Jean Snow [.net]

Favorite Media of 2025

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For the 16th time (following 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024), here is my annual look back at my favorite media consumed in a variety of categories, all released in the past year. As always, caveats: this is based on what I took in and so there’s obviously plenty of things that I didn’t get around to checking out yet, and it’s not a “best of,” but like the title says, a list of “favorites” (i.e. what I personally enjoyed the most). For me it’s a fun exercise in looking back at what I liked during the past year, and hopefully it acts as a good list of recommendations for anyone reading this. For each category I list a top 5 in alphabetical order, and then add in honorable mentions when I want to include more. Even though I read quite a few books this past year (here’s the post for that), I don’t include it as a category as I don’t really read enough of new releases, and this year I’ve added a new category, Board Games, as I’ve been able to play a lot of new releases.

Favorite Games
This year I really fell in love with the newly released Switch 2, which explains the very heavy presence of Nintendo games in this year’s list. The Switch 2 really is my favorite console, and I love playing old and new games on it (I’m currently thoroughly enjoying playing both Red Dead Redemption and Hitman: World of Assassination on it), both on TV and in handheld mode in bed or laid out on a sofa. Although not really represented here, I do also play a lot of older games on my Steam Deck, and I’m very interested in getting the Steam Machine when it comes out, as the companion to my Switch 2.

  • Assassin’s Creed Shadows (Xbox Series S)
  • Ball x Pit (Switch 2)
  • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment (Switch 2)
  • Mario Kart World (Switch 2)
  • Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Switch)

Honorable Mentions: Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition (Switch 2), Dear me, I was… (Switch 2), Donkey Kong Bananza (Switch 2), Fast Fusion (Switch 2), Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star Crossed World (Switch 2), Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (Switch 2), South of Midnight (Xbox Series S), Split Fiction (PS5), The Crew Motorfest (PC/Xbox Series S)

Favorite Board Games
Even though I’ve been big into board games for years, I never played enough new releases to include it as a category in this list, but this past year I found myself picking up quite a few games released in 2025, and so here we go — and the selection is definitely biased towards smaller games, since that’s what I mostly buy, to be able to play at lunch time with colleagues at work. It was in fact a big board gaming year for me, as I ended up playing 111 different board games throughout the year (I had given myself the goal of playing at least 100 different games), and logged 316 play session.

  • Alibis
  • Arkham Travel Guide
  • Ruins
  • Symbiose
  • Tacta

Favorite Movies
I wasn’t sure if I was going to surpass the count of 175 movies watched last year, but to my surprise I ended up watching 209 movies this past year. I definitely find myself preferring movies over TV shows these days, and that would help explain why the count is so high. As for my favorites, I would say there are many that could have been included in the top 5, but I feel very strongly about the movies I did include.

  • 100 Meters
  • Black Bag
  • Highest 2 Lowest
  • Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
  • Nouvelle Vague

Honorable Mentions: 28 Years Later, A House of Dynamite, Becoming Led Zeppelin, Fixed, Superman, Wake Up Dead Man

Favorite Movies of 1995
The only year-based movie marathon I did this past year was for 1995, and although I’m still not done (I’ve watched 20+ movies), I think this top 5 is a good representation of  my favorites from that year.

  • Casino
  • Crimson Tide
  • Fallen Angels
  • Flirt
  • Ghost in the Shell

Favorite TV
The reason I’m able to watch so many movies is because I’ve definitely been cutting down on the amount of TV shows I watch — at this point I don’t have a lot of patience if something doesn’t really grab me in the first 1-2 episodes, and so this year I found myself dropping a lot of shows that I started watching. But this top 5 is as solid as I’ve seen, and I can’t recommend these shows enough.

  • Alien: Earth
  • Mr. Scorcese
  • Pluribus
  • Severance
  • The Studio

Honorable Mentions: American Primeval, Andor, Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, MobLand, Murderbot, Platonic, The Bear, The Beatles Anthology

Favorite Anime
I think I watched less series this year than the previous, but I definitely thoroughly enjoyed everything listed here — but I decided to include the Mononoke movie here instead of in the movie category.

