Music of the Week #425

A new start

I’ll be focusing on my studies for the next three weeks even in the middle of a holiday so I’ll make this quick so we can get back to regularly paced and scheduled lethargy.

We’ve finally moving from my dear Ao no Kiseki into the beginning of the end of my favor with the Kiseki subseries. Trails of Cold Steel 1 on its own isn’t as offensive as the games it is succeeded by and it has some merits that make it a fun addition to the series while keeping its legendary world-building and excruciating attention to detail in NPC dialogues. Where it falls short however, we’ll get there. Most importantly however, my perceived downfall of the series doesn’t mean the music hasn’t gotten worse. From the beginnings of Bracer trainees in the backwaters of Liberl, to the formation of the Special Support Section in the bustling cityscape of Crossbell, we now are thrust into the lives of 9 students in Erebonia’s most prestigious military academy hand-picked by a familiar face who mentions this particular intent all the way back in 3rd. Even with all my negativity, I can’t help but feel nostalgic to this tune and always entertained by the particular segment towards the end of the opening with the sunset in Heimdallr and the glint in Rean’s eye.

Fate Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia Episode 7-8: Snakes with frickin laser beams

I decided to bundle two episodes again since Episode 8 was just Ushi getting a ton of money thrown at her animations to be really cool.

But man, Leonidas gets my win. Apparently they made his Noble Phantasm look like that starting from FGO Arcade but seeing it animated was a sight to see since he died unceremoniously in the game. You can make a point about how dying so easily adds to Gorgon’s power but Leonidas definitely came out a champion in the anime.

Azur Lane Episode 7: Shot through the Heart

Alright, I think I’m ready to forgive Episode 6 AND the week break.

Not only did some of the craziness return to the fighting, but the rather sudden turn of events have seriously shaken up my expectations on whats to come in the next few weeks.

Music of the Week #424

Just a bit

FGO’s post just needs pictures and since it’ll be a regularly scheduled week I thought of getting some personal work done before I got to finishing it. Just a couple more weeks of hard work and I’ll get my vacation.

This week’s theme plays during the penultimate scene of the game where Lloyd confronts two key figures in the growth of his character. One of them is spoiler territory while the other is a vision of Guy, his late brother. This moment cemented Lloyd as a great protagonist for me as it advanced his personal struggles to live up to his brother finally fulfilled in doing what he wasn’t able to do. It’s this act of striving to attain something and have that personal foil to him to constantly push him forward is what I valued most with Lloyd’s development. Estelle had Joshua while Lloyd had Guy.

Music of the Week #423

Back on top of things

If I’m recalling things correctly, Azur Lane gets a recap episode this week so it’ll just be FGO which is good for me because I want to get a lot of things done ahead of time in the next 2-3 weeks so I can relax for the entirety of December. Not much to add aside from that small bit of news but I can mention that I think it’s absolutely absurd that Azur Lane needs this recap week but if it means getting the quality back up to speed, so be it.

This week’s theme is final boss theme of Ao’s wild finale with one of the most powerful things in Kiseki’s enemy pantheon. Going beyond ambiguously evil society members, the final boss of Ao is similar to the final boss in Sky SC with it being an influenced power born out of an immensely powerful artifact. The nature of the boss is in spoiler territory so I won’t say much but my favorite moment in the game comes right after the final boss.

Fate Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia Episode 5&6: Kick and Run

Back on track of things.

Had a bunch of extra work but here we are again. Episode 6 was the end of the common errands episode now that Episode 7 kicks us off into finding more items for Gil and eventually confront the goddess alliance. With Blonde Rin, who somehow isn’t Extra Rin, around, we’ll be on our way to move towards the ever-exciting middle point of the singularity.

Azur Lane Episode 6: Getting too relaxed

You hate to see this type of thing happen.

So if I heard right, next week’s episode is going to be a recap episode that won’t take up a proper episode slot. So Episode 7 will go up in two weeks. First off, that’s a bit worrying that a 12 episode series needs a week break for a recap episode but after this week’s episode, it might be the sad truth that producers really need it.