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ryoskuna · 3 months ago

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Be the Light: Dragon Age: The Veilguard's Davrin - A Character Study/Analysis & Appreciation Post

Hi, my name is Leia, and I’m a Master’s degree candidate in Children’s Literature and Library & Information Science. I’m also a Black woman who loves consuming media, which is not limited to playing video games, reading books, and watching TV shows/movies.

To my friends who have put up with me rambling about this game for the last three(?)-ish weeks, thank you for entertaining me, putting up with all my thoughts, and pushing me to make this post.

I completed my first playthrough of Dragon Age: The Veilguard on January 6th (and cried twice), and while there is so much that can be said for the storytelling (it’s not perfect; there’s no such thing as perfection since that’s an objective notion), but in my opinion, I believe DATV makes for an excellent and conclusive end to the Dragon Age franchise in regards to lore and the world of Thedas on the best attempts of the developers and writing team. Especially considering it was a game that lingered in development purgatory for 8+ years, and there was such an intense fight to make sure it got released, I will contently take what I received (with some admitted bias as a Solavellen, and someone who does like Solas as a character though there is much to say about him as well but not here!). When I completed the game, my immediate response was very similar to the way I reacted when I finished my first playthrough of Final Fantasy 15 (another game that I found emotionally compelling- I sobbed for approximately 30-45 minutes straight while on a voice call with a friend during the final cutscene sequences, as well as the credits playing Stand by Me by Florence + the Machine) — I wanted to make a video essay talking about the storytelling and my experience with all of the characters, content, and everything that made me absolutely enamored with the game. (Side note: DATV has the best combat gameplay in any of the DA games, and I will stand by that. Like if they remastered Inquisition and the other two games with the Character Creation from Veilguard and upgraded the combat mechanics/gameplay/UI, I would be first in line to buy the remastered versions.)

(It’s also ironic this is getting posted when it’s been announced that the entire Bioware team for DA has been let go, left, or released to industry, which is a loss of some wonderful storytellers and creatives.)

But I lack the video equipment to make video essays/vlogs talking about my interests like this, and I also don’t know if anyone would watch it. I also generally do not see a lot of Black women engaging in content that would fall into this category or dialogues with media and games, although I wish I did see more of it!

However, this is not intended to be a critique of the game; this is solely meant to be a character study and appreciation post for one of the companions, Davrin, who was the standout companion for me during my initial playthrough and continues to be in my consecutive playthroughs. Davrin is arguably a fantastic character, not only because of his companion quests (which have some of the strongest and most emotional storytelling, in my opinion, whether you romance him or not), but also because of his personality and how he is a love letter to the history and future of Thedas.

(Additional side note: all of the companions are fantastic, especially the seven that are newly introduced within DATV. Harding is a great connection to DAI, the references to the Inquisition at large, and some additional history of the world of Thedas.)

This is also why I mention my race in my introductory statement, as my analysis of him is based on my experience and understanding as a Black woman. While I am not a Black man, I do have a brother, and my father is a Black man who comes from a military background, and this absolutely does affect my perspective and understanding of Davrin as a character.

This way of analysis in literature is called reader-response, in which the reader has a transaction with the text, i.e., the reader reads the material, and out comes their interpretation of the text (see: here, and Mingshui Cai’s “Transactional Theory and the Study of Multicultural Literature.” Language Arts, vol. 85, no. 3, 2008, pp. 212–20, if you’re looking for more intellectual writings on reader-response.). Reader-response allows for a unique interpretation based on the reader or in this case, the player’s individual experience.

Lastly, I’d like to preface that this post will reference the game, the podcast - Vows & Vengeance, that was released prior to Veilguard’s release - and some of the books, primarily Last Flight, for additional narrative context. I’ll flag spoilers the best I can but will state that this post is not spoiler-free.

First, for this to make sense, I feel like we have to discuss why representation in media matters. So, why? Why does representation matter?

Well, there is power in seeing someone who resembles yourself or your story on a screen or largely consumed content. It challenges stereotypes (or what one can be), introduces people to cultural exchange, and engages in cultivating a sense of belonging (here’s a wonderful TED talk if you’re interested, but also see this article from PBS, APA (American Psychology Association), here, and here).

Another one of my favorite TED talks about storytelling also touches on why representation matters. It matters when we engage in dialogue when we try to understand our friends and when we seek to build community with welcoming, inclusive people. It is why people seek to build accommodating spaces, and it is one of our greatest acts of resistance to systemic oppression that allows discriminatory stereotypes to flourish. Being in community is an act of resistance. This is also why it matters when people are so excited to see a character be undoubtedly and explicitly a part of a specific affinity group or identity. There can be a whole essay or book written on why representation matters (and there are, plenty), so I do not want to get to into the weeds with why representation is a valuable contribution in a time where DEIJ (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice) is being challenged so heavily.

Now that we’ve covered that, let’s get to the real reason you’re probably here. This is split into two parts, the character study/analysis, and the appreciation. Not that these two things aren’t similar in nature, but I wanted to make it separate in a way in case anyone wanted to specifically comment on anything, came for a specific portion, or please feel free to use in your fanfiction writing if you’d like. Just know if you’re going to engage with this post, please be respectful. If I am wrong on something, please feel free to DM me and let me know!

Character Study/Analysis

We meet Davrin initially in the announcement trailer for DATV, but we don’t really see a finalized formation of his character outside of visuals until Vows and Vengence, where they’ve switched from using a British accent of his voice to an American accent. I think this is a neat transition from the whole “all elves are british-accented/welsh-accented” we saw in the 2010s, but for me, this truly emphasizes a correlation to a Black American experience — however, I’ll touch upon this later. When Davrin is introduced to us in V&V, he comes off as a character with a strong sense of responsibility and duty — and he’s already involved with the Griffons as he wants to investigate the rumors of their reemergence instead of investigating the earthquakes occurring in the Anderfels. He chooses to fall into a sinkhole to rescue the protagonist of V&V, Nadia, and two additional characters. When Nadia mentions that the only reason she’s in the predicament she’s in is due to someone called “The Dread Wolf”, Davrin immediately wants to investigate as the involvement of Fen’Harel is a bad omen, and the Grey Wardens should be investigating. There is also the mention of darkspawn, which is more compulsion for Grey Wardens to investigate.

