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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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Anime Film Games Magazines Music TV Web

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

Categories
Film Games Magazines Music TV Web

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

Categories
On Something

On Comics: Jérôme K. Jérôme Bloche

One of the things I’ve enjoyed the most in recent years since moving to Montreal is becoming a frequent user of the public library system, just like I did when I was a kid. More specifically, this got me back into reading French comics (bandes-dessinées), which I had a bit drifted away from over the years because of my lack of access (while living in Japan). So the past couple of years have seen me not only discovering plenty of new series, but also catching up on some, or going back and re-reading a few (or a mix of all of these).

When the quarantine period hit Montreal, I definitely started missing my close-to-weekly library visits, to get a haul of books, but then a few weeks ago I remembered that they also offer digital lending, and have been back at reading my dear bandes-dessinées. Sure, the digital collection on offer is restrained, but I’m still finding plenty to read, and in this post I’ll just highlight one series I’m glad I can continue reading.

Jérôme K. Jérôme Bloche is a series by Alain Dodier that started in 1985, and is currently at 27 books, the last one released over the past year. It tells the story of a private detective who takes on, for the most part, pretty mundane cases. But the stories are really well told, fun to read, and I like the setting (Paris) and the character (doesn’t take things too serious, often to the detriment of making a decent living). It’s slice-of-life stuff mixed with various levels of mystery, and I really enjoy it. Although I remembered the name, I can’t remember if I really read any of the books when I was younger, but after reading the most recent books, I decided to go back and read it from the start, and just finished the 15th one. Highly recommended if you read French — although it’s quite possible that it’s been translated to English.

Categories
Books Film Games Music TV Web

Favorite Media of 2019

This marks my tenth year doing this annual reflection on my favorite media of the year, which means you can also easily see what my favorite media through the decade was (see 2010201120122013201420152016, 2017, and 2018). As always, this is a look at the media released in 2019 that I was able to consume this year that I enjoyed the most — it’s not a “best” list, and of course it doesn’t include all of the things that were released this year that I haven’t yet had a chance to check out, and that might have made the list if I did. Instead, take it as a big ol’ recommendation list of stuff that came out this past year that I liked, and so you might like it too. Each category kicks off with an alphabetical top 5, and then I include a few honorable mentions if there are other things I would like to highlight.

Favorite Games
I feel like I don’t have as many games in this category as in past years, but I think this is also a reflection of me spending more time playing fewer games. That’s especially the case with Destiny 2 — I could have listed the Shadowkeep expansion to indicate a 2019 release, but instead, I’ve decided to include a “live” game for the first time in my year-end list, since that’s how I’m consuming it (playing through the seasons, etc.) Sayonara Wild Hearts is included here and not in mobile because the best experience of this game for me was through Apple TV with a controller. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe for me was such a revelation because it was the first time I played a Mario game completely in co-op (with two colleagues at work), and it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing a Mario game.

  • Destiny 2 (Stadia)
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch)
  • New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe (Switch)
  • Sayonara Wild Hearts (Apple TV)
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Switch)

Honorable Mentions: Death Stranding (PS4), Far Cry New Dawn (PS4), Luigi’s Mansion 3 (Switch), Super Mario Maker 2 (Switch), Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (PS4)

Favorite Mobile Games
This is a category that comes and goes, as some years I see myself barely playing anything on mobile (and the stuff that I do play is usually on iPad, although my new iPhone XR has me enjoying playing games on a phone again). This year of course marked the introduction of Apple Arcade, and that got me back into playing mobile games in a big way. Below are my favorites so far, but there are still loads of games I haven’t had a chance to properly play yet.

  • Assemble with Care
  • Grindstone
  • LEGO Builder’s Journey
  • Pilgrims
  • What the Golf?

Honorable Mentions: Card of Darkness, Guildlings, Rayman Mini, Sky: Children of the Light, Steven Universe: Unleash the Light, Tangle Tower, Yaga the Roleplaying Folktale

Favorite Board Games
I introduced this category last year — following my re-entry into having a board game collection (after the purge I did when I left Japan) — and again, I include games from 2018 (that I didn’t include last year) and 2019, since I feel like board game releases are a bit of a slower thing, especially with the way Kickstarter is used.

  • Architects of the West Kingdom
  • Detective: LA Crimes
  • Gorus Maximus
  • Magic: The Gathering
  • Root

Honorable Mentions: Hokkaido, Raids, Tower of Madness

Favorite Movies
Since I spend so much time watching older movies, I do tend to have more trouble coming up with movies that are new releases — and even for this list, six of the titles included I ended up watching over the past week, as I tried to play catch up with 2019 releases. As a bonus, I include my top 5 of movies released in 1989.

