Last year I wasn’t able to make a favorites list, so this time we’re pulling double duty, covering both 2023 AND 2024! The list is packed, with me gushing about 6 games, 10 manga, 17 movies, and 13 bands!
As is tradition, there’s handy links below to skip straight to specific categories.
I hope you enjoy it. ❤
Games:
Much like how my resolution for 2022 was to read a ton of manga — and I did — my resolution for 2023 was to catch up on my visual novel backlog. Unfortunately I lost steam after a few lackluster ones and stopped, but I still managed to play a couple gems!
Then, in 2024, my hand improved a bit and I as able to play some games again. I finally got to play the La-Mulana 2 DLC, The Tower of Oannes, that I’ve wanted to play since it came out in 2022, and it was great fun. I managed to play a bunch of puzzle games. And I even managed to play some RPGs! I gush about my favorite games below.
The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass (2021) — Trinitite Team
Personal score: 8.5/10
The Sekimeiya is a VN that takes clear inspiration from its great mystery sci-fi VN predecessors, particularly the Uchikoshi games, like Ever17, Remember11, and Root Double. The basic plot is that a group of people are attending the inauguration of a special mineral exhibit, when a robbery occurs and they end up quarantined inside for the next couple days. Of course, this isn’t just a regular old mineral that was on display, but a gem with mysterious powers, and the story takes you on a 50 hour epic adventure.
If you’ve ever read one of these stories and wished they took the sci-fi more seriously, then this VN is for you. It goes so unbelievably deep in its sci-fi that you have trouble understanding how someone could even have created this. It commits to its story almost to a fault; At some point it can get hard to keep up with what’s happening anymore, and though the game provides you with some tools to get refreshers on information, it’s hard to not get a little lost. But I personally love this kind of stuff. The characters are extremely clever — the very definition of competency porn — and there is little in the way of contrivance. It’s a rare gem of a story, pun intended.
If I had to pick a fault, aside from the sometimes hard-to-follow narrative, is that I wish there had been some fanservice. The story features these two childhood friends as the main characters, and it’s just so ripe for romance, but there is not even a single crumb of it. In a way, it’s commendable how steadfast it is to keeping it serious, but I can’t help feeling like it was a lost opportunity.
The team has spoken to how big of a labor of love this was, and it shows. It’s sad they may not make another game, but man, what a game it is. A must play for people who like mystery stories.
Corpse Factory (2022) — RIVER CROW STUDIO
Personal score: 7.5/10
Remarkably well produced western visual novel, with beautiful portrait art, backgrounds, UI, and music. The whole presentation is just gorgeous. Even often overlooked elements like the font and textbox UI were clearly thought about, and they came out amazing. Easily one of the best-looking VNs out there. It may sound pedantic to remark on font, but you have to keep in mind that reading is what you’re doing the majority of the time in a visual novel. Any small improvement you make on it goes a long way. Which is why it’s so odd that when you look out there you find that most devs don’t seem to care about how text looks. It’s exceedingly rare to find VN UI presentation this good. Whether or not you like the story, you have to commend the love that went into it.
Speaking of the story, I would liken it to something like The Ring. There is a dark local rumor going around, one of a so-called “Corpse Girl”, a website where you can go and request the death of another person, and it somehow seems to work. The story takes an interesting inversion of this horror trope by making the protagonist be the killer, this “Corpse Girl”. We learn who she is, why she’s doing it, and how she’s doing it. The story hinges on her scheme seeming just plausible enough to work, and I think the writers did a good job at that. Corpse Girl is delightfully unhinged as a character, hiding behind the mask of an awkward office worker while indulging in these sick activities in secret. I think the writing particularly shines during her manic episodes where she completely falls apart at the seams, unraveling with really entertaining prose passages. The rest of the cast includes 3 or 4 other major characters, and they’re decent too, though they can take a while to grow on you, on account of their archetypes and odd speech tics.
Unfortunately, it’s widely agreed that it has a little bit of a half baked ending. Personally, I still had a great time, and I’m stoked to see what the team makes next.
Paquerette Down the Bunburrows (2023) — Bunstack
Personal score: 8.5/10
Stellar sokoban puzzle game about trapping bunnies. Instead of pushing boulders around, you’re trying to trick the bunnies’ AI into check-mate situations where you can catch them. It’s not the first game to play with this idea, but it’s the first I’ve seen really nail the execution. It’s delightfully well designed, and has a meaty amount of content. I had a blast.
