2025 is about to close, and as such, it’s time to look back at the media I’ve enjoyed this year! Anime finally makes a comeback, the games section is packed, the manga and movie sections not as stacked as previous years, and I had way too much music I enjoyed to list all of them but still managed to write about some of my favorites. I hope you (despite everything) had a good 2025 and enjoy this read and find some new things to try. If you have any comments or recommendations, leave a comment!
Anime
Anne Shirley (2025)
Personal score: 9.5/10
Babe, wake up, a good anime finally dropped! At long last. I was not expecting it to be an adaptation of the old Canadian novel Anne of Green Gables, but who cares, I’ll take it. I don’t know what it is about Japan and these old western stories, but they keep making anime and manga adaptations of them. I tried this new one not expecting much, and turns out it’s amazing and now I can’t stop gushing about it.
The story follows Anne, an orphan who’s adopted by an unmarried sibling couple in the countryside of England, and her life journey until adulthood. Anne’s whimsical character is infectious, and charms not just us but everyone she comes across, generating many lifelong friendships. This is one of those rare stories that makes you envious at how pure-hearted and loving the characters are. The story is devoid of the typical malice of antagonists in order to drive the plot. Instead, it unfolds naturally through a grounded portrayal of life, and the ups and downs it contains. Sometimes a conflict begins and you reflexively think it’s going to become the next story arc, until abruptly something else comes up and the story takes a different turn. Like life, it’s unpredictable, but not in a way that comes off as random or as a cheap plot device. Instead, it makes events feel organic and exciting, as you never know what might happen next. Overall, just a spectacular script that I could spend ages fawning over.
The story is complimented by great production all around, making the show truly shine. The songs are dope, the animation is really good, etc etc. It really is the best show that’s come out in years, for my money’s worth. I don’t imagine it will make a big splash, but if you’re one of the people who had this fly under the radar, give it a shot. You might love it.
Kino’s Journey (2003)
Personal score: 7/10
Having quickly gone through the season’s slim pickings, I’ve been going back and trying some older shows I missed. Kino’s Journey was one of those shows. I must say, it’s quite neat!
The basic premise is there’s some 1900s technology world with many disparate settlements referred to as countries. Kino travels on her motorcycle visiting a country or two every episode.
Every country and storyline has its own strange twist. Kino might arrive at a country where people are convinced that the world is going to end in 3 days. Or a country where they’ve developed a cure for menial labor dissatisfaction through a brain surgery given to every person when they become an adult. Or a country where a concoction was developed that lets people read each other’s minds. Every story feels more or less surreal. There’s a subtly wrong tone to the stories as they unfold, and the art and editing compliments this beautifully.
Honestly, that’s actually the best part. While the premise of the stories is usually interesting, I find that often the execution doesn’t fully nail the landing; They’re usually the kind of stories that don’t stand up to much scrutiny, and it’s hard to take some of them seriously if you think about them a little bit. However, the way the show portrays them, in the washed out, overbloomed illustrations, and unsettling shot editing, and with eerie music compositions, makes the vibes immaculate. I can’t overstate how great they are. It almost gives me kind of Paranoia Agent or Serial Experiment Lain vibes. It’s so good.
Watching the show, I couldn’t help but wish for a high quality videogame adaptation. Riding through these disparate lands, meeting these bizarre people and countries, dripping with eerie atmosphere. Ahh, one can dream.
Manga
This was a relatively weak year in manga for me. I didn’t find a lot of gems compared to previous years, and only one of them was a new-ish work. Recently a few new English publishers cropped up though, so it’s possibly 2026 will bring more interesting releases. Anyways, here’s my favorite manga of this year!
I Want to Hold Aono-kun So Badly I Could Die (2016–present) — Umi Shiina
Personal score: 10/10
Isekais have been the culprit of many crimes, but chief among them is the use of overly long, overly descriptive, stupid titles, and I reflexively almost skipped this manga because it seemed to resemble one of them, but decided to give it a shot just in case. I’m so glad I did.
