The Paladin' onto the other two FF4 cantrips, making it a reasonable 30 second long song.  This gave me room for another 1-star song to exist, 'Lost Shine,' the ending to the first episode of Uma Musume S3, sung by the lovable Kitasan Black.

All the details can be found as always in my music permapost.

Michigan dominated Washington from beginning to end.  The score was close for a long time but you could really feel Michigan had no chance of losing.  Congratulations to Michigan on a perfect season, the only undefeated team in the FBS, which makes them the undisputed #1.  I still think teams that steal signs shouldn't really be awarded National Championships but oh well.

I finished my rewatch of Dragon Ball Kai Recut's Buu arc.  It did a good job shortening every scene.  Vegeto's fight with Buu was much shorter.  Retrieving the absorbed bodies from inside Buu was much shorter and made Goku and Vegeta's decision to enter Buu when they had won if they had just stayed outside much more sensible (because things went smoother in the real version of events.)  After that, gathering energy for the Spirit Bomb thankfully took less time, as did the Buu vs. Buu fight.  Everything took less time.  It's such a better version of the series, I'm sad that it took this late in my life to watch the real Dragon Ball.  I watched the crappy version so many times before this.  Dragon Ball's elevated rank of #6 is deserved after watching this and with Daima and likely a new season of Super coming.  Recut shrank the series down to a reasonable length, but Dragon Ball excitingly is about to get enormous again.

Dragon Ball Super's manga needs to admit events have caught up with the ending of Z though.  In Z Pan is 4 years old, and in the latest Super Hero movie Pan was at least 3, she was talking, flying, fighting, a seemingly completely mature adult.  There's no more room for anything to happen before Pan trains for the Tenkaichi tournament.  Super should segue into the ending of Z with its next manga chapter.  If it wants more adventures from there, it should be after Goku is training with Oob.

I also finished my rewatch of Goblin Slayer S2.  It was great as expected, justifying its new entry into my rankings.  I like that it focused more on the females of the party since Goblin Slayer has already had everything interesting about him thoroughly described.

I'm very happy my Houston Texans and Dallas Cowboys made the Playoffs.  Now they just need to meet in the Super Bowl so I can't lose no matter who wins.

Winter 2024 Anime First Impressions: Part 1

Fluffy Paradise:  A kind of mindless generic isekai reincarnation story where a girl gets to live as a 3-year old duchess with adult mental capacities and the power to tame all manner of non-humans, all the way up to holy dragons and the like.  A nice life if you can get it.  Fail.

Ishura:  Another full cg series trying to pretend it's an anime.  The cg is high quality, though, so I could have forgiven it, except that the main characters are a deranged girl and a cocky asshole boy who doesn't care that millions of people died and just enjoys the chance at the resulting 'cool fight' he gets to enjoy for all of five minutes.  Amoral brutes aren't interesting and I don't care what they do with their lives from here.  Fail.

Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete:  Magical girl porn is a great idea for a single episode, but has already played all its cards -- I've already seen all the girls nude in the first episode, what else is left?  A repetitive plot that can't go anywhere because if either side wins the story ends?  A sadist protagonist?  No thanks.  Fail.

Mato Seihei no Slave:  I had high hopes for this show because it's by Takahiro, but the needless dominatrix ecchi subplot ruins it.  At best this show will be as good as Seiken Gakuen, it certainly has good enough art for that, but a huge letdown.  Pass.

Sokushi Cheat:  I knew this would be a good series but I didn't think it would be great.  Somehow the high quality art, voice acting and music elevates the story from good to great.  Now everything is funnier and cooler and prettier than before.  Since I've been seeking a replacement for 16bit Sensation anyway, this will do as my 200th great anime.  This is the best anime that will come out this winter, perhaps the only great anime of 2024.  The English title is 'None can withstand the power of instant death,' which is funny but unwieldy, so I prefer this short Japanese abbreviation.  Pass.

Dungeon Meshi:  This story relies on shock value to create humor.  I was laughing all ep because I was shocked all ep, but how long can that really last?  The joke will eventually get old, but until then it looks to be a nice enjoyable ride.  Pass.

Unwanted Undead:  An aptly named unwanted series.  Basically a reprise of 'So I'm a spider, so what?' except without the cute girl protagonist.  Now we get a boring middle aged loser man instead, and instead of a cute spider he's an ugly skeleton/ghoul.  Who was the brilliant person who decided this was a good idea?  Fail.

Sasaki to Pi-chan:  Another loser middle aged ugly man protagonist.  Is this a thing now?  This is a reprise of 'Saving 80,000 Coins in Another World' except minus the cute girl protagonist and plus an annoying pushover loser male.  And for some reason it dragged on for an hour, ugh.  Fail.

The wrong way to use healing magic:  A generic and slow-paced beginning to yet another isekai adventure.  Nothing stands out about this show from a thousand others, except an annoying attempt at humor where the king is afraid of his own underling.  Fail.