As of now the game is technically not “finished”, and we’re expected to see a DLC update to add some extra levels and round out the final puzzles. It’s definitely still worth playing as is, but some completionists may want to hold off. Either way, you should definitely support this project if you enjoy puzzle games. It’s one of the best ones in recent years.
Can of Wormholes (2023) — munted finger
Personal score: 8.5/10
Can of Wormholes very quickly developed a high reputation among the puzzle game community, hailed as a modern great in the likes of Stephen’s Sausage Roll, and I agree with that assessment. In this game you control a snake, with controls similar to the old cellphone game of Snake, and the goal is to fill certain line-shaped cavities in levels. You have pellets you can eat to make your body bigger, and that adds or removes options to how you can maneuver around levels. There’s a bunch of other interactions you can do, but I won’t spoil them since that’s what the fun of these games is all about.
The game is relatively challenging, and offers an interesting and novel hint system to help players. The way hint systems tend to work is they straight up spoil part of the level. In this game, it’s a little different. Each level here has its own bespoke associated hint level. Hint levels are usually not the same as the real level, but they use the same twist or key idea, exposed in a more evident way that’ll be easier to find out. Once you understand what the trick is, you can apply it to the real level. It’s an interesting system for sure, but I had a hard time fighting temptation when I was stuck, and used it more than I wish I had. I think that undermined my experience in the long run, and I wish I would’ve struggled a bit more and not had access to the hints. Perhaps it’s a me problem, but one I thought was an interesting issue worth mentioning. If I were you, I’d try to avoid using this system as much as you can, and leave it only for last resort.
Baba Is You (2019) — Hempuli Oy
Personal score: 8.5/10
If Can of Wormholes was hard, Baba Is You takes it to another level. I had a lot of trouble getting going with this game, picking it up and dropping it over the course of a few years, until finally making proper headway last year. You probably already know how this game works, but just in case you don’t, the idea is that this is a block-pushing sokoban game where the game rules are spelled out by blocks in the levels. Rearrange the blocks, and you change the rules. This means you can do stuff like disable collision on objects, turn plants into keys, or turn yourself into a door. It is a system that allows for immense depth, and the game uses it to create a huge amount of interesting levels.
The reason this game gave me so much trouble is due to the fact that it’s a very hard game to read. Sokoban games are normally very easy to read; You take a glance at a level and immediately understand what you’re looking at and what you must do. In Baba however, none of those things are a given. In every level you must make a new mental map about what things are solid, what are the rules in play, and how you might go about creating a solution. The game starts to rely on conventions more as the game goes in order to not add unnecessary noise to this process — earlier in the game it’s not a given that walls are solid, for instance, which generates interesting moments of learning the rules, but later on in the game walls are almost always solid — but it’s still fairly noisy overall and very mentally taxing just to get a basic grip on most levels. It’s both its greatest strength and weakness.
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (2017) — Square Enix
Personal score: 8/10
Something that’s not a puzzle game or a visual novel!
A long, long time ago I played Dragon Quest VIII back on the PS2. It’s a game I didn’t have very fond memories of — I found combat frustrating, I didn’t like the monster designs, and the orchestral score rubbed me the wrong way — but I recently saw that DQ11 had a free demo on Steam, and I saw some footage that peaked my interest, so I decided to give it a shot, and it’s all I ended up playing for weeks!
I’d describe DQ11 as a great modern take on classic JRPGs. It includes the basic turn-based formula you expect, but with all the quality-of-life bells and whistles. There’s a million small touches that I appreciate: you don’t have random encounters except in the sea, being able to easily fast travel from anywhere, being able to move your character around in battle (purely cosmetic, but adds a lot to the fantasy and the presentation), the battlefields being actually where you are and not on a separate abstract arena, an auto-optimize suggestion feature that tells you when you might want to swap out equipment, a heal all button from the pause menu to top up your characters outside of battle instantly, the ability to swap out dead party members, being able to change the outfit of your characters without having to actually wear the corresponding piece of equipment, ability to speed up combat, etc, etc. There is a lot of thought and refinement here, and it really makes the experience nice.
Visually, the game is gorgeous. I don’t know if the enemy design sensibilities have grown on me in the time since, but they didn’t feel ugly to me here, and all the characters and environments look beautiful. Even tons of NPCs look like they could be main story characters, they look that good. Every house you go into has tons of lovingly detailed props and architecture. The Steam version uses lower quality models from the Switch port, but you can easily install a mod that restores the original hi-res graphics. If I have any gripe about the presentation, it’s that there’s no first-person camera mode so I can appreciate them better! Apparently this existed in the original PS4 version, but they removed it for the definitive version. What gives??