The core premise of the manga is this girl started dating a boy, but shortly after their relationship begins he passes away, and comes back as a ghost that only she can see and talk to. That by itself is not terribly new — or terribly interesting, on its face — but where this manga truly shines is the execution. The writing is so good, it’s insane.
One of the things it does brilliantly, and one of my top favorite tropes in writing, is using the scientific method in supernatural situations. 99 times out of 100, magic is just used as a plain plot device or mcguffin, and not taken as a scientific phenomenon that feels real. When a story does try to justify it or poke at it with a plausible scientific lens, it’s always exciting. This manga goes super deep that in that direction, with the characters becoming consumed about trying to figure out what’s happening and how to avert danger.
Another thing it does brilliantly that is even more rare is the characters have an immense sense of awareness. There’s this one scene that blew my socks off, where the protagonist gets home after a date to a surprise visit from her sister, who chastises her for wearing her dresses without permission, and the boyfriend has to stay there and watch this happen before the sister storms out and the mom comes in asking what happened. When they get to her room, he’s like, “you know this is fucked up, right? Not just what your sister did, but your mom. There was enough commotion that your mom could hear all of it — she was just in the room next door — and she chose not to come in and help you.”, and this interaction just kept going and going. This character realized that the mom didn’t just conveniently spawn after the interaction was over. She was there, and she had to have listened to it. And that meant that she was willingly allowing this to happen, to let this abuse be inflicted on the protagonist. And as I’m reading this I’m like holy shit. You just don’t see this kind of thing in writing very much. But this manga is full of interactions like this, where the characters feel like active, thinking, aware agents, and not like walking vehicles for playing out plot points.
I don’t want to spoil much more of it, but I will say it’s completely blown me away. The quality of the writing is through the roof, and the art is subdued but also excellent, and it has a really unique blend of psychological horror and romance that I don’t think I’ve seen before. Unfortunately as of this writing this manga has only been licensed digitally in English. I am hoping they print it at some point because I would love to have it on my shelf. Huge recommendation.
365 Days to the Wedding (2020–2023) — Tamiki Wakaki
Personal score: 7.5/10
Honorable mention to this romance manga about a marriage of convenience plot, where two employees working at a travel agency are at risk of being drafted to the new branch in Siberia if they don’t find a partner soon, and so they do the only thing that makes sense, they fake a marriage together.
Not the best one of these I’ve read — that distinction would go to Full-Time Wife Escapist — but it’s still pretty decent! The characters start out a bit flat, but grow more interesting as the story unfolds, and there’s no major misteps to speak of.
If you’re looking for another nice romance manga, give this one a shot.
Emma (2002–2008) — Kaoru Mori
Personal score: 9/10
For the better part of the past 13 years I’ve been trying to collect this manga. First, it was licensed by CMX in its original 10 volume form, back in 2007 or so. I found it at a local comic shop and started collecting it, but I was only able to secure 5 volumes before the company went under and the missing volumes went for crazy prices on the second-hand market. As much as I wanted to finish the manga, I couldn’t justify getting the remaining volumes, and decided to sell them. Then, sometime in 2020, I learned that the English license had been re-acquired, this time by Yen Press, who had printed it in 5 2-in-1 omnibus volumes. Oh wow, finally! But then, much to my dismay, I found I had been late to the party once again. When I went to search the volumes, half of them were already out of print and once again incredibly expensive. What had I done to deserve this? I thought this was it, that I’d never be able to collect it. Then, early this year I was randomly searching the manga on Amazon and saw that volumes 1, 3, 4 and 5 were in stock. I frantically rushed to buy them, and prayed that volume 2 would get a reprint soon too. A few months later my wish was granted and it finally arrived, and we get to the present, where I finally own a full collection of this manga (as well as Kaoru Mori’s entire body of work)!
Even though I could’ve done it at any time, I didn’t want to read the manga online before I owned all of it, so all this time I’d held off on reading past the volume 4 I read back in the day. Now that I finally owned all of it, I could sit down and read this long awaited manga. I’m very glad to report that it was worth the wait, and the manga is great!
