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Favorite Media of 2023

For the 14th time (following 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022), here then is my entirely subjective compilation of favorite media I devoured over the past year. The main rule? It only contains things that were released in 2023, which of course means there’s tons I’ve missed (or haven’t had time to get to yet) that I’ll end up enjoying in the years to come, but I still find it to be a fun exercise to do, and hopefully it acts as recommendations for others. For each category I include a top 5 in alphabetical order, and then include a few honorable mentions (also in alphabetical order) if warranted. Let’s jump in.

Favorite Games
The biggest change in my gaming life this past year was getting a Steam Deck, which finally gave me the opportunity to play PC games in a big way (and I later even got an Asus ROG Ally, to play PC games from the Epic Games Store, PC Game Pass, Ubisoft Connect, and even Steam stuff that doesn’t run on the Deck). That also meant that a lot of what I played was from previous years, as I dove into a lot of things that I had in my Steam library, and added a lot as well. But this is representative of my favorite games that were released in 2023, including stuff like MK8, Vampire Survivors, and Warframe because they received new content.

  • Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo Switch)
  • Pikmin 4 (Nintendo Switch)
  • Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo Switch)
  • The Crew Motorfest (Xbox Series S)
  • The Making of Karateka (PC)

Honorable Mentions: Hi-Fi Rush (Xbox Series S), Jusant (Xbox Series S/PC), Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (Xbox Series S/PC), Metroid Prime: Remastered (Nintendo Switch), Parnanormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (PC), Planet of Lana (Xbox Series S), The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Nintendo Switch), Vampire Survivors (PC), Warframe (Xbox Series S)

Favorite Movies
Looking at my favorite films of the year you’d think I just like stuff that’s action-related, but I definitely watch more older films than I do new ones, and continue to do my year-based movie marathons — this time for 1983 and 1993 (still ongoing), and you can see my faves from those years below — as well as my October horror marathon.

  • John Wick: Chapter 4
  • Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
  • The Creator
  • The Killer

Honorable Mentions: A Haunting in Venice, Barbie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Nimona, Shortcomings, The Covenant, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Wingwomen (Voleuses)

Favorite Movies of 1983

  • National Lampoon’s Vacation
  • Never Say Never Again
  • Octopussy
  • The Dead Zone
  • Trading Places

Favorite Movies of 1993

  • Dazed and Confused
  • Sonatine
  • The Firm
  • The Fugitive
  • The Scent of Green Papaya

Favorite TV
The biggest change this year is that despite the fact that my absolute favorite thing to watch every week continues to be all of the AEW weekly pro wrestling shows (Dynamite, Rampage, and Collision), it always takes up one of my top 5 slots, and since it’s live content and I watch it via a streaming service (Triller TV), I’m moving that to what used to just be my “Web” category (where I already include F1 anyway). Also, I’d say this is probably the strongest top 5 I can remember having, as I loved all of these series incredibly and equally.

  • Copenhagen Cowboy
  • Poker Face
  • Scavengers Reign
  • The Bear
  • Welcome to Wrexham

Honorable Mentions: Ahsoka, A Murder at the End of the World, Blue Eye Samurai, Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story, Break Point, Citadel, Drive to Survive, Sanctuary, The Makanai

Favorite Anime Series
Another great year for anime, with a few returning series with new seasons. I think the biggest surprise has been Frieren, as I don’t generally like fantasy series, but his one just feels so different and special.

  • Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
  • Jujutsu Kaisen
  • Phoenix: Eden17
  • Pluto
  • SPY x FAMILY

Honorable Mentions: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury, Nier Automata

Favorite Web/Sports
I’m updating this category this year to include both web content and sports, which I was sort of already doing by including F1 TV in previous years, but I want to move all pro wrestling content here (instead of in the “TV” category).

Favorite Albums
Last year I feel like I included way too many records in the honorable mentions section, so this year I’m trying to highlight just records I think I really listened to the most, or that I feel were really favorites — there are probably many I’m missing, but this is stuff I quite enjoyed that came out in 2023.

  • Anything in Return – Instrumentals (Toro y Moi)
  • Crispy Crunchy Nothing (Packs)
  • Get Up Sequences Part Two (The Go! Team)
  • Off Planet (Django Django)
  • Pedestal EP (Fraulein)

Honorable Mentions: Flowers at Your Feet (Rahill), Parade (Takeshi Nakatsuka), Paris-Hawaï (La Femme), Sandhills EP (Toro y Moi)

Favorite Tracks
I haven’t included a “Tracks” category in years since I found it hard to remember what tracks I really liked more than others, especially since I tend to listen to albums, but this year I did some digging via Apple Music, and I think these are tracks that stood out for me over the past year.