I think the weak link in the package is the writing. While it does get a lot better, it starts off pretty bad, with a villain plot that’s really dumb and cookie cutter, and a starting cast of characters who’re utterly dry. It’s not until hour 20 or something that you start seeing characters with interesting motivations, and the earlier characters start getting fleshed out. Though, even later on, there never is much chemistry between the group. The protagonist is silent so he always just stands there doing nothing, and you’d think on our world-spanning journey the characters would sit down and talk to each other once in a while, but that virtually never happens. It’s always about solving the problems of the people of whatever town we’re in. For the vast majority of the runtime, it barely feels like this is a real party, and that is a shame. With such strong art direction, I want to care more about these characters. I want to feel like they have a bond, like they’re friends, like they’re on a meaningful journey together. But for the majority of it, that’s not how it feels, sadly.
Despite me gushing about the gameplay earlier, there is still quite a bit that could be done to polish and improve the experience, and I really hope the team achieves this potential in the next entry. Sadly the passing of Akira Toriyama will undoubtedly be delaying production of the next title, but I’ll be very eager to see what comes out.
Manga:
In my 2022 favorites post, I’d called it my year of manga, where I tried over 200 individual series. In the two years since, I’ve kept a high rate of manga reading, and my list this time is stacked! In addition to new series, there were some great older titles that finally got brought over officially into English. Of course, the most exciting one for me is Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto — my favorite manga! Seven Seas has been licensing a bunch of great cult hits, and they were the ones to bring this over at last. I’m glad to report they did a good job on it, and you should totally go out and buy this (be warned, it’s heavy!) Also exciting, Insomniacs After School by Makoto Ojiro got picked up by Viz, and March Comes In Like A Lion by Chika Umino is finally coming out from Denpa! Taiyou Matsumoto’s newest manga Tokyo These Days is looking to become a masterpiece, and you can expect it to be on my next year’s list. And a new manga by the author of Stravaganza, Akihito Tomi, called Sinner of the Deep Sea, has started coming out too! All around, great time to be into manga.
And now, here’s my favorite manga for 2023-2024!
Skygrazer (2022) — Masakazu Ishiguro
Personal score: 8.0/10
One-shot by the author of Heavenly Delusion. It’s hard to talk about this one without giving much away, but it’s a great self-contained book that keeps surprising you. Seemingly meaningless details come back over and over and flipping the story on its head. Fun read!
The Fable (2014-2023) — Katsuhisa Minami
Personal score: 9.0/10
Interesting quirky manga about an elite hitman who’s instructed to lay low for a year and just be a normal person. Problem is, this is not a normal guy, and these are not normal circumstances. On its face this is not a terribly unusual plot, but often it’s played for slapstick. Not here, though. Although it does have some nice moments of comedy, this is a much more serious and high effort take, with really solid writing, a great cast, and great art.
It feels reminiscent of authors like Hideo Yamamoto (Homunculus, Ichi The Killer), but a little more light in tone. After reading 10 or so volumes digitally, Kodansha announced that they’d be releasing this physically, so now I’m purchasing the books and waiting for that to catch up. Big recommend!
My Brother The Shut-In (2017) — Kinoko Higurashi
Personal score: 9.0/10
A manga whose title is technically accurate does a disservice to how good it is, this is a stellar drama about a broken family finding themselves moving forward when the shut-in son decides to come out of his room and tries to face the world again. It’s not the first manga to tackle this phenomenon, but it’s the one I’ve seen do it best. It does a great job portraying the characters believably and creating solid natural drama. Sadly this didn’t get published physically in English, so you’ll have to seek the digital version.
Again!! (2018-2019) — Mitsurou Kubo
Personal score: 8.5/10
If you were to have told me one of my favorite manga of the year was going to be a timetravelling cheerleading manga, I don’t know if I’d have believed you. But that’s more or less what Again!! is. And it’s excellent!
In Japan, there’s actually 2 different kinds of cheerleading. One is the one you’re familiar with, with the mini-skirts and the pom-poms and the cute dances, and the other is what they call the ouendan (literally “cheer group”), and it takes a more gruff, manly aesthetic, where members perform these loud, aggressive choreographies in black male uniforms. Our story here is about one such group, headed by a strange misfit girl, whose ill fate led to the group’s closure. Our protagonist finds himself going back in time and with the opportunity to save the group, so he sets out to do that. Despite the quirky plot, the writing is excellent, with unique characters and outstanding chemistry, and the art is great.
It is a gem I imagine has got to be overlooked, but I insist you give it a shot!