Given Kaoru Mori made A Bride’s Story, and what I’d partially read of Emma before, I knew this was gonna be at least a nice read, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this good. Emma is a classic story of forbidden love, of an orphaned maid who falls in love with a young nobleman, and their struggle to kindle their love against the pressure of society. The story is vast, featuring a huge cast of characters, that in true Mori fashion, are all likable and interesting and possess a great sense of humanity. It spends as much time on the big dramatic plot threads as it does on the candid mundane moments. And all of it is lavishly illustrated, with Mori going hog wild on all the frilly maids and noble dresses, to the backdrop of Victorian England.
To think that this was Kaoru Mori’s first published work is wild. This woman really is insane, and she’s a big inspiration for me. I’m so glad to have finally read this. I hope we get to see her work for many more years to come.
Games
In 2024, my hand’s RSI became better to the point where I was able to start playing games again. I had a large list of big games I’d been meaning to play, and began chipping away at them. This year, I continued that, and checked off a ton more!
Personal score: 9/10
Excellent sokoban puzzle game about a stretchy cactus pushing smaller cacti around. The thing that makes this game unique is that you can push against walls and that’ll make your body grow and push things in the opposite direction. This becomes a crucial mechanic in moving around and pushing the smaller cacti, and the game comes up with tons of puzzles to showcase the nuances of the system (roughly 100 puzzles total).
By the end it gets real bonkers with the stuff it’s doing. Rules about the world that you took as a given are stripped away and the levels become increasingly surprising and delightful. The final levels of this game were some of the most giddy fun I had all year.
If you enjoy cool challenging puzzle games, I highly recommend it!
Logic Bombs (2025) — MatthewmatosisPersonal score: 8/10
I’ve loved Matthewmatosis’ critique work for a long time, but I must admit I had less than high expectations when I saw his first game was gonna be a picross-looking gameboy game. As someone who was primarily fed on a sokoban diet, I wasn’t sure I was gonna like it. Well, I’m here to report I should’ve put my expectations way higher, because this game is great.
The game is a lot more structured and puzzle-like than what I expected from a game that looks like this, and it does a good job of revealing different twists and quirks of the mechanics as it goes. The first 50 or so puzzles in this game had me in a rabid obsessive state, and it wasn’t until the latter half when the difficulty really cranks up that I cooled back down.
I could critique more in-depth some of the things I wish this game did better, but instead I’ll just say if you enjoy puzzle games, you really should check this one out. It’s more interesting than it seems.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2020) — Ryu Ga Gotoku StudioPersonal score: 8/10
SEGA has been holding crazy sales on the Yakuza games, and when they set Yakuza 7 up for grabs for 9.99, I had to get it.
This is the Yakuza that’s known for them shaking up the formula. Instead of an action brawler combat, it’s an RPG reminiscent of Dragon Quest. This pitch seems like it would entirely redefine how a Yakuza game plays, but it turns out it still plays out just about exactly the same. The active combat involves different mechanics, but you’re still bumping into grunts and dispatching them with about the same frequency and efficiency as you did in previous games. It’s new, but with a very familiar feel. Perhaps a little too familiar, as I think I was ready for more of a formula shakeup.
Thankfully, more shakeups are abound in a new cast of characters and a new game area. Both are very welcome, and I quite enjoyed the main crew in this game. Last year one of my main gripes playing Dragon Quest XI was while technically you were on a big adventure with this group of people, it missed that spirit because the characters rarely ever interacted with each other. This game delivers on that promise. Many main and side-content scenes flesh out the characters into a tight-knit frendship, and it made me much more connected to them than anyone in DQ11.
The main story is perhaps the least remarkable thing about this title for me. It gets a bit too in the weeds and contrived as it escalates, but overall it still manages to be quite entertaining, and the game has loads of other meat on its bone to enjoy. I really enjoyed this game — maybe on par or better than Yakuza 0 — and am excited to play the sequel sometime soon.