  • Booksmart
  • Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
  • Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
  • The Art of Self-Defence
  • The Irishman

Honorable Mentions: Alita: Battle Angel, Avengers: Endgame, John Wick 3: Parabellum, Joker, Klaus, Midsommar, Missing Link, Ready or Not, Us

Favorite Movies of 1989

  • Dead Poets Society
  • Do the Right Thing
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  • Mystery Train
  • Patlabor: The Movie

Favorite TV
No big surprise, but this year was again a fantastic one for TV. And yes, for the time I’m including a wrestling show — this year marked my return to wrestling fandom in a big way, thanks to the new AEW league, which is absolutely my favorite thing to watch on a weekly basis (and the only one of these shows I watch live).

  • AEW Dynamite
  • Formula 1: Drive to Survive
  • Primal
  • The Mandalorian
  • What We Do in the Shadows

Honorable Mentions: Black Mirror, GameCenter-CX, Game of Thrones, Fleabag, Jack Ryan, John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch, Killing Eve, Love Death + Robots, Patriot Act, Russian Doll, Saturday Night Live, Shameless, Star Trek Discovery, Stranger Things 3, The Boys, The Twilight Zone, The Umbrella Academy, The Witcher, Watchmen

Favorite Web Series
This is another category I introduced in recent years, and this year I feel like my consumption of web shows/content really did explode. And yes, wrestling content takes up a lot of space, with both the AEW and NWA weekly web shows in my top 5, as well as the Being the Elite series, that I binged to completion this year as I played catch up, and then a couple of more channels I follow regularly included in the honorable mentions.

Honorable Mentions: Abby Dearest, Archipel (channel), Chris Van Vliet (channel), Formula 1 (channel), Hundred Rabbits, Noclip, The Inside Line, WhatCulture Wrestling (channel), Yoiko no Maru Maru de Maru Maru Seikatsu

Favorite Music
This is a really weird year in music for me. I did listen to a lot of new stuff, but I didn’t really spend a lot of time with most of those records, and so didn’t develop a lot of “loves.” I think it’s telling that according to Apple Music, my top 20 of most played tracks was entirely composed of hard bop — it’s definitely what I listened to the most this past year, and I continue to do so. And in the lead-up to my trip to Japan in November, I spent a month or two pretty much listening exclusively to my old Shibuya-kei favorites (Pizzicato Five, Cornelius, etc.) One of my new year resolutions is definitely to spend more time taking in new music.

  • Flamagra (Flying Lotus)
  • Hyperspace (Beck)
  • I Know You Like It (Shinichiro Yokota)
  • Reward (Cate Le Bon)
  • When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (Billie Eilish)

Honorable Mentions: Beat Tape 09 (Eevee), Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police (Juliana Hatfield), Ladytron (Ladytron), Outer Peace (Toro y Moi)

Favorite Comics
For the first time, I don’t include any honorable mentions in my comics list, and that’s telling. My interest in BDs (bandes-dessinées, or French comics) continues to eclipse my interest in comics, and I’ve seen my weekly reading list go down and down throughout the year. The absolute highpoint is Jonathan Hickman’s House of X and Powers of X series, my favorite comics in years (at least since Hickman’s run on Fantastic Four and Avengers). Dawn of X refers to all of the separate Hickman-curated titles that have launched in its wake (X-Men, New Mutants, X-Force, Excalibur, Fallen Angels, Marauders), which I’m not as enthusiastic about, but still find them to be quite enjoyable (most of them).

  • Dawn of X
  • House of X/Powers of X
  • Peter Cannon Thunderbolt
  • Silver Surfer: Black
  • Superman/Action Comics

Favorite BDs
My rekindled love of BDs (as of last year, when I started going to my local library) continues, and has grown, with this year being easier to include a lot of 2019 releases — although there are still some late-year releases that I’m sure would be included here (like the new Thorgal and XIII) but that I haven’t read yet. I do spend more time reading older releases (reading through a series) than new ones though.

  • Amazonie – Épisode 4
  • La Jeunesse de ThorgalLa dent bleue (7)
  • RenaissanceInterzone (2)
  • Retour sur Aldébaran – Épisode 2
  • SternL’Ouest, le vrai (3)

Honorable Mentions: Alix SenatorLes Spectres de Rome (9), CarthagoLe Pacte du centenaire (9), KatangaDispersion (3), LefrancLune Rouge (30), Soleil FroidL’armée verte (3)

Favorite Podcasts
My rekindled love of wrestling is also evident here (what can I say, I’m hooked), as is my rekindled interest (since the Ayrton Senna era in the 80s) for Formula 1 — ignited by the excellent Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive (which got me excited about watching races again).