  • “4th of July” (Packs)
  • “Big Cool” (Fraulein)
  • “Complete Me (feat. Self Esteem)” (Django Django)
  • “Gemini” (The Go! Team)
  • “The Weasel” (Young Jesus)

Honorable Mentions: “Give a Little Time” (Belle and Sebastian), “Ladies and Pac-Man” (Takeshi Nakatsuka)

Favorite Podcasts
The only change this year is the inclusion of the 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s podcast, which I came across a couple of months ago, and have enjoyed immensely, as I continue to dig back into the archives.

  • 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s
  • All Songs Considered
  • Pop Culture Happy Hour
  • Pure TokyoScope
  • Whatculture Wrestling

Favorite Comics
This year I found myself enjoying the books of Mark Millar again, which I had stopped reading years ago, and so found myself catching up on many of his series (and include here his books that came out in 2023). It’s also amazing to me how much I continue to enjoy Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe series, which just re-launched with a new publisher (but continuing the issue count from back in the 80s).

  • Batman Off-World
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
  • The Ambassadors
  • Usagi Yojimbo (Ice and Snow, Lone Goat and Kid)
  • Void Rivals

Honorable Mentions: Batman: Gargoyle of Gotham, Big Game, Creepshow, Cyberpunk 2077: XOXO, Geiger: Ground Zero, G.O.D.S., Groo (Gods Against Groo, In the Wild), Hexagon Bridge, Junkyard Joe, Nemesis Reloaded, Night Club, The Forged, The Human Target, The Ministry of Compliance, Wonder Woman

Favorite BDs
I feel like there are quite a few other bandes-dessinées (French language comics) that came out in 2023 that I haven’t had a chance to read yet and that could end up being in this list, but this at least serves as a round-up of things that I really enjoyed so far.

  • Adieu Aaricia (Thorgal Saga, Tome 1)
  • Azur noir (XIII Trilogy – Jones, Tome 1)
  • Bellatrix – Épisode 1
  • Scotland – Épisode 2 (Kenya, Saison 4)
  • Vertiges (Europa, Tome 2)

Honorable Mentions: Danitza 1965 (La Fortune des Winczlav, Tome 3), Le retour de Lagaffe (Gaston, Tome 22), L’Iris Blanc (Astérix, Tome 40)

Favorite Magazines
No change here from last year. I still read a lot of magazines via Apple News+, but at the same time, I don’t find many that I truly love (I browse a lot of them), but these are the ones I tend to read more, with Monocle remaining my top choice.

  • Edge
  • Empire
  • Monocle
  • SFX
  • Total Film
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Favorite Media of 2022

Oh how I love it so, taking time to think about all of the wonderful media I enjoyed over the past year, this time for the 12th consecutive year (following 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021). Yes, this is a highly subjective list of my favorite things I took in this year, and it’s not exhaustive, as it is only based on what I was able to consume throughout the year. The only strict rule is that it must have come out during 2022 (with a little wink to my annual movie marathons), which is why I don’t include board games or books, as I’m not as “of the year” for those. Each category is made up of a top five (in alphabetical order), followed by a few honorable mentions if warranted.

Here we go.

Favorite Games
What surprised me while making this list is that although I played tons of games over the past year (many via Game Pass or picked up on the Nintendo eShop on sale), I didn’t actually play that many proper 2022 releases — and I also saw myself embarking on an Assassin’s Creed kick by replaying both Origins and Odyssey a second time. If I were to pick an absolute favorite game for the year, it would be Vampire Survivors — even though it’s not a type of game I usually gravitate towards, I found myself absolutely obsessed with it, needing to complete all the achievements (which I did for the DLC as well). I also include Mario Kart 8 due to the track DLC released this year, and would have liked to include Cyberpunk 2077, which I finally played this past year following the latest patch, and it ended up being one of my favorite games played in recent years.

  • Grid Legends (Xbox Series S)
  • Mario Kart 8 (Nintendo Switch)
  • Marvel Snap (Mobile)
  • Pentiment (Xbox Series S)
  • Vampire Survivors (Xbox Series S)

Honorable Mentions: As Dusk Falls (Xbox Series S), Immortality (Xbox Series S), Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope (Nintendo Switch)

Favorite Movies
This was certainly a great year for movies, and I got to see more new releases than I normally would due to the accelerated digital releases we get these days. And as with previous years, I include top 5s for some of the movie marathons I did (1982, 1992, Zhang Yimou), just for fun.