Additionally, he has a partner at the time named Goff(?) who he later nearly has to to amputate a limb from and argues to carry the man out as he won’t leave him against Goff’s orders; when he does leave him it is reluctantly. He cannot accompany Drayden and Nadia and continues to investigate the Blight, and by extension, what the elven ruins have to do with the Blight, committed to his duty as a Grey Warden.

Which leads us somewhat into how we find him again in Veilguard, where we are referred to a monster hunter named Davrin by Evka and Antoine (they will be another important reference and guide into how the role of the Grey Wardens is changing towards the betterment or future of Thedas).

I have to appreciate Davrin’s complexity as a character. While the game, in my opinion, is more ambiguous on his standing or practice of the elven religion, he never leaves room to deny his roots and where he comes from. In V&V, he’s familiar with reading ancient elven, and wishes Nadia and Drayden that Andruil guides them on their adventure. Davrin’s vallasin is also dual-sided, which in a reference to the sun and moon quote in V&V (“Guide me on the path that splits the land between sun and moon”) on the mirror mosaic, you can argue that his vallasin is a reference to Ghilan’nain or you can argue that it is for Andruil. However, I raise that his vallasin is for both goddesses, as Andruil is the reason that Ghilan’nain ascended to “godhood”, and with Davrin’s title as a monster hunter, it would be fitting considering Andruil is the goddess of the hunt.

He also names Assan after the elven word for ‘arrow’, which is referenced in two of Andruil’s three ways - Vir Assan - or the Way of the Arrow - and Vir Bor’assan - or the Way of the Bow - which the former refers to ‘fly straight and never waver’, the latter being ‘bend but never break’. It makes sense that he names Assan this, as it is almost him speaking blessings over the young Griffon, to fly straight, never waver, to bend (or endure turmoil) but never break (or fail). To me, it is a blessing from a father to a child, but it is also a reminder to himself everytime he calls the Griffon’s name to himself.

[Note: all the other griffons presumably have names, he mentions a few of them if you walk to their cages during the first part of his companion quest/adding him to the Veilguard, but they’re a little silly in my opinion. Assan is the only one who is known to have an elven name, and noted to be the only one Davrin himself named.]

Having a vallasin that represents Ghilan’nain is also fitting (and ironic considering Ghilan’nain’s position through Veilguard), because not only was Ghilan’nain one of the people, but as a “goddess” she was dedicated to guidance and navigation. For someone like Davrin, who struggled fitting in with his clan and wanting to go on a different path than solely staying with his clan, he could’ve been asking for all the guidance he would be fortunate enough to get. Additionally, she is called the mother of the Halla, creatures that Davrin was gentle enough to care for, hence where we get the line where we find out that he used to sing to the Halla, and he’s attentive enough to identify when they’re ill, and the best methodologies to feed them successfully. (Halla are extremely sacred creatures, considered noble, and the Dalish ask for the Halla to accompany them instead of forcing them. Ghilan’nain is stated to be the first Halla. )

As we go throughout the playthrough of the game, Davrin’s role transitions from being a monster hunter, to a Grey Warden, to a bodyguard for the newly hatched baby Griffons, and then, upon joining Rook, and encountering the Gloom Howler, he becomes something else. Like Ghilan’nain, Davrin has ascended to a more important position than solely being a Grey Warden or a monster hunter. He is now the keeper of the future of the last of the Griffons, hence his urgency in rescuing them, and why the decision of their path (to stay with the Wardens or to live in Arlathan Forest) weighs so heavily upon him.

This is why I propose that his vallasin is left to be ambiguous or a combination of the two goddesses because of the duality of his nature as a character, but the two sides (or the sun & moon) of the path he’s chosen to live by. I also think there is an irony that the blight is what corrupted the Evanuris, and he fights it now - especially noting that Ghilan'nain also has the capacity for pulling out some wicked horrors when Solas calls her the "most sensitive of us" (referring to the Ancient Elves).

I would have loved to see something where Davrin and maybe even Bellara discuss their vallasin, and their viewpoint on it, now that they are in a predicament where their myths about their gods have now changed drastically, and is reflected in their lived experience.

However, I also acknowledge that Davrin does not particularly hold any signficant reverence towards the Gods, at least not in the same way Bellara does. He states he thought of them as “myths” and now that they’re real, he has to process that. He also states that he knows the gods being blighted and trying to take over isn’t going to do the elven people any favors in terms of “popularity” with the rest of Thedas, which leads me into my next point.

He is always mindful of his people. Whether this is the Grey Wardens, who we see him mourn and wish to honor; or the elven people, even if they’re not apart of his clan, he cares deeply for them. (By extension, he cares about the Veilguard and the Griffons, of course.) During the fight against Elger’nan and the Venatori to rescue the Veil Jumpers, you can hear him state, “These are my people” in a protective manner (much like Bellara can say, as well as an elven Rook). He thinks about how Thedas is going to see the elven people if they find out that the elven gods are behind the Blight, the archdemons, and the issue of the Golden/Black City & the “Tevinter Gods”.

This mindset also tends to cultivate his self-sacrificing viewpoint (he is willing to be the Warden responsible for killing Ghilan’nain’s archdemon); it’s not only what he’s trained to do, but it is about protecting his proclaimed and declared people (not to mention the innocents he morally is willing to protect).