The Full-Time Wife Escapist (2017-2023) — Tsunami Umino
Personal score: 9.0/10
Another manga with an unflattering title that hides an amazing story inside. It’s the story of this woman who got a degree in psychology and is finding it hard to find employment. To make matters worse, her parents (who she lives with) are planning to move back to the country, so time is running out for her to find a solution — either find a new job and move out, or move back to the country with them. While waiting for applications to materialize into something, she takes a part-time job as a cleaning lady for this engineer guy, and they strike a good work relationship. When her time is up, she on a whim suggests becoming his live-in wife, purely professionally, basically continuing to do her cleaning work while getting a roof over her head while she continues to look for a job — and he accepts! What follows is an outstanding manga about adulthood and relationships. It follows multiple characters in various walks of life as they navigate the tough modern dating landscape. It is perhaps the most mature romance manga I’ve encountered, and does an amazing job conveying positive relationships. In 2021 I’d gushed about how great the communication was in Sweat and Soap, and this manga might do it even better.
A truly excellent manga that more people should try. Do it!
You and I Are Polar Opposites (2024-) — Kocha Agasawa
Personal score: 8/10
This is my Skip & Loafer pick of the year. It feels straight out of that DNA: it’s a school slice-of-life manga with a primary focus on romance, with the POV often switching to focus on the various characters in the cast. The title led me to believe this would be a teasing manga where a situation (“you and I are polar opposites”) is established and the manga never really moves on from that state until the very end where the characters finally confess and get together, but that could not be further from the truth. Early on in volume 1 the characters confess their feelings and become an official couple, and the story keeps evolving after that. The end of most romance stories is just the beginning here. Very much like Sweat and Soap, which I love.
It’s excellently written and the art is super charming, and in the two volumes I’ve read so far it’s firing on all cylinders. It’s looking very promising. Skip & Loafer is now 10 volumes in and hasn’t missed a beat. I’d love for this manga to replicate that success. My only gripe so far is the main male love interest is a bit too shy and hard to read. I want to see more vunerability from this character. I’m very excited to keep following this one and seeing where it goes.
Sunny (2013-2016) — Taiyo Matsumoto
Personal score: 9.0/10
For a long time I’ve had a mixed relationship with Taiyo Matsumoto’s work. The movie adaptation of his manga Tekkonkinkreet, directed by Michael Arias, was a big influence on me. Despite some of its shortcomings, I love so much about it. But, I’ve had trouble getting into the source material, and Taiyo’s other body of work. I feel like the original Tekkon manga has a real jarring tonal inconsistency, not being able to commit to a serious mood, and the narrative feels confusing and it’s accompanied by rough, ugly illustrations. Michael Arias managed to sand off these edges in the movie adaptation, but they feel really sharp when you read the source material. Other early manga of Taiyo’s, like No. 5 and GoGo Monster, share the same problems for me. I just couldn’t get into Taiyo, and I thought that’s just how it was always going to be. However, I decided to give Sunny a shot recently, and am very glad I did, because all my complaints from his previous works are gone, and his newer stuff is masterpiece material.
Sunny is about an orphanage and the lives of the kids who live there. Taiyo’s staple in-media-res storytelling is in full force here, but done much more gracefully, introducing us to a cast of kids who manage to feel painfully human and relatable, and sketching out their various situations and dramas. It tells personal vignettes with an incredible flair, doing it in ways that feel like only manga could do best. His sketchy style has evolved to produce some quite compelling images, and it reminds me of authors like Yoshida Motoi’s work on Koi Kaze. It feels like after 2010 or so his work just made a radical shift, and anything he seems to touch now is gold. I’ve been checking out his newest manga, Tokyo These Days, and it’s incredible so far. Expect it on next year’s list.
Guyabano Holiday (2022) — panpanya
panpanya is one of the most unique manga authors out there today. The stuff she writes is unlike any other artist. To try to encapsulate it in a way that hopefully doesn’t do it too much disservice, her work is largely made up of slice-of-life vignettes bathed in magical realism. The stories are both fantastical and extremely relatable. The art is experimental, mixing different tools and techniques and changing them on a whim. And chapters are bookended by candid musings on life. The whole package has this air of a whimsy, and it’s just wonderful.
This author previously published An Invitation From a Crab, a book that feels like the natural predecessor to this one, and is the one you should probably seek out first as an introduction to this author.