  • Dan Da Dan
  • Gnosia
  • Lazarus
  • Mononoke the Movie: Chapter 2 – The Ashes of Rage
  • The Summer Hikaru Died

Favorite Web/Sports
The one change this year is the addition of Criterion’s “Closet Picks” series, which I started really enjoying this past year (and I also subscribed to the Criterion Channel). And I continue to be quite obsessed with AEW (for pro wrestling) and F1.

Favorite Songs
As with last year, I really am turning into more of a “singles” listener at this point (and playlists) instead of albums, and again, it was so difficult to narrow down my favorite tracks of the year down to 5, so I again cheat and highlight a top 10, and then lots of honorable mentions. They are taken from a smart playlist I have of favorited tracks from 2025 that includes 55 songs. I also made a point to not include more than one track from each artist.

  • “Abyss” (Anika)
  • “All Right” (Villagerrr)
  • “Broke My Heart” (Caribou)
  • “Catch These Fists” (Wet Leg)
  • “Contact” (Rick White)
  • “Forgiving” (Sir Chloe)
  • “La Spirale” (Biche)
  • “Our House” (Toro y Moi)
  • “Sincerely” (Momma)
  • “Wanna Start a Band?” (Sleigh Bells)

Honorable Mentions: “Aerial Troubles” (Stereolab), “Believer” (Peel Dream Magazine), “IGA” (Sunbathe), “Jump Out” (Ezra Furman), “Lucky” (Surfbort), “So Far Down” (Sloan), “Surfing Castafiore” (April March), “Take Care” (Tracey),”Touch You” (Georgie & Joe), “What Do I Know” (Deep Sea Diver), “Wisteria Flower” (Shinichiro Yokota)

Favorite Albums
Although I don’t listen to full albums as much these days (especially new ones), there are still a few standouts that I turned to occasionally.

  • Based on the Best Seller (Sloan)
  • Bunky Becky Birthday Boy (Sleigh Bells)
  • Honey (Caribou)
  • Instant Holograms on Metal Film (Stereolab)
  • Moisturizer (Wet Leg)

Honorable Mentions: Again (Rick White), Free Soul (Tetsuro Yafune), Sounds from the Far East – 2025 Edition (Soichi Terada)

Favorite Podcasts
Two additions in the top 5 this year, first a return to listening to Conan O’Brien’s podcast (I was a listener when it first started, but had dropped it years ago), and then the new gaming podcast, Post Games, which I like because of its strong editorial focus.

  • 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s: The 2000s
  • Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
  • Pop Culture Happy Hour
  • Post Games
  • Pure TokyoScope

Honorable Mentions: On Margins, The Spy Who, The Stack

Favorite Comics
No surprise, I continue to be a DC head (I don’t read any Marvel comics). Last year I was all about the new “Absolute” series from DC, but I ended up dropping all of them (and didn’t much enjoy the new ones) except for Absolute Batman.

  • Absolute Batman
  • Batman (2025)
  • DC K.O.
  • Justice League Unlimited
  • Usagi Yojimbo (Ice and Snow, Ten Thousand Plums, The Crow)

Honorable Mentions: G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (and all the “Silent” special issues), Invincible Universe: Battle Beast, The Question: All Along the Watchtower, Wonder Woman

Favorite BDs
There are still a lot of new albums of series I like that came out in 2025 that I haven’t had a chance to read yet, but here are a few that I did read and thoroughly enjoyed — and yes, that includes the new Astérix album, which I think is the best album released since the departure of Uderzo.

  • Astérix en Lusitanie (Astérix, Tome 41)
  • De givre et de feu (Thorgal Saga, Tome 4)
  • La danse du soleil  (XIII Trilogy – Jones, Tome 3)
  • Le monde selon Oz (Undertaker, Tome 8)
  • Si les dieux t’abandonnent… (Largo Winch, Tome 25)

Favorite Magazines
This list is completely different from last year, because I don’t have access to Apple News+ anymore, and so can’t read all of the magazines I used to read (except for Monocle, which I subscribe to directly). The rest are all Japanese, that I read through the Rakuten digital magazine subscription — and it’s a return to titles I used to like when I lived there. And a shout out to the beautiful collection of Here and There, published by Shanghai’s Bananafish Books.

  • Brutus
  • Casa Brutus
  • Here and There Vol 1 – Vol. 13.5 (Bananafish Books edition)
  • Monocle
  • Popeye (the special English language edition)