Animal Well (2024) — Billy BassoPersonal score: 8/10
As expected, this is a nice metroidvania. However — and this is partially because I played this relatively early in the year and didn’t write my thoughts then — I feel like I don’t remember much of my experience. There was the prodding at walls, finding secrets, all that stuff you expect. But not a ton of it stuck with me.
The most memorable thing from my experience was how unconventional the tools are. Forget double jumps and big fireballs, how about a physics-based yo-yo? That’s not your vibe? How about a frisbee? Literally, these are some of the main tools in the game, and it manages to use them in really clever ways that made for delightful and unique interactions.
It’s a good one of these. Try it.
1000xRESIST (2024) — sunset visitor 斜陽過客Personal score: 8/10
This is a narrative heavy game about a post-apocaliptic colony of clones and their undoing after the assassination of their leader. It’s hard to say much more without getting into spoilers, but I will say that it’s an interestingly-told narrative playing off some familiar tropes.
The thing that makes this game really remarkable is its dialogue and voice acting. It feels exceedingly natural, far above the industry standard, especially its voice acting. Voice acting is almost never something that stands out in videogames – big budget VO is riddled with overly-breathy, phony delivery – but this game uses its theater background and indie cast to deliver something greater. It’s unlikely we’ll see a shift anytime soon, especially since this game failed to break into the mainstream, but it would be nice to see dialogue and voice acting standards evolve to be more like this game.
Unfortunately, especially for such a narrative heavy game, it has a lot of typos and bad punctuation. I tried to help the devs fix it by reporting everything I could find in their community server, but they seemed uninterested in patching the script. It’s frankly really disappointing. Normally this would be reason for me to not recommend a work, but I don’t want to discount the cool stuff they did, and I still recommend you check it out.
Pseudoregalia (2023) — rittzler
Personal score: 7.5/10
It’s been a while since I’ve played a game that scratched my precision platformer itch, and this game did a decent job at that. It’s sort of a Mario 64, 3D platformer take on precision platformers (including the whole aesthetic, even), where you parkour around very low poly environments. It feels decently complex and fluid, and it’s a fun time.
It’s too bad it’s not more fun because of some design problems. As the challenge ramps up, so do some frustrations about how the move set was constructed. When you fail an input, it often results in a situation that is more punishable than it reasonably should be. Failing to hit something at the right time could be the difference between your character launching themselves forward, or jumping backward. It’s not like hey, if you land this you go super fast but if you fail you at least go okay fast, no, you straight up don’t go forward at all. In addition to this, some inputs just feel kind of needlessly involved, involving button sequences and combinations that makes them more prone to misinputs. It would be nice to see what this game could’ve been if it had been remade from the ground up to address these pain points.
Nevertheless, it’s a fun time, and if you like precision platformers you’d be doing yourself a disservice not to play this. It’s nice.
Psychonauts 2 (2021) — Double Fine
Personal score: 7.5/10
I briefly tried the first Psychonauts game back in the day and didn’t get very far, thinking it was a weird, ugly game. But, the cult status had always made me wonder if I’d missed something. When I saw the second game on a juicy sale, I picked it up, and now I kind of regret not having given the series another chance.
Make no mistake, I still think the character design is rather ugly, but what the screenshots don’t tell you is how beautifully animated the characters are, and how cool the editing of the scenes is, and just how trippy and imaginative the set pieces are. The game is brimming with a kind of imagination and commitment to weird ideas that you don’t find in games of this scale.
The writing is pretty good. The overall plot gets a bit hard to follow later in the game, but the introduction is quite nice, and the dialogue is great. The game manages to balance the funny and the serious and the trippy really well, and it makes you want to explore and talk to people and see what’s gonna happen next.
