Category: Anime

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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)
  • Neptune – Épisode 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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Anime Film Games Magazines Music TV Web

Favorite Media of 2020

For the 11th consecutive time (previously: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 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

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Anime Debaser Film

Vampire Hunter D

This is another 80s anime film that I decided to revisit for this horror-filled marathon, and I’m glad I did. Sure, it drags on here and there, but it’s still a neat story (despite the traditional vampire setup, the setting is Mars) and the designs of the creatures are pretty gruesome and fun to take in (especially in that sequence where he enters the castle through an underground corridor filled with monstrosities). I think I missed that a sequel was released in 2000 (although note that this is an adaptation of a rather large book series), so I think I’ll probably check that out at some point.

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Anime Debaser Film

Lily C.A.T.

Released back in 1987, this is another anime film I dug up while searching for anime releases that were horror-themed. It’s pretty much a take on Alien, and so a crew on a long-distance cargo ship starts having to deal with something killing the crew. Nothing groundbreaking, but it was entertaining, and decently animated. I only wish I could have watched the original Japanese edition — I could only find the American dub, which was apparently heavily edited (by Carl Macek of Robotech fame no less).

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Anime Debaser Film

Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack

Since I’m a big fan of Junji Ito’s work, I’m really surprised that I had missed the release of this (back in 2012) — I just stumbled upon it while searching for horror-themed anime to watch. If you’re a fan of Ito, then you know what to expect: deliciously grotesque happenings of the weirdest kind — in this case, fish (and other creatures of the sea, including sharks) start roaming the streets with insect-like appendages. And then it gets even weirder. I quite enjoyed this, and would now like to read the manga story it’s based on.

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Anime Debaser Film

Wicked City

Something I haven’t done so far as part of these October horror marathons is watch something animated, nevermind anime, and so I decided to look up a few things I could watch, and this came up. I do remember that this existed, with the reputation of being one of those “dark and dirty” animated films from Japan, but can’t remember if I ever actually watched it or not. Well, despite this being included in lists of horror anime films, this ended up being much more porn-y (with even a tentacle scene, natch) than horror. The setting is actually interesting, with the idea that humans and demons have a pact they renew every couple of centuries, and I liked the ending, but all of it takes a back seat to sexual encounters throughout. Oh well.

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Anime On Something

On Anime: Summer 2020 Season

I never got around to posting about what shows I checked out during this latest TV season, but I did do a Twitter thread about it, that I figure I’ll adapt as a post here. It’s getting more and more difficult to do a “start of season” post these days though, as a lot of these series that I’m watching are coming via Netflix, which just releases them whenever they feel like it.

Japan Sinks 2020

Japan Sinks 2020 is one of those new Netflix series, and having watched it all I can say that I enjoyed it quite a bit. The opening credits sequence is a delight, and I really loved the pacing and overall mood of the show. Basically, a huge earthquake hits Japan, and it explores the aftermath. This was directed by Masaaki Yuasa, and it then got me to go and get caught up on all of the movies and series that’s he’s been producing in recent years, that I’ve been chronicling in this Twitter thread.

Based on the first episode, Deca-Dence takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting where humans are holding up in a moving fortress, to defend against the appearance of giant (and not so giant) monsters. My feeling was that I could go either way on this one, with the first episode being decent, and I was planning on giving it 1-2 more episodes. Well, I bounced off quickly, as I didn’t like the swerve it took in episode 2 (it’s a virtual game that weird cartoony bots/creatures are playing).

Dorohedoro

Dorohedoro aired in Japan late last year, but popped up on Netflix recently. I’ve watched the first few episodes and like it. It’s set in a weird post-apocalyptic world with forms of magic that deforms some people. I like the animation style — and it’s gory as fuck.

Great Pretender

Great Pretender gets bonus points for its Lupin-like opening theme song. It’s about a Japanese grifter who in the first arc (of five episodes) finds himself in LA. It’s a very Lupin-like mix of humour and action, which is right up my alley (considering how big a fan I am of Lupin in general). I’m more than halfway through this first season, and I know that there are more episodes coming later this year. Again, it’s one of those Netflix series.

The only other series I wanted to watch this season was the return of The Millionaire Detective Balance: Unlimited, which was put on hiatus last season after only two episodes due to COVID. I like this show (it’s still airing new episodes), and episode 4 was especially fun.

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Anime On Something

On Anime: TokyoScope

Love me some Leiji Matsumoto.

I’m filing this in the “On Anime” section because it seems to fit there, but what I want to recommend here is what has turned into my current favorite podcast, and that’s Patrick Macias‘ TokyoScope. It was launched last year through Patreon, and it took me until recently to finally create a Patreon account to subscribe, but I’m so glad I did. I’m still making my way through all the archives, but this is basically people I like (Patrick, of course, but Matt Alt is a regular throughout) talking about stuff that I like (Japanese pop culture, old and new, with a focus on classic anime). Listening to chats about old Godzilla films or just what was hot in 1979 is pretty much my jam, and it’s incredibly fun — feels like you’re sitting in the corner of a dingy izakaya with Patrick and friends, chilled mug of Yebisu in hand. Oh, and each post on Patreon that accompanies a new episode is always filled with great imagery.