I propose that he was not filled with the “spirit” of the archdemon for two reasons: 1) because what they considered to be the “spirit” was the ancient elven magic seeking an out (it’s known and stated in-lore that the ancient elves were immortal because their magic was constantly engaging and adapting to the world) and 2) because Ghilan’nain was right there instead, thus performing a ‘return to sender’ (“Maybe the Gods changed things and the old rules don’t apply”). He states he wasn’t expecting to live because he had embraced the fact that Grey Wardens have an expiration date, and that pushed him. Now that he survived (and processing survivor’s guilt, as well as the stages of grief), he now has to find a purpose outside of being a Grey Warden and a monster hunter.

His seeking a purpose is a reminder, to me as a Black person, how we are taught that just being ourselves and contributing to what others contribute is not good enough. Giving 100 percent is not good enough - you must be outstanding. (There’s a quote from Scandal that’s applicable here - watch here; “You have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have”). In that, being just a Grey Warden isn’t enough, nor is being just a monster hunter.

What makes him relevant? Outstanding?

I propose that’s his transition from bodyguard to parent and keeper of the Griffons. It’s this reasoning that also answers his question on why he gets to live. He’s got to be the one to tell the story of the Griffons, of Isseya, of the past of the Wardens he knew, and the future of the Wardens as they move forward and away from slaying darkspawn and hunting the Blights. The fall of Weisshaupt is the metaphorical fall of the old order of the Wardens, with all their secrets, lies, and damage. Davrin’s emphasized bond with the Griffons speaks to how the new order of the Grey Wardens is healing.

Now, we absolutely should discuss Assan as he relates to Davrin, and I propose that Assan is an extension of Davrin — meaning the way Davrin cares for Assan is how Davrin learns to care for himself. It’s how he learns to hope, to recognize he is capable of being more than just the blade the Grey Wardens made him; that while he’s questioning his future and his path, that he has the freedom to choose. Davrin states he feels like “a blade sharpened all these years to confront the worst darkness in the world” and when his blade “[strikes] true”, he asks “what now?”

Davrin’s commentary on calling himself a blade is a parellel in how he describes how Assan, as a Griffon, by nature are inclined to fight Darkspawn like a wolf hunting a deer. Davrin’s nature has been to fight, to hunt; just as Assan’s nature is to hunt Darkspawn. But like Assan, during another companion quest, their nature is also to care. To be gentle — Assan, who brings food to the sick Halla — and Davrin, whose nature of care is extended to Rook and the team, and the thoughtfulness that he uses to care for the future of the Griffons, the future of Thedas, and all the areas encountered by the Gods, the Blight, and the Archdemons.

Davrin adapts. He’s very rough and tumble (the guy fought a hurlock, broke four ribs and cracked his jaw, got up and then drove a blade through the thing’s skull), but he also comes from places of care, hence why he makes his whittled figures of monsters and is working on an accurate bestiary as a warrior and hunter, not a mage.

It is also important to note another title Davrin not only earns but self-proclaims, is that of a parent. He states that “parent” is a scary word. (“I’m supposed to be his bodyguard”), but I’m inclined to go with Varric’s advice - if the decision isn’t easy, it means you’re taking it seriously. He then later proclaims himself, with confidence, that “I’m his (Assan)’s father.” Davrin’s proclamation as a parent, and a good one at that, strays away from the absent Black father stereotype that is prominent in media, which is rooted in system practices during enslavement where the father was removed to divide up and destroy the Black family.

Davrin is confident in hunting the darker things in the world, but he doubts how well he can care for a Griffon. It’s the questions asked by a first-time parent, with no manual, and the only thing that a child, or in this case, a Griffon, asks for is to be loved and embraced.

This is something that we learn that Davrin experienced through Eldrin, who taught him to appreciate nature, embraced Davrin’s desire to leave the clan to find his place in the world, and who reminded him to embrace the light as much as Davrin fights the darkness (to find balance). In turn, Davrin is reminded by Rook and states himself that he’ll “raise Assan to create a world where the light outshines the dark”. Eldrin told this to a younger Davrin (Eldrin being his uncle figure), and now Davrin tells this to his son, Assan.

Additionally, Davrin reminds me of my father, a Black man who has a military background, especially when Davrin states, “I can’t be soft on Assan, because the world won’t.” I cannot express how many times I have heard this from my father to my brother, even though my father, like Davrin learned over time that it is alright for them to be soft.

(Be protective of your child, but also be a safe haven for your child — firm when required, gentle when needed.)

Davrin breaks a form of behavior (the tough father - generational curse seen in Black and POC communities) by allowing Assan to grow and learn in an environment of love and care. Davrin would die for Assan, and he makes that very clear, both in action and dialogue. In turn, it’s clear Assan loves and is loyal to Davrin (he lays at his feet, always cuddles up to Davrin, and even attacks the Gloom Howler/Isseya to protect Davrin). Davrin even tells Rook to hug Assan for him. This, to me, is the embodiment of the notion of “turlum” - a form of unity. There is respect and love shared by Davrin and Assan, which forms their loyalty to one another and their ability to work as one.

Davrin fights and becomes more than just the objectification/weaponzation (of the metaphorical blade - of trying to martyr himself to be useful or worth something) and evolves to embrace his personhood, to embracing the unknown, and that his path and development is solely, 100 percent, his own. He goes away from that philosophy mentioned in that one tumblr post from wonderland-mp3: “if U cannot be wanted, I will be needed and if I cannot be needed, let me be used until there’s nothing left of me”.

Appreciation

There’s a lot of reasons to enjoy Davrin, whether it is his handsomeness, his chest, or his nose (his nose is so unapologetically Black; it’s a standout and prominent feature of his, and it is absolutely beautiful) - he was certainly given plenty. However, one of my reasons that I enjoy him is because of the duality of his nature. He is both fierce warrior and gentle spirit. He whittles. That’s a skill that requires an exceptional amount of dedication, patience, and caution, as if you cut too deep, you can splinter the wood, especially for the figures that he makes of the fallen Grey Wardens and of the attention to detail he puts in the ones of the monsters he has fought because he cares about capturing their accuracy for others. He chops wood when he’s stressed or to clear his head. But every piece of wood he uses, he creates something with. He isn’t wasteful, he makes the wood useful. He puts out his frustration and feelings into the things he creates.