  • Carter
  • Decision to Leave
  • Everything Everywhere All at Once
  • RRR
  • Top Gun: Maverick

Honorable Mentions: Apollo 10 1/2, Barbarian, Jackass Forever/Jackass 4.5, Men, Metal Lords, Pearl, Prey, Studio 666, Terrifier 2, The Batman, Watcher

Favorite Movies of 1982

  • Blade Runner
  • E.T.
  • Fast Times at Ridgemont High
  • The Thing
  • Tron

Favorite Movies of 1992

  • A Few Good Men
  • Patriot Games
  • Reservoir Dogs
  • Strictly Ballroom
  • Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Favorite Films of Zhang Yimou

  • Hero
  • Ju Dou
  • Raise the Red Lantern
  • Red Sorghum
  • Shadow

Favorite TV
Every year I include the AEW pro wrestling shows Dynamite and Rampage in my top 5 because I love them so, although I sometimes feel like I shouldn’t include them since everything else are scripted shows. I think Irma Vep, Better Call Saul, and Severance were absolutely my other favorite shows this past year, and the last spot could have been taken up by any number of shows included in my honorable mentions — but She-Hulk was a fun surprise, and a joy to watch.

  • AEW Dynamite/AEW Rampage
  • Better Call Saul
  • Irma Vep
  • Severance
  • She-Hulk

Honorable Mentions: Andor, House of the Dragon, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Primal, Peacemaker, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Sandman, Tales From the Territories, That Dirty Black Bag, Tokyo Vice, We Own This City

Favorite Anime Series
This category comes and goes, as there are years where I don’t watch much anime, but this past year has been quite a strong year, and I’ve found myself watching many of these (everything in the top 5 except Cyberpunk) with my wife, who loves them as well.

  • Chainsaw Man
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch of Mercury
  • Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
  • Pop Epic Team
  • SPY x FAMILY

Honorable Mentions: Ghost in the Shell, Summer Time Rendering, Uncle From Another World, Vampire in the Garden

Favorite Web Series/Channels
This category has pretty much turned into nothing but pro wrestling related content — the various AEW series, plus Being the Elite and KanaChanTV — except for Formula 1 racing, which I watch via a subscription to the F1 TV website/app.

Favorite Music
My list of honorable mentions is a bit extensive here, but hey, no music no life. Although I always just include albums, there are certainly songs I’ve specifically enjoyed a lot this year, but I’m not able to properly track them. And my most listened to album this past year is easily Maki Nomiya’s New Beautiful. And yes, three albums by Guided by Voices, so what.

  • Beatopia (Beabadoobee)
  • Household Name (Momma)
  • Mahal (Toro y Moi)
  • New Beautiful (Maki Nomiya)
  • Talk Talk Talk (The Paranoyds)

Honorable Mentions: Alpha Zulu (Phoenix), Back on the Music (Paul Cherry), Barbara (Barrie), Cheat Codes (Danger Mouse & Black Thought), Counterpoint (Tomggg), Crystal Nuns Cathedral (Guided by Voices), Domestic Fantasy (Hook-Ups), Du haut du 33e étage EP (Bertrand Burgalat), Dutronc & Dutronc (Thomas Dutronc & Jacques Dutronc), Get Back: The Rooftop Performance (The Beatles), Golden Apples (Golden Apples), Growing Up (The Linda Lindas), Happy Now (Thick), Hello (μ-Ziq), Hello, Hi (Ty Segall), Here with You (Tahiti 80), In Cinerama (April March), Laurel Hell (Mitski), Let England Shake – Demos (PJ Harvey), Multitude (Stromae), Plasma (Perfume), Pompeii (Cate Le Bon), Scalping the Guru (Guided by Voices), Sexy (Coco & Clair Clair), Slight Variations (Fujiya & Miyagi), Steady (Sloan), Strata Records: The Sound of Detroit (Jazzanova), Teatro Lucido (La Femme), Tremblers and Goggles by Rank (Guided by Voices), World Wide Pop (Superoganism)

Favorite Podcasts
The two new entries this year are also my current favorites: the TokyoScope spinoff series Pure TokyoScope, that brings together Patrick Macias and Matt Alt (the episodes they did together on the original TokyoScope podcast were always the best anyway), and Video Archives, the new movie discussion podcast with Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery.

  • All Songs Considered
  • Pop Culture Happy Hour
  • Pure TokyoScope
  • Video Archives
  • Whatculture Wrestling

Favorite Comics
I feel like I slowed down a bit when it comes to comics this past year, and so no honorable mentions — and the Usagi Yojimbo mention includes both the ongoing new series, as well as the color reprints of old material.