Pon no Michi:  A group of girls playing Mahjong, but not Saki.  Why don't they make a new season of Saki instead?  That's a better group of girls playing better Mahjong. . .Fail.

Momochi-san Chi:  A typical shoujo series where a girl is surrounded by gorgeous but slightly dangerous men.  And through no fault of her own she's already held hands, kissed, and seen one of the guys naked.  It's all so exciting if only I were female.  Fail.

Kekkon Yubiwa Monogatari:  A loser guy who is too afraid to say how he feels to his childhood girl friend magically teleports to another world, gains a special light weapon, and marries a princess.  Then he somehow gets four other girls according to the opening and ending themes, all while being this complete loser of a personality and having bad looks.  There's a limit to suspension of disbelief.  Fail.

Yubisaki to Renren:  I almost like this show, but I have a lot of hangups about it.  First, why does she wear hearing aids when she still can't hear with them?  Is it to signal to unknowing people that she's deaf?  But if I saw someone with hearing aids I would assume they weren't deaf because the hearing aids would be fixing their problems.  It seems like it would only confuse people.  Also, why do girls instantly fall for guys with tattoos when they're so ugly?  And guys who start instantly touching them when that's called 'rape' whenever a non-cool guy does it?  Also, why would you want to mate with a deaf girl when she's clearly genetically defective?  Also, where can this series possibly go from here since their romance was already sealed in episode 1?  It makes for a good first ep, but what about all the other eps?  Fail.

Solo Leveling:  They say this is the second coming of SAO, even better than SAO, but what I saw so far in this first episode wasn't inspiring.  A young lad who's the 'weakest hunter of all time' is trying to dungeon crawl but completely ineffectual and just tying up the healer's resources keeping him alive.  Any sensible person would get a different job as he's not cut out for this one.  Then of all things he gets caught in a high level dungeon trap which there's no way he should be able to escape, but obviously for the plot to work he must somehow escape it, which is just contradictory.  On account of the good animation and the good reputation this series has I'll go on watching but this is no SAO.  Pass.

Saikyou Tank:  This story is good in a cheating way -- it relies on good art and lots of little girls in need of saving -- sick little sisters, runaway slaves, etc.  With a plot like that what can possibly go wrong?  Who needs high art when you can have wish fulfilment?  Pass.

That will do for the first half of winter debuts.  I'll cover the remaining half in a second post.  Winter 2024 is already better than expected thanks to a new great anime debuting.  Let's hope there's a pleasant surprise in the second half as well.

Edens Zero S2 out in bluray:

It's a bluray extravaganza.  Thanks to [Almighty] over at nyaa.si, the beautiful art of Hiro Mashima is now at its finest resolution and color depth.  Another show well worth archiving.

Meanwhile, the new BanG Dream! season has been scheduled for January of 2025, so one year from now.  A little long but better than all the announced series with no release date set.  (I'm looking at you, Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest.)

Meanwhile, I got the Loremaster achievement in Dragonflight, meaning I've cleared all the quests/zones designed for levels 60-70 in the WoW expansion.  There's still some max level solo content I could do, but what's the point?  Any gear rewards I get will be invalidated by the War Within expansion which will have much higher level gear, and the new expansion is only six months away.  It just feels like I'd be grinding away for nothing.  It's true that there's infinite stuff to do in WoW, but whether there's infinite fun stuff to do is another question.

I'm over halfway through the Buu arc of Dragon Ball Kai Recut.  Sadly most of the filler this version is cutting is cool fight scenes, like how Vegeta vs Goku was much shorter, while all the dumb Mr. Satan scenes are pristinely intact.  I'll admit they mercifully reduced the amount of Goten/Trunks content for which I'm thankful, and of course all the filler eps about Gohan's high school life are gone which is nice.  Still, there's just no saving this arc.  The villain is dumb, Mr. Satan is dumb, and the heroes also keep making dumb mistakes which allows Buu to keep winning long after he should've been defeated.  The only thing I can really approve of in this arc is the art and Videl.  Even this shortened version really drags.  But I've come this far so I may as well finish the rewatch.

Meanwhile, I finished the appendix portion of Aiyoku no Eustia, aside from 'job-hunting diary' which for some reason is grayed out and my save doesn't qualify for.  Close enough to 100% completion, though.  Now I can say I've fully beaten this visual novel, which is true of all 25 of my hall of famers.  I don't tell other people to consume material I don't consume myself, all my ratings are verified.

Meanwhile, the US debt passed $34 trillion, which is still nothing compared to the $70 trillion shortfall we've promised in Social Security and Medicare once the Baby Boomers retire.  And while this is going on we're passing gigantic $1.5 trillion military spending bills in order to wage war on the entire world for no real reason, as no one has attacked America in ages.  It's so absurd and surreal.  People have to work hard for an hour to earn $7.25 in this country, and yet we just throw trillions down black holes like they're nothing.  Do the people earning these meager pittances realize how pointless their labor is?  How little respect the government has for the money they've earned?  We could work for a thousand years and never repay the US debt.  Soon enough the interest on the debt alone will be higher than all tax revenue combined.  Then what?