He also is open and unabashed about his feelings. His ability to communicate his feelings is powerful, and deters from the emotionally constipated black man stereotype. Even when you flirt with him once or twice, he immediately gets the heart and Thrill of the Chase. In my opinion, you earn this status with him faster than the other companions. He makes it very clear that he can be romantically invested in Rook. Even if you don’t choose to pursue him romantically, he is still a devoted and caring friend towards Rook. The walks he takes Rook on are moments in which he pulls them away from the Lighthouse or from some intense moment to reconnect to nature. He may use Assan as an “excuse” but he and Rook need those walks just as much.

He trusts and befriends his team. He comforts Bellara and her grief (on top of the fact that Davrin and Bellara (and an elven Rook) are trying to process this whole revamped narrative of their “gods”, their myths, and place in the world when the entire society has historically mistreated elves) - and their relationship to me, becomes akin to siblings, or close friends. He bonds with Taash and takes their advice on making sure Assan is getting the nutrients he needs. Emmrich and Davrin exchange parenting advice. Lucanis and Davrin become drinking buddies.

Davrin makes people feel seen.

Now, when you romance him, he is even more transparent about his feelings. He affirms that there’s more than passing glances between him and Rook, that they spend time together at an increasing rate, and he admits that he’s been thinking of a future with them. He expresses fear and worry - even a bit of anger of all the difficult decisions that Rook has had to do (his anger is not with them, I believe, but with the fact they have the burden) - over Rook.

He’s good with children - he offers Mila payment in the form of Griffon Kisses post-Weisshaupt. He’s also funny and silly (this man tells that the Gingerwort Truffle tea made Rook pee for the rest of the day).

He’s also mindful, tactical and intentional. While hunting the Gloom Howler, during the second part of the quest, aka The Cauldron, Rook may suggest they go after the Gloom Howler/or that she got away. However, you see Davrin state that it is okay, they’re not in a position to hunt her as they don’t truly know what she is, and it is dangerous to hunt something whose nature is not known. He then solicits help in finding out what or who the Gloom Howler is after allowing Emmrich to discern the nature of the cloth that Assan managed to tear from the Gloom Howler.

[Spoilers will continue in the next paragraph.]

(Spoilers: they find out that it is an elf, a former Grey Warden.)

In his pursuit of knowledge, Davrin discovers that the Gloom Howler is actually a former elven Grey Warden named Isseya who, during the 4th Blight, was ordered to blight the griffons so that they could not be useful to anyone else after going rabid on the Wardens who were using them to fight in the 4th Blight. (If you want to know more about Isseya, please read Dragon Age: Last Flight).

Even when he’s mad at the Gloom Howler for kidnapping the Griffons, he takes time to find out who or what she is— and then reminds her of her own humanity as an appeal to try and get her to stop before he puts her out of her misery because she’s basically been blighted and immortal for 500 years and living with that horror of her orders which has driven her mad.

[SPOILERS OVER.]

He is socially and emotionally intelligent. If you take him on Harding’s companion quest to Kal-Sharok, he is able to greet Stalgard in dwarven, after Stalgard greets him as well. I also consider his ability to place his personal feelings aside in how he reviews Solas’s memories during the quest Regrets of the Dread Wolf, and to empathize where Solas was coming from in some of his decision making as a sign of emotional intelligence. He states that if he had an opportunity to forever end the blight like Solas did, or even though he did - he would take it, just as Solas had. (This is a paraphrasing, please don’t eat me alive.) Then, reviewing Solas’s regrets,

Davrin also can acknowledge when he’s wrong. He grows. He has strong opinions on Lucanis, granted, these are emphasized by the incident at Weisshaupt when he is in mourning, processing, and going through the stages of grief of arguably one of the only places he’s considered home since he’s left his clan. However, if you check on him after the argument - he states that Rook should check on Lucanis, and that the shot Lucanis took at Ghilan’nain was “incredible”. He then later tells Lucanis that no one can do what Lucanis can do in regards to taking down Ghilan’nain.

He’s a man of action. If you romance him, during the romance scene, he reassures Rook through physical touch - they’ve been stuck in a place alone for 2-3 weeks - and then follows up his physical reassurances with verbal affirmations. He says “I love you” first to Rook, and while this is probably intentional by the programming - for him to continue being transparent enough to admit I love you in a high tension situation speaks volumes.

Davrin, in the way that he is written is such a dynamic character and his character growth and arc is arguably one of the more long-lasting ones that I think about from DATV. While I’m not sure the ethnicity of his writer(s), they did a fantastic job embodying this man as an unapologetically and explicitly Black man, with all the nuance and roundness that avoided stereotypical behavior and tropes associated with Black men.

Final Notes

Davrin was my first romance in DATV, and arguably, if I could romance him every time, I absolutely would (however, I’m curious about the other romances, but I am planning another playthrough with my original Rook, Zen, and she will be romancing that man again). The way he loves is so big. He is the embodiment of to be loved is to be seen (and romancing him and then choosing him for that ending (which in my opinion, shouldn’t have been an option) is absolutely emotionally devastating. But, it confirms what I say: “You saw me, and I saw you”). His devotion (because that man is locked in) is phrased in “wherever you are, there I am”.

The AMA erasing him and saying that it is Assan that makes the ending so devastating on a level that equates to Harding is a very bad take. Not because it erases his personhood (which is the purpose of his entire companion quest), but also because Assan is a part of him, but he is what you are offered first, Assan is the added bonus. Additionally, reducing his character to “just the jock” is also in poor taste because a) the jock character is obviously Taash (they literally have weight-lifting equipment in their room) and b) he is so much more than just that, and he is a very gentle character.