  • Batman
  • Do a Powerbomb
  • Shaolin Cowboy: Cruel to be Kin
  • The Human Target
  • Usagi Yojimbo

Favorite BDs
Although I consistently read a lot of BDs (bandes-dessinées, or French language comics), in the past year or two I didn’t include the category because I wasn’t reading a lot of new releases, but this past year I was able to include a few choice titles that I quite enjoyed.

  • Cuba, où tout a commencé (XIII, Tome 28)
  • La mort de Spirou (Spirou et Fantasio, Tome 56)
  • NeptuneÉpisode 1, 2
  • Scotland – Episode 1 (Kenya – Saison 4)
  • Tom & Lisa 1910 (La Fortune des Winczlav, Tome 2)

Favorite Magazines
The biggest change in the list this year is that I finally stopped buying/subscribing to the physical edition of Monocle, and switched over to a digital subscription (due to my move to China). Everything else I continue to read though my Apple News+ subscription.

  • Edge
  • Empire
  • Monocle
  • SFX
  • Total Film

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Favorite Media of 2021

I’m sharing this later than usual, but yes, this year again (following 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020) I’ve compiled a comprehensive and highly subjective list of my favorite media, this time for the year 2021 — that means I limit it to media that was released in 2021, which of course means that there are things that simply don’t make the list because I haven’t yet had a chance to take them in. For every category I start with an alphabetical top 5, followed by honorable mentions. Here we go.

Favorite Games
This year, I again remove the separate mobile games section, since I really didn’t find myself playing a lot of them — if I did any gaming on my phone, it was doing remote play with my Xbox Series S and playing with my Backbone One controller (which I absolutely love). And why is Assassin’s Creed Valhalla there? I really became obsessed with the game in December of 2021 (playing over 100 hours), and since that includes the DLC that was released during the year, I feel it’s warranted to include it.

  • Art of Rally (Xbox Series S)
  • Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (Xbox Series S)
  • Far Cry 6 (Xbox Series S)
  • Forza Horizon 5 (Xbox Series S)
  • The Gunk (Xbox Series S)

Honorable Mentions: Genesis Noir (Xbox Series S), Hextech Mayhem (Nintendo Switch), It Takes Two (Xbox Series S), Psychonauts 2 (Xbox Series S), Riders Republic (Xbox Series S), Ruined King (Nintendo Switch), Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury (Nintendo Switch), The Artful Escape (Xbox Series S), The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Nintendo Switch), Yakuza: Like a Dragon (Xbox Series S)

Favorite Movies
I feel like my top 5 this year is pretty strong, as the latest Bond film was terrific, I think The French Dispatch is the best Wes Anderson film so far, and I think The Summit of the Gods is one of the best films I’ve ever watched. If you want to see most of what I watched over the year along with my ratings and reviews, you can check me on Letterboxd (although I only started using it in May). I’ve also continued to do my year-based movie marathons, so I include top 5s for both 1981 and 1991.

  • No Time to Die
  • The French Dispatch
  • The Harder They Fall
  • The Sparks Brothers
  • The Summit of the Gods

Honorable Mentions: Evangelion 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, Dune, Jolt, The Green Knight, The Story of Film: A New Generation, The Suicide Squad, Titane

Favorite Movies of 1981

  • Escape from New York
  • For Your Eyes Only
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark
  • The Decline of Western Civilization
  • The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2)

Favorite Movies of 1991

  • Cape Fear
  • Point Break
  • Raise the Red Lantern
  • The Last Boy Scout
  • The Silence of the Lambs

Favorite TV
Yet another great year for TV, and I have a feeling I’ve probably forgotten to include things I really enjoyed. I continue to be a huge fan of AEW wrestling, so those two weekly shows continue to be my favorite thing to watch, but directly behind would be The Beatles’ Get Back documentary, which absolutely mesmerized me. I don’t include it here because it doesn’t seem to fit as a “series,” but my other obsession is F1 racing, and I watched every single race of the 2021 season live.

  • AEW Dynamite/AEW Rampage
  • Arcane
  • Dexter: New Blood
  • The Beatles: Get Back
  • The Book of Boba Fett

Honorable Mentions: City of Ghosts, Cobra Kai, Foundation, Hawkeye, Heels, Loki, Only Murders in the Building, PEN15, Servant, Star Wars: Visions, Ted Lasso, The Last Pirate Kingdom, The Wheel of Time, WandaVision, We Are Lady Parts, What We Do in the Shadows, Yellowjackets

Favorite Web Series
As with last year, my web video content (all from YouTube) is heavily wrestling-related, along with the Formula 1 channel (that I love for the pre-race First Practice and Qualifying highlights), and the excellent Power On, a 6-part documentary about Xbox.