Kokkoku – Moment by Moment (2008-2014) — Seita Horio
Personal score: 8.5/10
Last but not least, I’m featuring 2 manga by Seita Horio, an author that’s instantly become one of my all time favorites. His work has so much about it that I love. His stories are sci-fi tales that start out localized and small, but spiral into amazing epics. Horio’s art is unassuming at first, but look closer and you see a painstaking amount of detail in every page, with tons of lovingly rendered backgrounds and a slew of striking compositions. The plots are unusual and weird to explain to people (as you’ll see), but the execution is excellent, and the characters are super well written, and the yarns he spins are just so fun to read. I could see him becoming a huge cult hit author, but sadly his manga have been relegated to digital-only English releases, so it’s hard to find. I’d like that to change. His work is so exciting, I need more people to check it out.
A little bit about this manga in specific. Kokkoku is the story of a woman who learns her family holds a secret relic that has the ability to stop time. When her brother and nephew are kidnapped one day, Grandpa reveals this to her and activates the artifact, stopping time for everyone except the both of them. As they soon come to learn, they’re not the only ones who’re able to move in this timestill, and things get more mysterious and more dangerous as crazy events unfold.
This manga was a pure treat to read. I would continue to gush about it, but I think I said my piece, and I want to gush about Horio’s other manga too.
Golden Gold (2015-) – Seita Horio
Personal score: 9.0/10
Golden Gold is probably my favorite find of the last 2 years. It’s the story of this girl who lives in some tiny podunk island, whose heart is broken when the boy she loves reveals he intends to go live in the mainland with his dad because all the cool comic shops are there. Then, one day she finds this washed up ugly doll, and thinks it might be related to the religious shrines on the island, and decides to clean it up and return it to one. With heartbreak fresh in her mind, she mutters under her breath how she wishes one of those big comic shops could be built on the island, so the boy she crushes on would stay. Little does she know, the ugly doll turns out to be a lost god of fortune, and her prayer has formed an invisible contract with it, making the god come to life, and acting to make her wish come true. Soon enough, the island starts experiencing a supernatural turn of fortune, but with it come dangerous unforeseen consequences, as the unstoppable force will do anything necessary to achieve its goal, and it seems like it might all be more than she bargained for.
It’s a ridiculous story, but it’s super well done and fascinating to read. It’s touching and relatable, but at the same time also huge and fantastical. The story is so unpredictable, you never know where it might go, and the rising stakes keep it tense and exciting. Despite the weird covers, the art inside is lavish and great.
Unfortunately this manga has been on a multi-year hiatus since the release of volume 9. I dearly hope this is not the end, but even if it does end here, man, what a freaking cool manga this is. If they released this physically in English I would snatch it up in an instant. I’ve been trying to get my hands on the JP version, but with post-covid shipping rates, it’s rough. Anyways, yeah. This is now one of those manga I just reach for instantly when I think of my favorites. It’s rad, and I need everyone to read it.
Movies:
I’ve continued my tradition of doing movie nights every Saturday (anyone can join us on the Discord!), and in the last couple of years we found a bunch of cool movies. Here’s most of my favorites!
They Cloned Tyrone (2023)
Personal score: 8.5/10
A drug dealer gets killed one day after an errand and awakens the next day with no memory of his death. When he goes to do his errands for the day (again), the people he meets rightfully act like they’ve seen a ghost. An unlikely group teams up to try to get to the bottom of what’s going on, and they end up uncovering something much bigger than themselves.
This movie was super fun! I saw this originally recommended by Cinefix on youtube last year, and it was a terrific movie. It’s very odd in plot and style, but it really commits to it, and the whole production is top notch. I’d say this feels almost Tarantino-esque.
Big recommend!
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)
Personal score: 9/10
What the fuck, why is this movie so good?! I heard good things about this movie the whole year, but I wasn’t prepared for it to actually be this good. It doesn’t do anything super unique in terms of plot — anthropomorphic kitty goes on an epic fantasy adventure to acquire a mcguffin to restore his 9 lives — but the execution is just spectacular. The writing in particular does everything right, with great characters, dialogue, and story progression. And the animation is full of charm and well executed comedy bits.
One of the best 3D animated movies to date!
A Hero (2021)
Personal score: 8.5/10
In a previous year I covered A Separation, a movie by Asghar Farhadi, which I loved (one of my few 10/10s!), and since then I’ve been trying his other films. Farhadi is fond of messy tales about morality, and this movie is another great example of that.