[ MORE SPOILERS BTW ]

(Also, arguably, his scene as a result of leading the second team is so much more worse than Harding’s, in my opinion, because he didn’t even get a fighting chance, and Harding’s status is different than his (MIA vs. Fallen Hero with the disclosure they couldn’t find his remains)

[ SPOILERS OVER ]

I loved my experience romancing him and playing as a Veil Jumper Rook because he gives banter like “Not bad for a Veil Jumper” even without romancing him. It’s funny, it’s comradery, it is warmth. He jokes with Neve about her assessment on Rook.

He doesn’t forget his roots and where he comes from, and this is why I propose that Davrin, the Grey Warden, but also the man that he is, is the proclimaiton of the future and change of Thedas at large. He knows he’s an elf (but he states, I’m not a spirit (like the ancient elves), he grows to represent the change of the Grey Wardens. We see this in the flowers found by Rook, Evka, and Antoine under all the Blight that begin to grow in the Wetlands. We see this in how Flynn, the healer from Lavendel, uses the Blight to sense it in their patients; we see it in the changes of the Calling and how for some Wardens in the midst of their hearing the call - it stopped. We see it in the narrative end of the Blight (“the Blight to End all Blights” because no more archdemons = no more gods = no more elven god related blight); we hear it from Antoine who says the song of the Blight is changing and healing.

This man is built up to be a narrative parallel of the light and hope that comes with the changes in the Grey Wardens, the Elves, and the world of Thedas at large (without the Blight), and I stand by that. Not only do the Griffons represent change, and the Grey Wardens changing their purpose, but Davrin is the light that leads the way for a greater and more positive future for Thedas, in all of his parts that make him whole, connecting Thedas’s past and flaws, to the prospects of a better future. And for that, DATV told an incredibly powerful story through him (and his beautiful brown eyes).

If you managed to read all of this, I appreciate you. <3 If you liked this, I yap a lot on twitter, bluesky, and elsewhere, and draw doodles and things of my ocs (including my rook zen, davrin, and my solavellen) plus gladio from FFXV (and my oc, persephone). Please feel free to drop into my DMs or inbox!!

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ponett · 1 year ago

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Bobby's 2023 Media Wrap-Up

So! Like I said before, this past year I kept a running list of everything I watched, every game I finished, every new album I listened to, etc., and wrote one-paragraph blurbs with my thoughts on every single one. Please enjoy this journey through everything I liked, or didn't like, in 2023, with my favorites of the year listed at the bottom.

(Yes! This is long!!)

Some notes:

I mainly only included things I finished. Exceptions are marked with an asterisk.

I included some YouTube stuff as "TV shows" - mostly particularly long, high effort video essays and documentaries.

I was a bit less adventurous than I'd like to have been this year. Part of this was just that I felt like I was constantly playing catch-up with Big Releases I felt obligated to check out, and part of this was just executive dysfunction from burnout. Wait until you see how long it took me to beat Mario Wonder lmao

Yes, I need to read more books. I don't read a lot of books these days. I need to get back to Discworld.

COLOR KEY

Video Games • TV / Web Video • Movies • Comics • Music

January

1/15: Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (MSQ) - Very slow at times, the Primal shit is generally extremely lame to me outside of the boss fights themselves, but god if the quality of life improvements over WoW, the JRPG energy, and the fact that it Actually Has A Story carry it pretty hard.

1/18: Sonic the Hedgehog: Scrapnik Island miniseries - One of the most creative and compelling uses of the Sonic IP… ever? Fantastic little self-contained arc about the struggles of Eggman’s abandoned creations that gracefully weaves between heartfelt optimism and moody horror with some of the best art ever seen in a Sonic comic.

1/18: Mega Man X4 - Glad I finally actually beat this after never even beating any of the Mavericks as a kid! I can see why it’s a lot of peoples’ favorites. The gameplay has very little of that X series bloat and is just fun, especially after getting X’s armor upgrades. (But the story really is a long series of missed opportunities.)

February

2/2: Donks - Felix Colgrave continues to be an exceptional artist. The sound design on this is fantastic and really sells this short as something unique. Had to go back and watch his older stuff again after this.

2/4: Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward (3.0 - 3.3 MSQ) - I get it now. I get why people say this is just a proper mainline Final Fantasy game built into the framework of an MMO. That shit ruled. Not even walking back the drama in Ul’Dah from the end of ARR can sour me on it because the main storyline was so strong.

2/8: Disneyland's Forgotten Sci-Fi Rock Band - Live From the Space Stage - A nice and honest tribute to a group of artists who could have easily been forgotten. In hindsight this feels like a precursor to Kevin’s Disney Channel jingle video, a tribute to the unsung artists pouring their hearts into “lesser” art for a megacorporation, art that was designed to be transient but sticks with people nonetheless.

2/9: Metroid Prime Remastered* - Not gonna finish because I just played through the Wii version in 2021, but still. Very, very pretty remaster.

2/16: Theatrhythm Final Bar Line - It’s more Theatrhythm. What more could I want

2/17: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean (anime) - Probably the best part of the anime so far (assuming they continue on to SBR). A near perfect mix of the more structured plot of part 5 with the goofiness of parts 3 and 4 that crescendos into a fantastic, bombastic, emotional, bittersweet ending. The use of footage from the original opening and the new ending set to Roundabout in the finale were perfect, and made me intensely nostalgic for the early days of my JoJo fandom between seasons 1 and 2 of the anime.

2/22: Aggretsuko Season 5 - I don’t really know what to make of this one. Once you get past the agonizing initial arc all about Haida where Retsuko has to be his overbearing mommy GF who flips out and starts spying on him when she’s left on read and chides him when he misbehaves, it feels like an improvement over the previous seasons. But I don’t know how much of that is due to the extremely low bar set by season 4. And then the ending is extremely rushed and anticlimactic. They got legally married and the only acknowledgement was a shot of them signing the paperwork in a montage partway through the final episode?????????