Honorable Mentions: Fake Name No Gimmicks, Whatculture Wrestling

Favorite Music
This is certainly the category where I had the hardest time narrowing it down to a top 5 albums for the year — it could easily have been a top 10. But yes, there’s a lot of music that I enjoyed this year, and my honorable mentions list could easily have been longer, but I tried to keep it down to the stuff I feel like I listened to the most.

  • Asakusa Light (Soichi Terada)
  • Cold Brew (Sam Mehran)
  • Escapades (Gaspard Auge & Justice)
  • First Flight to Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings (Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers)
  • Paradigmes (La Femme)

Honorable Mentions: Another Side of John Coltrane (John Coltrane), Attention (Smaller Hearts), Blood (Juliana Hatfield), Bodies of Water (Moontype), Cheater (Pom Poko), Chering Is Caring (Cher Strauberry), Clang Clang Ho (Cub Scout Bowling Pins), Cozy (Chelmico), Death of a Cheerleader (Pom Pom Squad), Domani (Chip Tanaka), Doomin’ Sun (Bachelor, Jay Som & Palehound), Earth Man Blues (Guided By Voices), Future Past (Duran Duran), Get Up Sequences Part One (The Go! Team), Heaven Beats Iowa (Cub Scout Bowling Pins), It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be The. It Is Them! (Guided By Voices), Marriage (Deap Vally), Palladium (April March & Olivia Jean), Pizzicato Five On Demand (Pizzicato Five), Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea – Demos (PJ Harvey), Take the Cake (Packs), Texis (Sleigh Bells), Van Weezer (Weezer), Wink (Chai)

Favorite Podcasts
This is probably the category that stays the most consistent year in, year out, as I tend to listen to the same podcasts, just dropping or adding 1 or 2 each year.

  • AEW Unrestricted
  • All Songs Considered
  • Pop Culture Happy Hour
  • TokyoScope
  • Whatculture Wrestling

Honorable Mentions: Japan by River Cruise, Talk is Jericho

Favorite Comics
Looking at my list, it’s not hugely different from what I had included last year. I also feel like I’m slowly drifting away from monthly series, and I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point I start reading more via trades. As with every year, I do find a lot of interesting non-superhero things (original graphic novels) to read via year-end “best of” lists, so they never get included here because I read them the following year.

  • Batman
  • Decorum
  • Nightwing
  • The Human Target
  • Usagi Yojimbo (regular series and color reprints)

Honorable Mentions: BRZRKR, Geiger, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, Infinite Frontier, James Bond (Agent of Spectre and Himeros), Strange Adventures

Favorite Magazines
I still read a lot of magazines, pretty much all of them digitally via Apple News+, with the two print exceptions being Monocle (which continues to be my favorite title, along with all of its special spinoff publications) and Orange Crush (an indie magazine about pro wrestling).

  • Edge
  • Empire
  • Monocle
  • Orange Crush
  • Total Film

Honorable Mentions: Retro Gamer, SFX

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Anime Film Games Magazines Music TV Web

Favorite Media of 2020

For the 11th consecutive time (previously: 20102011201220132014201520162017, 2018, and 2019), here’s my massive look-back at all my favorite things that I consumed over the past year. As always, this is limited to things that were released in 2020, and it’s of course HIGHLY subjective — this is not a round-up of the best media of 2020, but rather a look back at stuff I really enjoyed this past year, because I like the exercise of doing it. And that of course means there’s plenty that came out this year that I haven’t yet had the chance to check out, and I’m sure I’m also forgetting things I did enjoy. So be it. Each category is made up of an alphabetical top 5, followed by a few honorable mentions if warranted. I’ve added some new categories, with some disappearing, like board games (because I barely bought anything in 2020, for obvious reasons) and French comics (since I’ve been mostly limited to what’s available digitally from my local library).

Favorite Games
Despite the list below, I will say that the highlight of my gaming year has been getting access to Game Pass when I got my Xbox Series S upon release, and catching up on tons of games I missed out on in recent years. And my most happy game times have been playing Forza Horizon 3 and 4 — these were the games that I was really sad I missed out on since I didn’t have an Xbox One, and it’s been a joy to dig into both over the past couple of months.

  • Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (Xbox Series S)
  • Hades (Switch)
  • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Switch)
  • Yakuza: Like a Dragon (Xbox Series S)
  • Warframe (Xbox Series S)

Honorable Mentions: Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch), Destiny 2: Beyond Light (Xbox Series S), Genshin Impact (PS4), Ghosts of Tsushima (PS4), Watch Dogs Legion (Xbox Series S)

Favorite Mobile Games
This is a category that comes and goes over the years, as some years I end up playing a lot of mobile games (mostly on iPad), and some I don’t. Up until about a month ago, I wasn’t planning on including it, since the majority of iOS gaming I did was on Apple TV with a controller (mostly Apple Arcade games), but then I got the Backbone One controller to use with my iPhone, and since then I’ve absolutely loved playing games on my phone, as it really does feel like I’m playing with a true portable gaming system.

  • Alba
  • Creaks
  • Legends of Runeterra
  • Legend of the Skyfish 2
  • Little Orpheus

Honorable Mentions: Marble Knights, Slash Quest, South of the Circle, The Collage Atlas, The Last Campfire

Favorite Movies
It was obviously a strange year for movies, with a lot of big releases being pushed back. But I did find a lot to like, even though I do probably spend more time watching older movies (through all the movie marathons I do) than I do new releases.

  • Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm
  • Da 5 Bloods
  • Possessor
  • Weathering With You
  • Wolfwalkers

Honorable Mentions: Altered Carbon: Resleeved, Beastie Boys Story, Bill & Ted Face the Music, Color Out of Space, The Go-Go’s, The Invisible Man, You Cannot Kill David Arquette

Favorite Movies of 1990
As I’ve been doing in recent years, here’s a top 5 for one of the movie marathons I did in 2020, for movies from the year 1990 (and I’m not done yet).

  • Die Hard 2
  • Goodfellas
  • Miller’s Crossing
  • Misery
  • Total Recall

Favorite TV
Yet another strong year for TV series, which made it difficult to narrow down what would make it to my top 5. But what is there is truly what I enjoyed the most — and if it had released a day earlier (and not on January 1), I would have included Cobra Kai.

  • AEW Dynamite
  • Long Way Up
  • PEN15
  • Primal
  • The Mandalorian

Honorable Mentions: Altered Carbon, Better Call Saul, Devs, High Fidelity, High Score, Lovecraft Country, Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, Raised by Wolves, Star Trek Discovery, Star Trek Picard, Ted Lasso, The Boys, The Last Dance, The Queen’s Gambit, Tiger King, Westworld, What We Do in the Shadows

Favorite Anime
Even though I’ve gotten back into watching a lot of new anime series as of 1-2 years ago, this is the first time I include it as a category — I guess I finally feel like I’ve watched enough to be able to warrant making a list.

  • Great Pretender
  • Japan Sinks 2020
  • Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
  • Sing “Yesterday” for Me
  • Wave, Listen to Me!

Honorable Mentions: Dragon’s Dogma, Kimetsu no Yaiba, The Millionaire Detective Balance: Unlimited, Woodpecker Detective’s Office

Favorite Web Series
I do still spend a lot of time watching a lot of stuff on YouTube, to a point where this year I finally started paying for YouTube Premium because I couldn’t stand the insane amount of ads anymore. As you can see in my top 5, it’s pretty much all wrestling-related, except for the Formula 1 channel, which I tune in to watch the race previews, as well as First Practice and Qualifier highlights.

Honorable Mentions: “James Bond Revisited,” KanaChanTV (channel), Tokyo Explorer (channel)

Favorite Music
When I look at the automated list that Apple Music creates at the end of the year, it’s pretty much all composed of hard bop, which continues to be what I listen to the most, but I did enjoy quite a few new albums this year, as listed below.

  • Always Tomorrow (Best Coast)
  • Coriky (Coriky)
  • Dry – Demos (PJ Harvey)
  • Earth (EOB)
  • Everything Else Has Gone Wrong (Bombay Bicycle Club)

Honorable Mentions: Causers of This – Instrumentals (Toro y Moi), Domingo (Chip Tanaka), Fake It Flowers (Beabadoobee), Future Past Life (STRFKR), Giant Steps – 60th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition (John Coltrane), Host (Cults), It Is What It Is (Thundercat), Ludi (Chassol), Mordechai (Khruangbin), Mr Experience (Donny Benet), Not From Where I’m Standing (Various Artists), Palo Alto – Live (Thelonious Monk), Seeking Thrills (Georgia), The King of Sudanese Jazz – Habibi Funk 013 (Sharhabil Ahmed), To Bring You My Love – Demos (PJ Harvey)

Favorite Podcasts
As with the web series category, my podcast listening is very wrestling heavy. My favorite new podcast though has been TokyoScope — I get a lot of enjoyment out of listening to Patrick and Matt talk otaku (and Tokyo in general) topics.

