Oomuro-ke 'Dear Friends' oav released:

2025 is starting off well with the finally translated finale to Yuru Yuri's animation run, Oomuro-ke Dear Friends.  This will burnish 2025's anime quality at the expense of 2024's, which really should have contained this release.  The oav is pretty good, probably better than the first oav, but I was left questioning who Nadeshico's girlfriend really was.  Was that intentional?  Did they ever say which of her friends is her secret girlfriend, or did I just miss it?  It certainly made the show more suspenseful not knowing.

2025 is getting some more 2024 leftovers, like the last episode of Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest coming out in two days, and the last few eps of DanMachi Season V now slated for this spring.  There's also some leftover Arifureta, a whole extra cour of Ao no Hako, the remainder of Wonderful Precure -- it feels like 2025 is experiencing a 2024 hangover.

When will the new year really feel new?  Certainly not on January 1st, where the college playoff is settling who the best team was in 2024 (not 2025, which would be reasonable.)  The Super Bowl will determine who the best pro team was in 2024 (not 2025), and that's in February.  March Madness will determine who the best college basketball team was in 2024, (not 2025), and that goes until April!  (coincidentally, the same time we get to see the rest of Danmachi. . .)

The newly elected American government isn't sworn in to office until January 20th.  Even after the elected officials are sworn in, there will be a long slow process of getting senate approval for the appointed officials, the cabinet departments that actually wield all the power.  Who knows when we'll really have a new government.

Can we please retitle New Year's Day as May 1st just to be safe?  To make a little bit of sense?

Speaking of the college playoff, I think all four top seeds losing is a good indicator that conference champions shouldn't automatically be given top seeds and a bye.  I'd rather have a committee just choose the top four teams as the top four seeds.  It's fine for conference champions to get an automatic invite, but there's no reason to give them a top seed on top of that.  At least Texas has made it to the semifinals, so I still have someone to cheer for.  (Honestly they're gonna get wrecked by Ohio State next week but who knows, maybe the Ohio State that lost to Michigan will show up again. . .)

My paperback copy of the 48th and final version of '100 Waifus' has arrived in the mail.  It's really gratifying for at least one thing to be completed in life.  The Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest ost still hasn't appeared online so for now my music hall of fame is in a holding pattern.

In Heaven Burns Red, it took all my strength to defeat the initial stage of the Death Slug Omega boss at the top of the 50 floor Oubliette of Tears, when I realized it had a whole second stage where it got even stronger and was back to full health I despaired and withdrew before the boss could kill me.  I also couldn't beat the Desert Survival Event at Nightmare Difficulty.  The boss seemingly had infinite health.  Sometimes I would hit it for over 200,000 damage and it barely made a dent.  And I couldn't defeat the level 2 Orb boss with fire resistance, because both of my parties are designed around dealing fire damage.  Oops.  I beat all the other level 2 Orb bosses, though, so that's something.  I didn't even bother trying to take on the level 3 Orb bosses.

Basically you could say that Heaven is expecting too much of me and I'm struggling to find ways to get strong enough to keep up.  It's still good so long as I'm strong enough to handle the actual main story though.  I'm gonna get pissed if my characters start getting too weak for that as well.  (I'll also get pissed if they don't hurry up and release more of the main story to play. . .)

I'm about halfway through Konozora Snow Presents.  As expected Kotori is beautiful and endearing, it's nice seeing her walking.  The game is a little glitchy and the translation tends to not fit inside the text box, but I'll take it.  Konozora is my favorite visual novel so any release is perfect as far as I'm concerned.  (Now somebody release an uncensored version of Flight Diary. . .)