2/24: Double Fine PsychOdyssey - God, what a journey the making of this game was. I already loved 2 Player’s past efforts at documenting Double Fine’s process, but this takes it to a whole new level. This feels culturally significant. The depth and honesty with which they depict not just the nitty gritty of making a game, but also the inherent struggles of working on a collaborative creative work for years at a time, is astounding. Not to mention that they were there to capture the shift from office life to remote work as COVID hit. So much of this would have been nightmarishly stressful to watch if I didn’t already know how successful the game was, but that’s just because they really didn’t sugarcoat it. And yet even after all that, it leaves me feeling optimistic about video games as an art form in a way that the constant headlines about cynical live service games don’t. There are still people out there pouring their hearts into making real art, and this is their story. Everyone who plays video games should watch this.

2/25: Cracker Island (Gorillaz) - New Gorillaz albums feel like less of an event these days, but after Humanz it feels like they’re just more chill with the project and their ambitions with it. Every couple years we get some more laid back jams from Damon along with some fun new collabs. Hard to complain. Favorite track: New Gold

2/25: Pool Kids (Pool Kids) - I discovered this band because Derek knows them and was excited when they got a song added to Fortnite through the Bandcamp collab. Always down to find more cool indie rock bands I can vibe with. The mix of dreamy vocals and energetic riffs on some of the tracks here almost fill the Crying-shaped hole in my heart. Almost… Favorite track: Conscious Uncoupling

2/25: Insane in the Rain (insaneintherainmusic) - I thought it was really funny timing when Carlos announced that his first original project would be a jazz fusion album inspired by acts like T-Square and Casiopea right as I was getting into those two specific bands. The final product does not disappoint. Favorite track: Insane in the Rain

2/26: Get Up Sequences Part Two (The Go! Team) - I’ve never been one to believe that a band’s sound has to remain exactly the same forever, but it really does hit you hard that the first two tracks here sound like classic The Go! Team. Their more recent cleaner sound is still here too, though, for a nice mix of old and new. Favorite track: Divebomb

2/28: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury (Season 1) - Oh my god. Oh my god. I got distracted around the time I was finishing SLARPG, but finally catching up now, wow. My assumption that the seemingly lighter tone of the series compared to the prologue was there to lull us into a false sense of security before twisting the knife when war finally breaks out was spot on. This is peak Gundam.

March

3/4: Pizza Tower - One of the best platformers I’ve played in a long time. It transcends its blatant Wario Land inspirations with the sheer speed at which Peppino can move and the way things like the level design, his wall running, and even the hidden ability to do a second lap around the level reward getting into a flow state where you’re just constantly moving. This is the type of game that wants to turn you into a speedrunner. My only real complaint is a few iffy enemy designs that I wish would get patched.

3/6: Bloons TD 6 * - I bought this before bed one night on a nostalgic whim and then the next morning woke up and saw the Steam receipt email on my phone in one of the most “what did I do last night” moments of my life. I like when the monkeys pop the balloons.

3/7: The Book of Boba Fett - I put off finishing this show for a very long time but finally caved upon the release of The Mandalorian season 3. This show spends four episodes failing to make me give a shit about Boba Fett trying to be “the daimyo” and drive the drug trade off of Tatooine, then just gives up and becomes season 2.5 of Mando, which in turn feels like it undercuts the main series. It fails as both its own story and as a spinoff. I know that finishing this after Andor did it no favors, but WHOOF.

3/12: Obi-Wan Kenobi - Some interesting ideas in the first half hinting at a more introspective show, but it’s mostly swept aside in the back half so it can become a generic Star Wars adventure remixing things from A New Hope and Rebels (and apparently Jedi: Fallen Order). Action scenes have zero stakes because you know nothing can happen to any of the returning characters and none of the new ones are particularly interesting. Why there’s a second climax hinging on a Luke Skywalker death fakeout eludes me. Obi-Wan throwing the rocks at Vader is one of the funniest things in Star Wars history. But it was still better than Book of Boba Fett, I guess.

3/19: The King of Braves GaoGaiGar - Wow, cool robot indeed… GaoGaiGar isn’t going to blow anyone away with its writing, but sometimes you just need a really fun monster of the week mecha show with great action and lovably goofy characters. This is a show where like 20% of every episode consists of recycled transformation, combination, and signature attack sequences and I ate it up every time because they look fucking cool as hell. I don’t care. I’d watch Final Fusion another 49 times.

3/21: The Last of Us (HBO) * - Watched the first two episodes out of curiosity, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue because I don’t give a shit about The Last of Us. It’s definitely a well done adaptation, though, even if I know it’s inevitably going to devolve into miserable torture porn with questionable politics if they adapt Part II faithfully. The ending of episode 2 also lines up perfectly with where I stopped in the game in 2013 lmao

3/27: The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse (Folding Ideas) - Another banger from Dan Olson. This time the premise inherently gives him more time to just show off a bunch of stupid ugly bullshit made by crypto guys, which is fun. My main complaint was that I wished he would’ve brought up Second Life more as a point of comparison (a thing I basically always want out of discussion of “the metaverse”), but he at least did touch on it in the last section.

3/31: The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog - I can’t believe after years of begging for the supporting cast to get more and better material in a Sonic game I got my wish in the form of a freeware murder mystery VN released for April Fools. This kicked ass.

April

4/7: Berserk - Completed Miura’s run and caught up on the chapters that have been released posthumously. It’s hard to say anything that hasn’t been said about Berserk, universally agreed upon as one of the greats of manga and fantasy fiction as a whole. What begins in its first few volumes as a nihilistic and edgy action comic built to facilitate as much sex and gore as possible quickly evolves into something deeply human and vulnerable and beautiful, both figuratively and in terms of its lavish art. The world sucks and is immeasurably cruel, and you will see that cruelty illustrated in graphic, sickening detail repeatedly throughout the series. (Perhaps a little too often throughout the Golden Age, where it feels like Miura never misses an opportunity to threaten Casca with sexual assault mid-battle.) But the point isn’t to wallow in that misery. It’s the story of a victim of horrific abuse learning to slowly open up to others, having those people he cares about torn away from him in the worst night of his life, hardening himself into a cold killing machine, and then slowly learning to open back up again, even if it means leaving himself vulnerable to more hurt. Anyone who says that the series peaked with the eclipse and went downhill in the “Guts’ JRPG Party” era is missing the point. Guts needed to find new people in his life to care about, to begin to find happiness again. Because no matter what unspeakable things Guts has gone through, it’s still possible for him to heal and to be loved. It takes time, but eventually you stop and realize that life has moved on.