In A Hero, a man has been imprisoned for not being able to pay back his debt. During a two-day leave, he finds a lost wallet full of gold, and thinks it may be the key to settling the debt and solving his problems. However, after some deliberating, he decides to put out the word and finds the woman and returns her the wallet. The story gets picked up by the media, and the man turns into a local celebrity where he is lauded for his good deed. Unfortunately for him, he’d promised his creditor a bunch of money that now he has no way of paying, and when the creditor casts doubt on his story, and details of the events are scrutinized, more and more questions start popping up.
This movie has some very juicy scenes of moral quandaries. I think the lendor character is especially good, and really makes this movie shine, despite his limited appearances.
Definitely give this a try if you enjoy some juicy slice-of-life drama.
The Salesman (2016)
Personal score: 8.5/10
Another great Farhadi movie!
A couple’s apartment building begins to collapse, forcing all residents to evaquate. A work friend tells them about this place they can rent, and the two move in. One day, the while the husband is away at work, the woman gets assaulted in their home, and the mystery becomes about finding out what happened and who the assailant was.
In true Farhadi fashion, there’s lots of juicy moral quandaries, and the mystery plot does a great job progressing and then culminating satisfyingly. Great movie!
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Personal score: 7/10
In the Irish countryside, one man’s world is turned upside down when his lifelong best friend one day tells him he no longer wants to be his friend and wishes to cease all communication with him.
This is such a strange and fascinating movie, going places you just can’t possibly predict, and it’s backed by a great production that makes this a really entertaining watch.
My Dinner With Andre (1981)
Personal score: 7/10
You know those Tarantino scenes with extended conversations, where it feels like the characters are actually having a natural conversation and it’s not just lines to move the plot forward? This movie is like that, but for its entire runtime. Two old friends get together for a dinner date, and the movie is about that span of 2 hours.
The reason this isn’t scored higher for me is because the first half of the movie feels weak, with lots of ramblings about Andre’s vision quests. I personally don’t have much patience for indulging in the religious and the occult — a bit of a pet peeve of mine — so the first hour felt like a bunch of nonsense. But the second hour really redeems this film, when our protagonist steps in and provides his perspective on matters, and the two end up having some really cool (and surprisingly relevant to modern times) conversations.
If this kind of movie idea sounds cool, definitely watch this, but be prepared for a possibly dull first hour.
Red Rooms (2023)
Personal score: 8/10
A professional model and hobbyist hacker grows a morbid fascination with a high profile murder case being trialed in her city. She attends the hearings and becomes increasingly absorbed in the sordid affair. Voyeurism turns to obsession and compulsion, and she becomes more involved than she intended.
This is my thriller of the year. Your butthole will be puckered watching this. It’s so deliciously dark and tense. Great movie!
Penguin Highway (2018)
Personal score: 8.5/10
When penguins start appearing in his town, a budding boy genius goes in search for answers, and ends up unwravelling a fantastical mystery.
This movie feels sort of in the vein of a Makoto Shinkai, but more lighthearted and fun. It’s super well produced, and, fun fact, it’s directed by the guy who made Fumiko’s Confession! Wonderful anime movie.
Enter The Void (2009)
Personal score: 7/10
If you look up reviews for this movie, you see a bunch of nonsensical ramblings by stoners, and you get the idea that it’s only enjoyable if you’re blasted. It’s unfortunate, because it’s actually a pretty cool movie.
During a drug bust gone wrong, this guy gets shot in a bathroom, and the movie is largely about his fleeting moment before death, as his spirit leaves his body and travels through space and time. The writing in this movie is sort of whatever. What’s cool about it is the cinematography. The VFX techniques used are so freaking cool and innovative. You’d want to watch a whole documentary on how they did it.
If you want to see something unique, try this.
Death Proof (2007)
Personal score: 8/10
A retired stunt driver who targets young women one day decides to target the wrong girls.
This is a fun-ass Tarantino movie, with deliciously fun and gory action set pieces. Not much more to say. It’s just great!
Django Unchained (2012)
Personal score: 8/10
A slave gets offered freedom in exchange for helping a bounty hunter find some wanted criminals. Fortunately for the slave, the people who the bounty hunter is tracking are the people who tortured him and separated him from his girl, and the movie is about his quest for liberation and revenge.
Also not a ton to say, just another fun Tarantino movie, bless that man. There’s so few like him.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Personal score: 8/10
A man dies at his doorstep, and the wife is brought to trial as the sole suspect of his murder. A messy courtroom drama ensues, with the couple’s blind son caught in the middle.
Well produced juicy mystery drama. Recommended!
Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Personal score: 8/10
When his brother passes away, the protagonist is brought back to his old home town to care for his brother’s son and deal with the belongings. In doing so, the tragic past he’s tried to bury comes bubbling back up to the surface.