  • AEW Unrestricted
  • All Songs Considered
  • Talk Is Jericho
  • TokyoScope
  • Whatculture Wrestling

Honorable Mentions: Japan by River Cruise, Pop Culture Happy Hour, The Stack

Favorite Comics
As I mentioned in the intro up top, I’m not including picks for French comics this year, since I didn’t read enough 2020 releases (due to me not going to the library). As for American comics, again, I should probably seek out more original graphic novels (that I keep seeing in year-end “best of” lists), but I’m a weekly comic reader.

  • Batman
  • Decorum
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
  • Usagi Yojimbo (regular series and color reprints)
  • X-Men

Honorable Mentions: Hill House (comic imprint), Pulp, Strange Adventures, Rorschach, Spy Island, Star Wars: Darth Vader

Favorite Magazines
I love magazines, and I still read tons of them, but I’ve never included a category for some reason. The only two titles that I buy physically are Monocle and Konfekt (that just launched), and the rest I read digitally via Apple News+.

  • Edge
  • Empire
  • Konfekt
  • Monocle
  • Total Film

Honorable Mentions: Retro Gamer, SFX

Categories
Magazines On Something

On Magazines: Monocle

The first issue of Monocle (March 2007).

I’m quite vocal about my love for Monocle. I was truly excited when it first launched in 2007 (being an old-school fan of Tyler Brûlé’s previous title, Wallpaper), and have read every single issue since (well, I missed one issue a couple of years ago). It’s also the only magazine that I continue to read in paper form. I got a subscription to the paper edition of Wired last year, but let it expire as I felt I got absolutely nothing out of that edition over the digital one (that I get anyway through my subscription to Apple News+). Admittedly, for Monocle, reading it as a physical edition is also due to the fact that they’ve stayed away from a digital edition so far (other than putting article archives on their website, accessible if you’re a subscriber), but it’s a beautiful thing that I really enjoy digging into every month, and even though they’ve announced that they’re about to release a proper digital edition (in about two weeks), I plan on sticking with the paper edition (although that just means I’ll have access to the digital edition as well).

Why do I enjoy it so much? It’s a beautiful, thick book-ish piece of physical media that feels good to read. The paper stock feels right (especially compared to the paper thin joke that is the current Wired), and it makes the great layout design shine.

The beautiful Monocle Book of Japan, a love letter to the country.

I’m of course also a fan of what they’ve been doing in the book space, and on top of the few travel books I’ve already grabbed, for my birthday last month I treated myself to their new Monocle Book of Japan (that I loved to bits), as well as The Monocle Guide to Shops, Kiosks and Markets. I would like to eventually pick up all of their big books.

Even though I’ve been reading it for over a decade, it was only last month that I finally got a proper subscription. Price-wise, it came to about the same as getting it at the newsstands each month, but even better is that I finally started getting my issues when they get printed, instead of the month+ wait for the issues to reach our shores on newsstands. If you’re a fan of the magazine, a subscription is really the way to go, and it’s something that they’ve been pushing of late, to deal with the fact that the magazine wasn’t as available as could be due to the global pandemic — I imagine I would have missed out on recent issues if I didn’t have a subscription.

I could go on and on about what how much I love what they do — like the daily email newsletters they send out, the seasonal newspaper series they publish, or even their smart collection of goods (which are admittedly too pricey for my blood) — but I’ll end this rave of a post by simply stating that I’m grateful that it exists.

Categories
Magazines On Something

On Magazines: Haruki Murakami

I’ve admittedly — and strangely — never read a novel by Haruki Murakami. You’d think I would have by now, and I’ve certainly had the intention of doing so many a time over the years, but it’s something I’ve yet to do. I have finally read my first piece of fiction by him though.

Last week’s issue of The New Yorker — which I read through Apple News+ — featured a short story by him, and so I figured this would finally be my entry into his style of writing. And I liked it.

The story, “Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey,” tells the surreal tale of a man who meets up with a talking monkey in an onsen town, and over one evening shares a drink, listening to his strange musings on life as a talking monkey. It’s quite enjoyable, and reads quite smoothly and fast.

“Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey” by Haruki Murakami, from the June 8-15, 2020 issue of The New Yorker.

I do have quite a few books lined up currently — yes, I’m still on my quest to increase the number of books I read — but I do want to read one of his novels before the year is out.