4/8: Dedede’s Drum Dash Deluxe - Skipped it upon release because I didn’t particularly care for the minigame in Triple Deluxe, and I didn’t miss much. It’s fine as a little distraction, but not as a standalone rhythm game with only seven songs. If you don’t bother with the hard modes or chase after high scores this game is 15 minutes long. Oh how I yearn for Kirby to get the Theatrhythm treatment.

4/10: The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar FINAL - Eh… It was okay. Lots of cool robot fights, but said fights are stitched together with a mediocre plot that tries too hard to be more “mature” than its unabashedly schlocky kids’ show predecessor. Not crazy about the ending, either, which tries to be a bittersweet farewell closing off the series once and for all while also teasing that maybe there’ll be ANOTHER sequel after the OVA series they literally called “FINAL.” Ah well.

4/11: The Owl House - Sad to see this one go, but it’s hard to imagine them doing a better finale than this, even if they had gotten the six seasons they deserved. I’m not as obsessed with The Owl House as I probably would’ve been had it come out when I was, like, 20, but it’s a really fantastic show for all the reasons people always say. Great characters, great world, great story. I love that this starry-eyed fantasy story about a teenager finding love and a place where she belongs is also set on the rotting corpse of a titan with Hieronymous Bosch-inspired scenery and freaky monsters everywhere. What a great mix. If anything, I just wish I would’ve watched the first season as it aired so I could’ve had more time with it.

4/29: Mega Man Battle Network 3: Blue Version - FINALLY beat this via the new collection, 20 years after playing it as my first Mega Man game. (Technically my first was White, not Blue, but whatever.) There are more annoyances than I remember - lots of really really bad forced backtracking sections where you have to revisit every previous part of the internet, low chip drop rates, some really aggravating bosses like BubbleMan and KingMan, etc. But it’s still a great time overall. It’s Battle Network. In the back half the story gets surprisingly emotional, too. I was always under the assumption that the Hub stuff never came back up much in the story after 1, so I was pleasantly surprised with how relevant it was to the emotional arc of 3.

4/30: Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun * - Yeah I’m not playing through the whole thing lmao. I just wanted to play the first couple hours for nostalgia’s sake, and as a baseline for how much better the rest are. Even before getting deep in the game and having to deal with all the shit gated between doing two new game+ playthroughs, it’s immediately obvious how much of a downgrade this one is. Tons of glaring errors and typos all over the script, blander music, a way more boring aesthetic for the internet, and a premise that mostly just recycles the tournament idea from 3.

May

5/14: The Venture Bros. - Glad I finally sat down and watched all of this with Anthony after having seen one (1) episode as a teenager and a bunch of random clips in the years since. Great show. Some jokes in the early seasons haven’t aged gracefully, but what the show grows into over time... man. Hank and Dean go from being the butt of the joke to being characters you actually sympathize with - while still also being funny little goofballs. And the journey Henchman 21 goes on throughout the show. Man. Amazing that a comedy like this could run for 20 years and maintain its level of quality. Can’t wait for the movie.

5/18: Future Me Hates Me (The Beths) - Okay yeah I’m now just discovering bands through Fortnite lmao. I can’t complain really, they pick some really great indie artists for the in-game radio stations. Anyway: It’s very easy to win me over with a combination of energetic power pop, catchy guitar riffs, and earnest lyrics like this. One of those albums where three or four tracks in I know I have to buy it. Favorite track: Not Running

5/18: Jump Rope Gazers (The Beths) - Ditto. Favorite track: Dying to Believe

5/18: Expert In A Dying Field (The Beths) - Another good album. (I’m listening to these in release order.) I’ve been a bit slower to warm up to this one, initially thinking it was a little too mellow overall, but it might be my favorite after a few listens. Some real high highs. Interestingly, the lead singer’s New Zealand accent is also coming out more in her singing? Favorite track: Your Side (or maybe Head in the Clouds)

5/19: The Super Mario Bros. Movie - As a Mario fan, I think I enjoyed it? As a movie, less so? It was decent, in spite of feeling like they came up with a list of fun action setpieces first and then wrote the absolute bare minimum possible for the story scenes tying it all together. Full thoughts here. (This is the first movie I’ve seen this year, huh? I really don’t watch a lot of movies.)

5/23: Don't Know What You're In Until You're Out (Gladie) - I feel like I don’t like Gladie as much as I should. Their style of noisy indie rock is very much in my wheelhouse, and I do enjoy listening to them, but I dunno. Maybe it’s that the particular style of vocals makes it more monotonous to me. A good album nonetheless, if not 100% my thing. Favorite track: Nothing

5/24: City Slicker (Ginger Root) - Yes I am still making my way through Bandcamp artists I heard on Fortnite don’t @ me. Any excuse to get me to listen to some cool city pop-inspired funk like this is a good excuse. Favorite track: Loretta

5/24: Rikki (Ginger Root) - Favorite track: Why Try

5/25: Spotlight People (Ginger Root) - Favorite track: The Classic

5/29: Succession - A good dramedy series that increasingly focuses more on the drama than the comedy as it progresses, but it’s hard to complain about that since the drama is so compellingly produced. I enjoyed it. That being said, I kind of rankle at the claims that it’s The Greatest TV Show Of All Time. It’s great, don’t get me wrong. Amazing performances all around. But the show LOVES to spin its wheels, to repeat itself, and to let most of its interesting dramatic developments fizzle out before anything really comes of them, almost as if the show is constantly getting bored with its own ideas. To some extent this is intentional - Logan Roy is the untouchable billionaire, his kids fail at everything (but will nonetheless remain billionaires), and in the long run none of them really give a shit about anything other than their own status. But it’s not like things tend to visibly impact anyone else, either, be they supporting characters or the world at large. Even the Big Scary Election, where the Roy siblings are directly responsible for plunging the nation into chaos, ultimately has zero impact on the finale a mere two episodes later. Certain Other Things do have an impact in the last season, though, allowing things to meaningfully change for the cast and for the show to sit with the ensuing drama, which has stopped me from souring on Succession more. There was finally a payoff for something. But it does still kind of feel like a show that goes in circles until it’s ready to call it quits, even if those circles did contain a lot of great acting and music along the way.