This is a heavy drama piece, really well executed, and with some particularly nerdy writing touches that I loved. There’s some really powerful scenes in this movie, and one in particular is freaking 11/10 material. Really cool movie, but be warned, it’s heavy!
Only Yesterday (1991)
Personal score: 9/10
It’s curious to me that my favorite Ghibli movies seem to be the ones not directed by Miyazaki. No disrespect to the man, but Goro’s take on From Up On Poppy Hill just tugs at my sensibilities much more than any of the dad’s fantastical adventures. And now, case in point, Isao Takahata’s Only Yesterday struck the same cord for me. It’s so beautiful, and intimate, and relatable, with gorgeous illustrations of everyday life, and it encapsulates the human experience in a perfect bittersweet way. I loved it! It’s now in my top 3 Ghiblis.
My Neighbors The Yamadas (1999)
Personal score: 8/10
This isn’t so much a full length story as it is a bunch of shorts stitched together, but they’re so wonderful and relatable, and so beautifully animated that it makes for a great movie. The art in particular is outstanding, with an animation style that I haven’t quite seen before, and that must’ve been an insane amount of work to animate. Even by today’s standards this movie looks incredible. Another Isao Takahata gem!
Paterson (2016)
Personal score: 9/10
Gentle slice-of-life story of a man who drives a bus for a living, writes poetry for fun in his off time, and has a loving girlfriend.
There’s this feeling that permeates the movie where like, Paterson seemingly has a perfect life — he has a woman he loves, he has this hobby he’s passionate about, he doesn’t hate his job, and has no bigger problems to deal with like some other people he knows. He’s ostensibly living his best life. What more could you want? And yet, you can’t help but shake this feeling that he’s thinking about it and being like “is this it? Is this what life is? Am I happy? Is this okay?” I think this movie manages to capture this feeling very well. It’s a beautiful and bittersweet movie full of humanity. I feel like some people might not appreciate this quality about the movie, or feel like they don’t really get it, but it really resonated with me. I loved it.
Past Lives (2023)
Personal score: 10/10
Two young classmates with a budding crush on each other are suddenly split apart when the girl’s family decides to emmigrate for work. 12 years later, then college age, the two reconnect through social media, rekindling their feelings from childhood, but life happens, and the two end up estranged again. Now in the present, another 12 years in the future, the guy is coming to spend a few days vacation in New York, where she lives, and the two decide to meet and catch up. What ensues is a beautiful story of love, life, and heartbreak.
This is the only 10/10 rating on the list, a rating I almost never give out. It’s my favorite movie of the past two years, and now one of my favorites of all time. I love it so much that I feel like whatever I say will do it a disservice, but I will say that if you enjoy a good bittersweet romance, and some really good dialogue, then you might fall in love with this movie too. There’s a couple nitpicks I could levy at it, but they’re so minor compared to its amazing achievements that it’s basically a perfect score for me. What a movie.
Music:
I listened to so much music the past couple years that I couldn’t possibly write about all the albums I enjoyed, or even list them all. Instead, I will only pick albums that I compulsively listened to for a while, and still replay here and there. The real jimmies.
Stream regulars will probably recognize most of these albums.
First up, bands I already knew that released some great new music!
pulses. – [2023] It Wasn’t Supposed To Be Like This
pulses. feel like they’ve reached their final form, and their new album is a ton of fun. Their upbeat post-hardcore sound is so polished now, and you’re guaranteed to have a good time every time you put it on. It really evokes the fun vibe that I loved from their 2017 album Bouquet, but with extra polish. My short interactions with the band have also been great, so I really wish these dudes all the best. Check ’em out.
Hot Mulligan – [2023] Why Would I Watch
Another band that feels like they’ve reached their final form. I’ll be honest, prior to this I thought this band was just good, but now they’re great. You cannot put this record down once you start. A good mix of fun and emo post-hardcore jams, littered with earworms.
Dwellings – [2023] Little Garden
I’ve been foaming at the mouth, waiting for new music from Dwellings for years, and it finally happened! And it’s just as awesome as you expected it was going to be. A band that just can do no wrong. Everything they put out is post-hardcore gold. I just hope the next album doesn’t take another 5 years.😭
Darko US – [2024] Starfire
Another year where Darko makes it to my list. They’ve been absolutely cranking it with their output, and I especially love this new album. I think what makes Darko so pallatable for me, despite being deathcore, is how they mix so many different styles. It’s heavy as fuck, but it’s also super groovy, and songs are peppered with little hooks that make repeat listens really enjoyable. I was playing this album almost every day for a solid few weeks.