And although I had already started my Leijiverse journey (that’s still going strong) before I started listening to the podcast, it was all the episodes with mentions of Yamato (Star Blazers) that got me to finally watch some — I decided to start with the fairly recent Space Battleship Yamato 2199, which is a retelling of the original series.

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Anime On Something

On Anime: Captain Harlock

Captain Harlock (or Albator, as he was known in French) with friends.

Over the weekend I started a re-watch of the original Captain Harlock series from 1978. I’m only 7 episodes in, but not only am I enjoying it, I’m also a bit surprised by just how dark and depressing it is, and yet this is what I always point to as my favorite animated series from when I was a kid (which I watched in French, under the name “Albator”). What is it that attracted me so much? Was it just that the characters and ships looked cool? How was I affected by all of the darkness and sadness that seems to feature prominently in every episode? I don’t have any answers, but it does mean that this is a series that, although there’s still plenty of cartoony silliness, I’m appreciating at this point in my life because of its mature themes.

Ozma, a 6-episode series produced in 2012, that sees a post-apocalyptic Earth covered in sand.

Because of my obsessive nature, this has also caused me to do a deep dive into the works of Leiji Matsumoto, and yesterday I uncovered a 6-episode series called Ozma, that was produced in 2012 (for the WOWOW satellite channel, as part of its 20th anniversary), based on a pilot he wrote back in 1980, but that was never produced. I quite enjoyed it.

I am planning on watching a lot more of the Captain Harlock subsequent series and movies that were produced over the years, as well as other works based on Matsumoto’s manga. Another series I’ve already started watching on the side (I’m two episodes in) is called Gun Frontier. It’s a very weird 13-episode series that sees Captain Harlock as a gunslinger and Tochiro as a samurai, in a Wild West setting. Also, it’s more of an adventure-comedy kind of thing — compared to the dour space operas we usually see from Matsumoto. I’m also quite enjoying this.

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Anime

My Ten Favorite Anime Series

At work I like to organize some fun times at the end of every week — I even have a name for it, the “Friday Fluke.” Part of it is getting a drink, relaxing a bit with colleagues, and playing some games (our go-to tends to be various forms of Werewolf). Last week I introduced a new part to it, and that’s to encourage everyone to do a presentation about something they’re passionate about using the PechaKucha format. The idea is to have fun and get to know each other better, so it can be about anything, like your favorite albums, a trip you took, etc. I kicked it off with a round-up of my 10 favorite anime series (not including movies), and so here’s what I came up with, in alphabetical order.

Captain Harlock
Or to me, Albator, as he is known in French, which is the language I watched it as a kid. I believe it was the 1978 series, and it’s my favorite cartoon from my childhood. It’s a bit surprising in a way, because I’m sure so much of it went over my head, but I was obsessed with Harlock’s ship, and my go-to building project with my LEGO blocks was to create giant ships that looked like it.

Cowboy Bebop
I always consider this as one of my very favorite series, and I think it’s as close to perfect as a series gets for me. Great characters, an awesome soundtrack, and fun space adventures. What else do you need?

Future Boy Conan
Another series from the 70s (and in fact, 1978 as well), I only watched it a couple of years ago, and found it to be hugely enjoyable. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, you do get a lot of proto-Ghibli feels, despite the admittedly crude animation (standard for the time).

Junji Ito Collection
I’m a huge fan of Junji Ito’s horror manga — favorites include Tomie and Uzumaki — and this is a fantastic adaptation of his short stories (each episode is made up of a few shorts). It was produced last year, but I already consider it a favorite.

Lupin III
I’m a longtime Lupin fan, and I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything I’ve seen, which includes various TV series, TV movies, and movies (Miyazaki’s Castle of Cagliostro is a fave). Most recently we got the Part V series, and it’s just as fun as any other Lupin series.

Monster
Based on the manga by Naoki Urasawa — one of my favorite mangaka — this anime adaptation is massive (over 70 episodes), and riveting. I absolutely loved watching it as it was airing, anxious to see where it would end up going (I had never read the manga, strangely).

Neon Genesis Evangelion
Well, it is a classic, and not for being a giant mech show, but rather for everything it did to deconstruct the mech genre, and mess with everyone’s expectations. I haven’t re-watched it since back in the day, but I am excited to revisit it when it shows up on Netflix this summer.

Paranoia Agent
I’m a huge fan of Satoshi Kon’s films, and loved this series — the only one he created — just as much. Psychologically daring and visually aggressive, same as with his movies.

Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter
Goro Miyazaki — Hayao Miyazaki’s son — doesn’t get a lot of love, but I quite enjoyed this series he directed a few years ago, the only Ghibli TV production. The use of CG was criticized, but I thought he managed to create a lovely series, with a lot of fun character moments.

Samurai Champloo
I usually consider my top 3 series to be this, Cowboy Bebop, and Monster. Just like Bebop, you get the fantastic soundtrack (here hip-hop instead of jazz), the great characters, and the fun adventure. Even better is how the hip-hop influences the aesthetics and pacing of the show.