Sokushi Cheat > 16bit Sensation:

I didn't want 16bit Sensation in my rankings anymore after the story jumped the shark, but I didn't have any good replacements for it either.  Until now.  Sokushi Cheat's first episode was marvelous, with action, humor and romance already going at full tilt.  I know from the manga that it's a good story, but the anime makes it so much more emphatic.  This reminds me of Isekai Nonbiri Nouka -- the anime is so much better than the manga that it suddenly becomes great.

I don't need Sokushi Cheat to be a masterpiece, all I need it to be is better than 16bit Sensation, and for that purpose it will serve me well.  Someday I expect it too will be replaced by something better, but who knows when that 'someday' might come.  For now it totally deserves its 200th place.  At the end of the season we'll see if it can rise up any further than that.

Since all great anime deserve mention in my fictional character hall of fame, I also replaced Konoha with Tomochika (the heroine of Sokushi Cheat).  Tomochika is prettier than Konoha and has a combination of common sense and a strong sense of justice.  I respect a lot about her.  It's a shame because I had Konoha as Aoba's child, two game makers, but now Tomochika is Aoba's child and there's no common bond between mother and daughter.  Everything's a tradeoff, though, and the higher priority is only honoring things actually deserving of honor.  16bit Sensation didn't deserve mention in an all-time great gallery so it had to go, Konoha and all.

Now that I finally have a respectable top 200 anime, maybe I won't need to edit it or '100 Waifus' ever again.  That would be nice.

Isekai Kodomotachi Natchaimashita complete:

A wonderful manga with beautiful art featuring a mother of ten (going on eleven!) saving the world through the power of love reached its ending today.  The first of many satisfying endings in the year 2024 I'm sure.

In addition, Healin' Good Precure now has a 1080p bluray release, which seems like a worthwhile upgrade for archival purposes.

Michigan and Washington both won in tightly contested thrillers.  The bowl system did its job, giving every team in the country at least one loss, except the two teams playing for the national title on January 8th.  It can't get any fairer than that.  Between the bluray anime, the manga finale and these splendid semifinals New Year's Day really delivered.

Isekai Nonbiri Nouka, Yama no Susume S4, Shadows House S2 and Shikkakumon all have bluray releases now:

What better way to start the new year than with bluray anime?  2024 is off to a good start with four new great anime series all available in bluray.  There's also a bluray upgrade of the first Yes! Precure 5 movie, which is one of the best Precure movies featuring Dark Dream.  Of course, there's still a lot of work to do, for instance, where is Extreme Hearts bluray?  Or Utawarerumono S3?  But progress is progress.

Of course the real feature of New Year's Day is all the wonderful bowl games being played later today, but the 2024 winter anime season also begins today.  I'll of course be writing up my winter 2024 anime first impressions post once I've gotten enough impressions to make it worthwhile.

January as a whole is looking pretty empty, with basically only football to look forward to.  A lot of pro teams are still hoping to reach the playoffs with only one week of games left to go.  There's also supposed to be some WoW update which will lead to more heritage armor quests, which would be nice.

Things will heat up in February with the release of FF7 Rebirth, and this summer features the Paris Olympics, so the year will get better eventually.  The spring anime season is shaping up to be pretty nice too.  And then there's the November election.  It's just this January that feels like a desolate wasteland.

Now that the UN Secretary General is condemning the indiscriminate massacre of civilians in Belgorod by the Ukrainians, will somebody, anybody wake up from the western-press delusion that Ukraine are the good guys?  They are genocidal Nazis who deliberately target civilians in terrorist attacks using banned munitions -- cluster rounds that Biden specifically said Ukraine had promised not to use on civilian targets.  Even Ukraine's allies are now admitting all of this, this is all on record now and not in dispute.  The very next day Ukraine, ignoring the UN's admonitions, launched a terrorist cluster-round attack on downtown Donetsk, killing yet more civilians.  These people are mocking the effete west's condemnations because they know they'll still get as many billions from the press-deluded dupes as before no matter what they do.  Why does nobody change their mind after learning they're allied with Satan?  Shouldn't at least one person care that their tax dollars are going to killing children?

This is why I stated long ago that the vast majority of people are evil.  There is no excuse for siding with Ukraine in this war.  A good person could never do that.  It is impossible not to know the facts about this war, the information is readily available all over for anyone who was curious and wanted to know right from wrong.  The only way to keep supporting Ukraine after their bombing of Belgorod and Donetsk is if you actually celebrate the death of Russian women and children while enjoying occasional drinks of blood from jewel-encrusted goblets.  And yet that's the majority of the western world.  The non-western world supports their own atrocities, like the terrorist attacks of the Muslims, who also target women and children, so it's not like they're any better.  The whole world celebrates the slaughter of innocents and sends weapons and funds to those who carry the atrocities out.  They're all complicit.