Gameplay is perhaps the least refined part of the package, but it’s still quite interesting. During combat you have a menu wheel where you can assign up to 4 powers to the game’s back buttons. The issue is, there’s more than 4 powers, and quite often you’ll be forced to swap some out mid battle. For me, this resulted in me keeping 2 of my favorite powers locked and only rotating the other two, in order to maintain some semblance of muscle memory. Unfortunately this still ends up feeling like a clumsy control, and you can’t help but wish they’d found a better way to map them. Powers aside, it feels snappy and fluid and generally good to play.
Set pieces and boss battles tend to be quite creative, with some real standout moments. They sadly get a bit weaker near the end — the level of jank suggests they ran out of money and had to cut their losses — and it’s an unfortunate blemish on the game.
It’s a game with a lot of heart that really tries to do lots of cool stuff and it has mixed results. Some totally works, other things feel undercooked, and you can’t help but feel a bit sad that it didn’t get to reach its final form. Whatever the case, I get it now. I am a new Double Fine fan.
Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025) — Team Cherry
Personal score: 8.5/10
At last, Team Cherry finally put an end to silkposting by releasing the long awaited sequel to Hollow Knight. I quite enjoyed that game when it came out, and while I never shared the fervor of the community for the sequel, I was always interested in what would come of it, and if it would do a good job at improving over that game. Thankfully, they did a great job.
Hollow Knight for me was mostly distinguished by its art style, of course, but also by its movement. It was very precise and based around careful positioning and placement of hits as you weaved in and out of danger. However, certain things like the knight’s jumps and dashes and the hitstop on taking damage felt just a bit clunky. This game feels like a massive improvement on that front. Controlling Hornet is so much faster and more fluid, and the camera doesn’t exhibit the jankiness of before. And the animations support that too. Despite her huge handlebar-shaped head, her animations look so stylish and beautiful. There’s tons of great flourishes, like the way she leans in when you begin walking, or the little vault she does with her legs at the apex of a jump. It all just looks and feels so much better than the first game, and it’s about the best followup you could expect.
Of course, being Hollow Knight, there’s a huge focus on combat. The game is stacked with content, featuring tons of enemies and original bosses. As a previously stated lover of precision platformers and action games, I had a great time with this game’s fast execution requirements. It’s perhaps the most fun action game I’ve played in years. This game would have easily been like a 9.5 for me, if not for a few glaring problems.
Problem number one, the one likely most of the community is frustrated by, is some of the late game boss corpse runs. There’s 2 areas late in the game where the path from the nearest checkpoint until you’re actually fighting the boss are so long, and the bosses are so punishing, killing you in 2 or 3 consecutive attacks and inflicting you with status ailments, that it really wears your patience to push through them. I see no good reason that save points couldn’t have been placed closer and avoided the slog.
Another issue I had was with some lack of polish on a couple mechanics that made my experience needlessly punishing. For example, if your heal gets interrupted by an enemy attack, you not only lose the heal but also the resources you used to cast the heal. That’s a fair punishment, but what’s not fair is if your heal is interrupted by a boss transition cinematic, or stumbling on the level geometry, which I had happen to me various times, and now you’re out of HP and out of healing juice. I hope these are things that get ironed out in upcoming patches.
Overall I had a great time with this game. It’s super fun to control and has loads of challenges, and I’ll be happy to revisit it for DLC content. I’m especially looking forward to some sort of arena mode!
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) — CD ProjektPersonal score: 8/10
This might’ve been the highest profile game that I missed playing this past decade. Well, no more, this year I became a Witcher.
Of course, mentions of this game were inescapable, and I took in enough to make a mental image of a game that is an RPG, based on Polish folklore, with action combat. In my mind I’d built a rather exotic picture of what this game was gonna be like — no doubt because of the Polish folklore bit — so I was very surprised when I found out that this game is actually pretty normal.
Sure, it’s based around weird european stories, but most of the beats are the same as all the other RPGs out there; vampires, zombies, ghosts, yadda yadda. You’ve seen all these before. The action combat, fairly familiar too. The people, also not particularly weird. Not to say the normalcy of these things is somehow bad, but it’s just not what I expected. Now I understand why this game was so popular. It really is quite familiar and easy to get into.