  • 8-4 Play
  • Pop Culture Happy Hour
  • Shift+F1
  • The Chris Van Vliet Show
  • WhatCulture Wrestling

Honorable Mentions: All Songs Considered, Monocle 24: The Stack, On Margins

Categories
Anime Film Games Media Music TV Web

Favorite Media of 2018

Yes, it’s finally that time of the year (see 201020112012201320142015, 2016, and 2017) when I take a look back at my favorite media from the past 12 months. As always, this is not a “best” list, but instead a survey of some of my favorite media that released in 2018 that I consumed over the past year. I don’t take in everything, so there’s absolutely tons of things that I haven’t gotten to experience yet that I might like even more than what I have listed here (and I might even make some updates over the coming weeks). The purpose in me doing this is to take some time to look back at the year, and remember all the great games, shows, movies, etc. that I really enjoyed. Each category is made up of an alphabetical top 5 (a “favorite 5” if you will), followed by a few honorable mentions.

Favorite Games
I think more than any other year, I had a bit more trouble putting this list together — and it has nothing to with the quality of releases this year. It’s in part because I didn’t play that many 2018 releases, which is partly explained by the fact that I got a PlayStation VR in the summer, and so spent a while playing a lot of older VR games on that platform. It also doesn’t help that Nintendo didn’t release much that I was particularly excited about this year. And of course, as always, there’s still loads I need to play. And where’s God of War? I really enjoyed it when I started playing it, but never got around to finishing it (got to about 10 hours), and I haven’t felt the urge to return and finish it — I think it’s a good game, but it just didn’t excite me as much as it did others. Also, I’m sure that if I would have played Yakuza Kiwami 2 it would be included, but after already playing Yakuza 0, Kiwami, and 6 this year, I wanted to take a break (but as you can tell, I love that series so much). Super Smash Brothers Ultimate makes my top 5 because I have so much fun bringing my Switch to work every day to play a few rounds with colleagues at the end of the day (I don’t particularly want to play it alone at home).

  • Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (PS4)
  • Dragon Quest XI (PS4)
  • Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)
  • Super Smash Brothers Ultimate (Switch)
  • Yakuza 6 (PS4)

Honorable Mentions: A Way Out (PS4), Far Cry 5 (PS4), Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition (Switch), Hollow Knight (Switch), Into the Breach (Switch), Lightfingers (Switch), Magic: The Gathering Arena (PC), Onrush (PS4), Quarantine Circular (PC), Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PS4), Spider-Man (PS4), Starlink: Battle for Atlas (Switch), The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (PS4), Yoku’s Island Express (Switch)

Favorite Mobile Games
I don’t play a lot of mobile games these days, and it all happens on my iPad (except for Pocket-Run Pool, which I did play a lot on my phone), but I still had a lot of fun with these games. To be honest, my top game would be Gorogoa, but it officially released in mid-December of last year, so I don’t include it. For Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition, I only played the first few chapters on mobile, but ended up buying it on Switch and continuing there.

  • Alto’s Odyssey
  • Donut County
  • Florence
  • Hidden My Game by Mom 3
  • Pocket-Run Pool

Honorable Mentions: Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition, Reigns: GoT

Favorite Board Games
This is a new category, and the only one where I’ve decided to cheat a bit in terms of time of release. After getting rid of my entire card/board game collection when I left Japan, this is the year that I finally got back into playing regularly and building up a new collection. I feel like I didn’t buy enough games that were released in 2018 proper to just share that, so I’m sharing favorites that were released in 2017 as well. There’s tons more I’d like to play from this year though, and I expect them to hit my table in the coming months.

  • Breaking Bad: The Board Game
  • Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game
  • Gloomhaven
  • The Quest for El Dorado
  • Ultimate Werewolf Legacy

Honorable Mentions: Deadwood 1876, Founders of Gloomhaven, Keyforge: Call of the Archons, Kingdomino: Age of Giants (expansion), Magic: The Gathering, The Legend of the Cherry Tree That Blossoms Every Ten Years

Favorite Movies
As with last year, with all of the old movie marathons I do, I tend not to spend that much time watching new movies, and so my list isn’t as fleshed out or exhaustive as it could be — going through what came out this year, I already have an incredibly long list of things I want to watch (and I expect I’m going to love Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse when I see it). But in terms of what I did watch that came out this year, here are my faves.