Okay, and now here are my most infectious new discoveries!
Blanket – [2021] Modern Escapism
These past couple years I got really into shoegaze and black metal. Their dreamy, meditative quality is like a soft blanket for the brain. Which makes this band’s name perfect for this kind of music. I challenge you not to have the most chill time listening to this album. It’s not possible.
Lantlôs – [2021] Wildhund
The next black metal-adjacent album that I’ve gotten obsessed with is Lantlôs’ newest record. Again, just the most immaculately chill vibes. It’s a bit of an odd album, but the more I listen to it the more I love it. Old fans of the band seem to prefer Melting Sun, the band’s former album from 2014, and I can certainly see why that would be, since it sounds a bit different. But, having started with this one, this is the clear favorite for me. I really hope there’s more of this band in the future. It’s gorgeous stuff.
Asunojokei – [2022] Island
This might be in the top 3 albums I replayed the most in the last two years. This band takes black metal and shoegaze and blends it with Japanese rock sensibilities in a formula that’s so unique and enthralling, I could not stop listening to it. I don’t know how they can follow up this behemoth, but I’m very excited to see them try. I’m a music ignoramus so I can’t explain why this album is so cool, but I can tell you I absolutely love this. Also, shoutout to that spectacular cover art. We need more anime girls in metal album covers.
Lobby Boxer – [2024] Head Shoulders Knuckles Floor
I don’t rightfully know how to categorize Lobby Boxer, to be honest with you. It has a weird sound that I can’t pin down, but it has a quality to it that just grows on me the more I listen to it. It’s fun and energetic and kind of dorky. Give this album a shot, as well as their previous EP, Eugene’s Preference. It’s a really cool rock project.
Bad Rabbits – [2023] Garden Of Eden
A common method for me to find new bands is to stalk the bands I already know and love, and see who they’re touring with and promoting. One day when stalking Origami Button (incredible band, and they released an awesome new EP in 2024 you should check out!) I saw them mention Bad Rabbits as an inspiration, and it was love at first sight. I can totally see the inspiration. They are fun, they are groovy as hell, and the vocalist has the voice of an angel. Awesome band.
Rome Hero Foxes – [2016] For When You’re Falling Backwards
Pretty much all their discography is dope, but I am partial to their 2016 album in particular. This band puts out the most beautiful emo rock jams. They’re wonderful, and I hope to see much more of them in the future. Give them some love.
Little Geronimo – [2022] Celebration
I think I might have first listened to them before 2023 actually, but fuck it, it’s my list, I’ll do what I want. This is another beautiful emo rock band that I play more and more, and that needs more love. Go listen to them!
Forests – [2022] Get In Losers, We’re Going to Eternal Damnation
This is one of the other top 3 bands I played the most in the past two years. I am obsessed with Forests. These dudes from Singapore have this quality to their emo rock jams that I can’t put my finger on, but I find absolutely infectious. Their youthful spirit and bittersweet lyrics make for a perfect combination. I have almost the entire lyrics from this album stuck in my head. I need more Forests in my life. Please protect these boys at all costs.
Winona Forever – [2024] Sound Argument
You knew it was coming. My absolute biggest music obsession of the past year, without a doubt, has been Winona Forever. Ever since I stumbled on their 2019 album Feelgood and their 2023 album Acrobat, I have been on another plane of existence. And then, during the height of my obsession, they release this new masterpiece. Holy shit. Their songs are beautiful and technical and catchy, and like Forests, they just have this je ne sais quois quality that I love.
Friend and stream regular Raidanos also got hooked on this band with me, and recently attended one of their shows, and managed to produce this incredible picture. I am still incredulous looking at it. I wish I could have met the band in person too. They seem awesome.
I dearly hope we see much more music from them in the future.
And that is it!! Holy moly, this turned out huge. The reason I didn’t write one of these last year is because my hand wasn’t doing so good. Thankfully, this year it’s been doing better, and I’ve been able to catch up and was able to write a lot more.
I enjoy reading and listening to other peoples’ favorites lists, and I hope you get some enjoyment out of mine too. A big reason I do these is because I want to give more exposure to projects I care about. I think now more than ever it’s important to support people doing cool creative work. It’s not an easy landscape out there, and I want to do my part to help. I’d appreciate it if you checked out the stuff I mentioned, especially the smaller indie ones. They deserve the love.
Here’s to a 2025 filled with more exciting art. If you have any comments or feedback, feel free to post them in the comments, or anywhere you can reach me. Love you.
Kuro ❤