It’s also easy to get into because it just exhudes triple-A. It is a game of a massive scale, and with a very high average level of quality for how much content there is in the game. This is the thing that was most impressive for me, and that only became more impressive as I played. Coming from other videogames, it’s a wild experience how you can go into a village in the middle of nowhere, with no quests or anything, and walk into the bar and talk to the bartender and there’ll be a little cutscene where they talk about some thing or other, with bespoke lines, bespoke model, fully animated cutscene, with full voice acting (that is, by the way, higher quality than main character VO in most other games.) And these kinds of interactions are everywhere in the multiple huge maps of this game. There’s tons of environments, super lush with vegetation, full of NPCs, and so little of it feels copy-paste. You feel like you’ve seen everything and then the game shows you an entire new map to explore. Even now knowing the tools they used to streamline the various processes in making content for this game, it’s still crazy how much and how good it all is. Lots of open world games have big maps, but they don’t tend to have the density of meaningful content to feel big. This game feels big.
I’d heard lots of good things about this games’ quests, and indeed they’re quite nice. Rarely is a quest simply a matter of go here, deliver that. There’s loads of varied stories, and you’re gonna be stumbling on them all the time. The aforementioned great scripting systems make them all feel uniquely animated, and I had a good time doing every quest I could find. In some sense, The Witcher 3 has become my new bar for what I would want other RPGs to be like in terms of general quality. I’d love to see so many other franchises and ideas be given this treatment.
Controls ended up being the weaker part of the package. There’s a myriad of small problems that make it feel less than refined. Menuing is clunky and slow. Skill trees are poorly constructed and don’t incentivize experimentation. Crafting feels obsolete against found equipment, and the money and material requirements feel too steep. Searching out question marks on the map ubisoft-style is incredibly tedious. It’s not bad by any means, but there’s so much here that could be improved, and I wish they do that for The Witcher 4.
I’m definitely looking forward to the next Witcher game now. I may even try Cyberpunk, though I’m a little skeptical, as 1st person controls and the setting are not my favorite, but if it exhibits most of the qualities of this game, I can see myself having a good time.
Movies
This year in movies was not super exciting for me. It’s been harder and harder to find stuff to watch, and only a few movies stood out to me. A couple honorable mentions:
- The Fall (2006) – Very beautiful cinematography in an otherwise just okay movie. If you enjoy some cool inventive shots, try it out.
- Do The Right Thing (1989) – Also cool cinematography with a great sense of place. The ending completely shits the bed, in my opinion, and is sadly the reason this doesn’t get a proper entry.
And now the two gems!
Mass (2021)
Personal score: 9/10
Two couples whose children were involved in a school shooting meet for a conversation. What you see on the tin of this one is essentially what you get, but the remarkable part is just how perfectly executed it is.
It’s an in-media-res story, happening almost in real time, and you have to piece out the specifics of what happened and the aftermath through the interactions between the characters. It’s stimulating to follow, the script and performances feel believable, and it’s well shot. They nailed the assignment, and it’s a great movie as a result.
Tamako Love Story (2014)
Personal score: 9/10
Well, fuck me sideways, I did not expect one of my favorite movies of the year (and now one of my favorite anime movies, period) was gonna be a spinoff of Tamako Market.
Unlike that show, this story does not have a dumb mascot ruining the mood, and the movie is focused on a single love story that’s played straight, with terrific writing, great slice-of-life moments, and gorgeous animation by Kyoto Animation. Another story where the premise is sort of straight forward but they nailed the assignment. No dumb conflict and misunderstandings, scope is nice and tight, and it tells a beautiful love story with charming characters. It feels like the kind of story that there should be a lot of, but I have trouble recalling more than a few that are this good. Big recommendation, even if you, like me, did not enjoy Tamako Market.