  • Mandy
  • Mary and the Witch’s Flower
  • Mission: Impossible – Fallout
  • The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
  • The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl

Honorable Mentions: Apostle, Annihilation, A Quiet Place, Batman NinjaBird Box, Black PantherDeadpool 2, Flavors of Youth, HalloweenHereditary, Incredibles 2Ready Player One, Sicario: Day of the SoldadoSolo: A Star Wars Story, Summer of 84, Teen Titans Go! to the MoviesWon’t You Be My Neighbor

Favorite Movies of the 1980s
Last year I watched a crazy amount of movies from the 80s (from 1985 to 1987), and so thought it would be fun to list top 5s for each of those years. This year, I only recently started marathoning films from 1988, but here are my 5 faves for the year.

  • Akira
  • Coming to America
  • Die Hard
  • Heathers
  • They Live

Favorite TV
I think my biggest discovery and love this year was the treasure trove of international crime dramas on Netflix (like The Break, The Chalet, The Forest, and Trapped, among others). Although not included in my top 5, they made up a lot of my favorite viewing this year, but I still enjoyed a lot of other things.

  • Cobra Kai
  • Everything Sucks
  • Jack Ryan
  • Killing Eve
  • The Terror

Honorable Mentions: Altered Carbon, Better Call Saul, Black Mirror: BandersnatchBodyguard, Castle Rock, GameCenter-CXGLOWHannah Gadsby: Nanette, Lost in Space, Norm Macdonald Has a ShowSaturday Night Live, Star Trek Discovery, The Break, The Chalet, The ForestThe End of the Fucking World, The Good Place, TrappedUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Westworld

Favorite Anime Series
I definitely watched less anime this year than last year, and it was pretty easy to come up with a top 5 — but these really are all series that I highly enjoyed.

  • Devilman Crybaby
  • High Score Girl
  • Ito Junji: Collection
  • Lupin III: Part V
  • The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These

Favorite Web Series
Not much changed since last year, I still enjoy the same series, although I’m now including the Nintendo-produced “Let’s Play” series featuring comedy duo Yoiko (GameCenter-CX‘s Arino and his partner, Hamaguchi).

Honorable Mentions: People Make GamesShut Up & Sit Down

Favorite Music
As the years go by, so does the reduction in new music that I end up spending a lot of time listening to, to a point where I have more trouble filling up this category. There is a lot that comes out that I enjoy, but I just listen to the albums a few times, and then never end up revisiting them, which makes it hard to say that they’re favorites. I do listen to music constantly (“no music, no life”), but it’s very eclectic, spans decades, and I’d say this year I’ve developed more of an obsession for classic jazz (hard bop). But here are albums that came out this year that I did really like.

  • Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album (John Coltrane)
  • DJ-Kicks (Mount Kimbie)
  • Strangers in Dub (Burt Kaempfert Meets De-Phazz) (De-Phazz)
  • The Beatles (White Album) [Super Deluxe] (The Beatles)
  • The Pool (Instrumentals & Remixes) (Jazzanova)

Honorable Mentions: All Nerve (The Breeders), Do the Get Along (Holly Golightly), MassEducation (St. Vincent), Sparkle Hard (Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks), The Pool (Jazzanova), The Sunshine Beat, Vol. 1 (Tahiti 80), Time ‘n’ Place (Kero Kero Bonito), Woman Worldwide (Justice)

Favorite Comics
Each year I feel bad that I’m not reading more independents when it comes to English-language comics, but yeah, what I read regularly is the super-hero stuff. And this year again, the majority of my sequential art reading happened more on the French-language side, as I continue my weekly (sometimes more) visits to the library to pick up books new and old.

  • Action Comics/Superman
  • Batman
  • Doomsday Clock
  • Mister Miracle
  • The Green Lantern

Honorable Mentions: Dark Nights: MetalG.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, HawkmanHeroes in Crisis, Justice League (as well as Justice League Dark and Justice League Odyssey), The Punisher

Favorite BDs
As mentioned above, my comics love these days continues to be on the French side (bandes-dessinées), as I continue to catch up on releases, reading through series. So because of that, I’m not reading as many new releases as I normally would, but these are still all books that came out this year that I really enjoyed. (The series name is followed by the book’s title or number.)