Categories
Magazines

NJP

This past week I was incredibly happy and excited to receive the first issue of NJP, a new magazine by the creators of the Neojaponisme website. Full disclosure, the two masterminds behind the site (W. David Marx and Ian Lynam) are great friends of mine, and I was — if ever so slightly — involved with the launch of the original Neojaponisme website, but this is truly a thing of beauty, and I can’t recommend enough that you pick up a copy for yourself.

Cover of the first issue of NJP.

As I started reading the issue, as much as I was enjoying what I was taking in, I will admit that I did feel a tinge of sadness — bordering on jealousy — that I never managed to get a magazine project like this up and running. It’s no secret that I have a great love — bordering on obsession — for the medium of magazines, and it even resulted in an old website I used to run called The Magaziner. I always dreamed of producing some sort of indie magazine project, and what they’ve done with NJP is exactly the type of thing I had in mind — a beautifully designed “meaty” object with a strong theme.

But hey, at least someone is doing it, and I get to enjoy the results.

Categories
Games Magazines

K is for Kazdal

Jake Kazdal is a force of nature. And I’m lucky enough to have him as a buddy. He also gave me my first ever game credit — a thank you in his game Skulls of the Shogun, that he released under his indie studio now called 17-bit, but at the time called Haunted Temple Studios.

Jake Kazdal, as featured in the March 2019 issue of Edge.

I’ve spotted him a few times in Edge magazine over the years, but in the latest issue (March 2019) he gets his very own featured interview, which offers up a fantastic look at what it was like to work at Sega in the early days of the Dreamcast (one of my all-time favorite consoles). Take the time to read it to also get a look at what it’s like to be a foreigner running an indie studio in Japan (he’s based in Kyoto, as is 17-bit studios).

Categories
Magazines Personal

Texture vs. Magzter

A few months ago I wrote in jest that magazines are dead. They were sorta getting like that for me at least — with my digital-first lifestyle and reading habit, I was getting more and more frustrated by what was being offered in terms of proper iPad-formatted magazine editions.

And then I gave in.

Many a time have I bemoaned the PDF-like formatted magazines being offered by publishers — meaning, just taking your print edition and releasing it as is for iPad, which means constantly having to zoom in and out of pages to read the text. But the thing is, I really like reading magazines, and while it still wasn’t enough to make me want to seek out print editions (I buy one print magazine monthly, and that’s Monocle), I did decide to bite the bullet and test out a couple of “all-you-can-eat” digital magazine services — luckily, both services offer a free 1 month trial, so there’s nothing to lose in trying them out.

I’d seen Texture mentioned a few times, and the app looked slick, so I started with that. What’s great with Texture, is that although most of the titles on offer are PDF-like, the ones that do have proper iPad-formatted editions are actually included this — which is the case for a lot (if not all) of Conde Nast titles, like Wired and The New Yorker. The selection on offer is comprised of the majority of big titles out there. At $15 a month (for a subscription that not only gives you access to all titles, but also to all archives of each title) it seemed like it would be the more expensive option.

Magzter is the better known service — I’d heard it mentioned by a few people — and includes quite a lot more titles. That expanded inventory is a bit moot though, as the majority is made up of pretty much anything under the sun, and mostly international offerings that I have no interest in. But the worst thing here is that after I signed up for the free month (for the service that is $10 a month I think), I quickly realized that it doesn’t include access to most of the titles I’d want to read (and individual title subscriptions are not cheap). The one magazine that was part of that price tier — and also isn’t present in Texture — is gaming magazine Edge, which I used to read religiously but stopped when they turned their digital edition into the PDF-like model. What I did end up doing during that month was voraciously read through most of the issues I had missed (in the past year) before my free trial was up. I ended up falling in love with that magazine again —  with the intense reading getting me to a point where I guess I just accepted that zooming in/out is part of the process of reading these days, que sera sera — and so eventually subscribed again using Edge‘s standalone app.

The main result of this intense month of trial of these two services (back in August/September) was that, well, I fell in love again with reading a great number of titles, and so at the end I decided to keep my subscription to Texture, and I’ve been gorging myself on titles ever since — and since this is buffet-serving, I don’t feel bad about going through some titles in mostly browse mode, just reading bits here and there.

I’d still like to include more indie offerings to my diet — which would be in print, and tends to bust the wallet more — but I’m at least happy to find myself in a magazine reading mode that I haven’t found myself in for years (not since I ran The Magaziner, a website I used to share my musings about magazines).

Categories
Art Magazines

Browne’s Tokyoiter

The latest Tokyoiter cover, produced by Andrew Browne — see the original image here.