Music
This was an insane year for music. So many big and small bands I followed released albums this year. Many bands that hadn’t released stuff in years coincidentally all delivered huge releases, and it was a joy to see an exciting drop every other week, on top of the new bands that made a splash. This year was so stacked in fact that I couldn’t possibly do a writeup for every album I’ve enjoyed, so I’ve decided to only write about a select few gems that I was especially obsessed by.
First up, bands I already knew that released new bangers!
Roughly sorted from heaviest to softest.
Vildhjarta (2025) + där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +
Easily my favorite release of the year has got to be Vildhjarta’s new album. After inventing a new genre and then laying dormant before dropping the colossus that was måsstaden under vatten in 2021, they were surprisingly quick to get back to work, and drip fed us a few of the sickest singles over the span of a few years, until it culminated in the release of the full album this year. And god damn, what an album.
Since they coined the metal subgenre of thall, a few bands have tried to capture the sound, but they all pale to the originals. This album has some the coolest sounds you’ve ever heard. The sequence of the 5 initial tracks especially is an all time masterwork, delivering disgusting, layered, inventive sounds that only get juicier the more you dig into them. The latter half of the album is a little weaker by comparison, but it’s still great stuff, and overall it’s the most memorable album for me this year. I’m gonna be spinning this for years to come. Banger!
Kaonashi (2025) I Want To Go Home
This is the acquired taste pick of the year. The first time you listen to Kaonashi you might think it’s a joke. The vocals are so weird, almost ridiculous, that I couldn’t stifle a laugh when I heard it the first couple times. But repeated mentions of the album left me intrigued, so I played it a few more times, and then it clicked. I get it now. Somehow, this works, and I love it more the more I listen to it. Incredible hardcore band.
Deafheaven (2025) Lonely People With Power
Legendary blackgaze band, known best for their 2013 album Sunbather, that I did not fully appreciate until this new album. This is blackgaze at its finest. I got on a huge blackgaze kick with Asunojokei last year but I’ve had trouble finding other bands that scratch the itch in the same way, and this album does it for me. Really beautiful black metal that I’ve enjoyed spinning a bunch this year.
Asunojokei (2025) Think of You
Speaking of Asunojokei, they released their first new album since Island! I was extremely excited about this one. I’d be lying if I said it completely met my expectations, because it didn’t; I was expecting them to take what they did with Island and push it to the next level, but instead they took it in a more sideways direction. Instead of the more classic heartfelt blackgaze sound from Island, they shifted it more in the J-rock direction, making a much more bright, upbeat album that would feel right at home as the opening for an anime. It’s still great and has the Asunojokei flair, but Island just hits deeper for me. Regardless, great album, and one that hopefully lands them more fans. Also, nice to see more anime metal album covers!
Stellar Circuits (2025) Phantom Phoenix
Stellar Circuits came on my radar with their 2018 album Ways We Haunt, and I was very glad to see them return in 2023 with a new record. Now, in 2025, not even two years later, they have a new full release, and it’s another meaty one. Reminiscent of Tool, but with a more mathy, progressive flavor, I’ve been loving what they’ve been putting out. There’s passages in songs like Queen Mary and Elegant Illusion that are so hauntingly beautiful that make this album very memorable for me. I hope they manage to make it big. They’re great.
Sleep Token (2025) Even In Arcadia
Take Me Back To Eden was a notoriously popular and divisive release, launching Sleep Token into the stratosphere, with many people either loving or hating their sound. I personally dig them. The production is great, with great vocals and instrumentals, and they have a nice range, going from nice-boy poppy rock, to some heavier black metal flavored sections like in the song Caramel. Similar to something like Spiritbox, I think they make for a good gateway band that retains its appeal even for bigger metalheads, and I have a great time listening to this album.
Hot Mulligan (2025) The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still
Not much to say here, just another banger release from Hot Mulligan, who have been crushing it in the scene, putting out terrific emo rock. Great followup to their 2023 album, which was in my list last year. Always excited to see new music from them.