  • CentaurusTerre d’angoisse
  • Il faut flinguer Ramirez – Acte 1
  • La jeunesse de ThorgaleLe drakkar des glaces
  • Retour sur Aldébaran – Épisode 1
  • Tyler CrossMiami

Honorable Mentions: Alix SenatorLa Puissance et l’Éternité, Amazonie – Épisode 3, CarthagoLéviathan, Journal d’Italie – Hong Kong 2 OsakaI.R.$Les seigneurs financiersMutations – Épisode 1

Favorite Podcasts
My list of podcasts has changed a bit this year, with my top 5 now including two new gaming-related shows I started listening to this year (Kinda Funny Games Daily and Kotaku Splitscreen). After skipping the second season of Serial, I quite enjoyed this year’s 3rd one. For Retronauts and What a Cartoon, these I don’t listen to regularly, but instead check for episodes with a topic I’m interested in. And I really do wish Noclip would release more episodes of its excellent podcast (just as good as its video documentaries).

  • 8-4 Play
  • All Songs Considered
  • Kinda Funny Games Daily
  • Kotaku Splitscreen
  • Pop Culture Happy Hour

Honorable Mentions: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Monocle 24: The Stack, Noclip, On Margins, Retronauts, Serial, The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook, What a Cartoon

Categories
Debaser

Le Monde de Milo

Since the newsletter is going on a summer break, I wanted to highlight a series that gives off a bit of a summer vacation vibe (at least at the start). Le Monde de Milo is a fantasy series – but think along the lines of a Ghibli film – written by Richard Marazano with art by Christophe Ferreira. The latter has worked for years in the animation industry in Japan (working on the fantastic film Napping Princess — read an interview with him here), and so it’s no surprise that his style feels very animated/anime, with a setting and world that ends up looking like a beautiful melding of European and Japanese styles.

The story follows the adventures of a young boy who finds himself teleported to another dimension, discovering the truth of his lineage, presented in 2-volume arcs. Five books have been released so far, so we’re halfway through the third story arc, with the latest book having come out a couple of months ago. I like it especially for the art style, but the vibe is fun too, with the kind of characters you’d expect to see in a Ghibli film.

Categories
Debaser

Les mondes d’Aldébaran

Today I highlight a series that I just started reading last week, and I’m already incredibly addicted and on the way to binging everything in the series. The overarching series by Leo (the pen name used by Brazilian Luis Eduardo de Oliveira) is called Les mondes d’Aldébaran (The Worlds of Aldebaran), and it’s made up of a series of “cycles” that follow the colonization efforts of Earth on other planets. The first series, Aldébaran, released in the 90s and made up of five books, tells the intriguing story of colonists on the planet Aldebaran who have lost contact with Earth for over 100 years. An authoritarian government has taken hold, and so we follow the story of a group of resistants – not a group at first – who over the series deal with the fantastic dangers of the planet they inhabit, while trying to uncover a mystery that will eventually lead to some major societal changes. It’s fantastic stuff, with characters that age (there are occasional jumps between albums of a few years), and that you end up caring for quite a bit. I binged that first series over a weekend (you can read it in a collected tome), and I can’t wait to read the follow-up series: Bételgeuse, Antarès, Survivants – Anomalies quantiques, and Retour sur Aldébaran.

Categories
Debaser

Murena

When it comes to reading stories set in Roman times, my touchstone growing up was the wacky adventures of Astérix the Gaul, but a series I’ve quite enjoyed reading in recent months is Murena, written by Jean Dufaux with art by Philippe Delaby. Set during the reign of Nero, we’re presented with a highly detailed – and heavily researched, as the addendums suggest – look at life in the Roman capital, but with a healthy dose of intrigue, violence, and political maneuvering. There are ten books in the series so far (I’ve read the first nine so far), divided in cycles of four books. It’s great stuff, and if you want even more Roman reading, I can also recommend Alix Senator, which is a modern series (seven books out so far) that takes the young hero of Jacque Martin’s classic Alix series (that started back in the 50s), and revisits him at an older age, now a senator in Rome.

Categories
Debaser

Servitude

When I recommended Thorgal a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I’m not a big fan of fantasy when it comes to BD, but I did discover another great fantasy series this year, called Servitude. Written by Fabrice David and Éric Bourgier, with gorgeous art by the latter, it’s basically Game of Thrones in feel and atmosphere, with the same kind of political manoeuvering between the various factions – and same goes for the violence as well.

Each book does a great job of not only telling the story we’re following, but also devotes extra pages to give a lot of background on the world and its history, and to explain what makes the world tick – think of a resource book for a traditional tabletop RPG. The series was supposed to span five books, but following the release of the 5th book last year, the creators announced that they will need one more book to finish their story. I look forward to reading how it all ends.