Armor For Sleep (2025) There Is No Memory
Listening to this, it’s like I’m teleported back to 2007, when I first got into this band. Their 2005 and 2007 albums were a huge influence on me, and some of my all time favorite emo albums. Few bands successfully return from a 15 year hiatus, and even fewer are able to lock back into their old sound and do it again, but better. This band is like that. It feels exactly like what I remember, but new and great. Still some of the kings of emo. Love them.
Cheem (2025) Power Move
I can’t stop gushing about Cheem. Ever since CheemTV in 2018 I’ve been wanting to see these boys make it big, and I’ve been loving to see how much they’ve grown, both in terms of their sound and their audience. These are some of the freshest songs you’ll hear all year, mixing early 2000s-reminiscent pop, with chuggy nu-metal riffs and infectious beats. They don’t care for conventions and just focus on putting out the most fun music possible. Once again, my only criticism with Cheem is there’s not enough Cheem!
Pawlack (2025) Jeszcze Raz
Shoegazy bedroom pop from Poland, I first fell in love with this band through their 2022 album Pech, and was stoked when they dropped this new album this year without me knowing it was coming. Sure enough, it’s great. I also found out that they have a sibling band called Syndrom Paryski, that has a very similar sound, and it’s also awesome. I tend to run Pawlack and Syndrom Paryski’s albums back to back, and will continue to do so in the future. These guys are awesome, and I need you to give them a shot.
Nature TV (2025) Unlucky for Some
Gorgeous UK band that keeps putting out bangers. After a long string of EPs, they finally release their first full length album, and it’s every bit as beautiful and melancholy as you would expect. I hope they have a prolific future!
Okay, and now it’s time for new finds! These are bands that just begun or that only popped into my radar this year.
Snooze (2025) I KNOW HOW YOU WILL DIE
Amazing progressive math rock band with beautiful droning vocals. Upbeat but heavy, I feel like it takes until the third song of the album for it to really show its colors, and when it does, the rest of the hour flies by. Their single Harked is a great showcase of what their sound is all about. I would recommend you check out their official music video on youtube!
Prostitute (2024) Attempted Martyr
Anxious and fun, this experimental band mixes a punk sound with Arab influences, and create something really unique and interesting. I hear they’re reminiscent of bands like Swans and Model/Atriz, which I then proceeded to check out, but I find I like Prostitute best. Insane that this is their debut album. Super curious to see what they make next.
Mella (2025) Or so I’ve been told
If I recall correctly, I think the youtube algorithm recommended me one of Mella’s singles last year, and from the moment I listened to it I was hooked. Since then I was waiting with bated breath for the album to drop. Another band with an amazingly refined sound for this being their first release, they created an incredible debut that is now one of my favorite emo albums. I need more of this band.
saturdays at your place (2025) these things happen
I did not find them this year, but this is the year when I really noticed how special they were. I am normally not much of a lyrics guy, but some of their songs’ kept getting stuck in my head, and then the instrumentals, and then I just wanted to play their discography over and over. Some of the most beautiful emo music being produced today. I am a new fan!
And we’ve finally reached the end! God, that was long, huh? This year was kind of a blur for me in many ways, but all the great creative things I gushed about above are why I look forward to every new year. It’s unlikable 2026 could top the magnitude of 2025 when it comes to music, but there’s a few bands with suspiciously absent albums that could drop (I’m looking at bands like Coletta, Lantlos, Forests, and Little Geronimo), and I would be stoked to see anything new from them. I will make renewed efforts to try more manga — conveniently, a few new publishers cropped up, and I’ll be looking out for their releases — and likely continuing to try new and old anime shows, with low expectations. In videogames, I’ve now cleared most of the big games I had on the list. The remaining big ones that I own are MGS V, Trails of Cold Steel, Doom 2016, and I recently started Sekiro. We’ll see if any of those make it to next year’s list!
I hope you found this at least somewhat entertaining and found some new things to try and hopefully enjoy. Lemme know if you have any thoughts or recommendations.
See you for another list next year!