5/29: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts - I’d watched the first 12 episodes when they originally released, but I guess the Netflix binge release and the fact that all three “seasons” came out in one year led to me waiting until it finished… and then I just never got around to finishing it. Glad I fixed that! Really fun and stylish cartoon with an art style reminiscent of Teen Titans, a hip hop-filled soundtrack, dynamic fight scenes, and a colorful post-apocalyptic world filled with mutant (mostly anthropomorphic) animals. I’ll admit that at times I do kinda roll my eyes at Kipo’s unshakeable belief that everyone can be friends in a way that I don’t necessarily with similar shows like Steven Universe, and not every joke lands, but I dunno. It’s a kids’ show. That’s to be expected. It doesn’t detract from the overall package for me.

June

6/1: Craig of the Creek (Season 4) - It’s been years and I’m still processing the fact that kids can turn on Cartoon Network and hear Jeff Rosenstock. Anyway! Craig continues to be one of the best cartoons on TV, consistently funny and creative and way more engaging than a show about a bunch of kids LARPing in the woods has any right to be. This season turned into One Piece with the gang effectively hunting down the Poneglyphs in search of a legendary treasure. The kids think it’ll be magic. It isn't. An increasing number of cartoon logic gags aside, this show is firmly set in the real world. Does that make it any less interesting? Hell no. Season 3 turned a game of capture the flag into an all-out five episode war between the heroes and villains, filled with dramatic turnabouts and a climactic guest appearance from Del the Funky Homosapien. I’m sure however they wrap things up in the (sadly shortened) final season, it’ll be great. (Also? I would watch a whole show based on that “what if” episode that jumped forward to everyone’s 20s.)

6/6: Barry - Holy shit, what a show. I ended up binging it in less than a week in a cycle of “okay, just one more episode.” The way this show is able to swing between tones and genres while still feeling like a cohesive whole is truly masterful. It’s a layered character drama, a tragic crime thriller, a farcical comedy, an understated action series, a surrealist morality play, and a scathing satire of Hollywood, all in one. Even within the criminal underworld subplots the show ranges in tone from Breaking Bad to Paddington 2. And it works! While the show naturally gets bleaker over time as it confronts the repercussions of Barry’s murders, it never completely loses sight of its comedic roots. My favorite episode was easily season 2’s “ronny/lily,” a mostly self-contained episode that somehow manages to keep throwing the perfect curveballs to escalate its dark comedy.

6/12: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition) - Y’all heard of this movie? Pretty good, it turns out. (I’d seen the theatrical cut before, but this was my first time watching the extended edition. I’ve also only seen parts of the other two movies, so it’s time I finally watch all the extended cuts. The Gollum game pushed me to this.)

6/13: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition) - give it to us RAW and WRIGGLING

6/17: The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Extended Edition) - I’m not crying YOU’RE crying

6/22: Clone High (Season 2) - While the first episode being about “cancel culture” (or, more accurately, a teenager from 2003 being transported to 2023 and putting his foot in his mouth a lot) put a lot of people off, I ended up enjoying the new season of Clone High. The new clones grew on me as the season went on and their roles in the web of teen romance melodrama crystalized, and it made me laugh a lot, and Cleo/Frida is galaxy brained. Also they played one of my favorite Antarctigo Vespucci songs like a minute into the first episode. I don’t think I could really ask for much more.

6/28: The Mandalorian (Season 3) - I'd been watching this weekly but put off the last episode for no real reason. Responses to this season have been all over the place, but my blistering hot take is… it was fine. Is it as good as the first season? Probably not. But Mando no longer needs to carry the whole franchise on its shoulders and set the bar for how good the live action Disney Star Wars shows can be, because Andor exists, and it’s never gonna top Andor. The Mandalorian is free to just be a pulpy space adventure show where Giancarlo Esposito plays a scenery-chewing cartoon villain and a little puppet does wire stunts. These are things Andor cannot and should not do, but that’s Star Wars, baby. It’s delightful. I could watch Grogu get underhand tossed like a sack of flour all day.

July

7/2: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (Season 2) - LOVE WINS. (More nuanced take from way later: It definitely feels like a lot of the more messy political conflicts in this show got swept aside by the big final battle where some more easily resolved family conflicts take center stage. I’m not sure the ending is the most satisfying. But also this show only got half the episode count that damn near every other Gundam show ever made got, so that might be a factor here. Idk. Still one of my favorite Gundams.)

7/4: Final Fantasy XVI (watched Anthony play) - I had to write my longest Medium article ever about this one because I was so frustrated

7/10: Home Movies - “Things I like that I’ve never seen in full” has certainly been a recurring theme this year. Home Movies remains an all-time classic of animated comedy that went out on a high note before things got stale or the characters became parodies of themselves. While it’s mostly known for its funny improvised banter, throughout the last season you can really see the arc where Brendon no longer enjoys making movies, yet he feels obligated to keep using them to escape from the real world. In that light, the ending where the nature of their dysfunctional makeshift family is cemented, Brendon’s camera suddenly breaks, and life moves on really does feel like the perfect note to end on. Truly one of the best to ever do it.

7/15: The Legend of Zelda - Tears of the Kingdom - Wow. Just… wow. I had serious doubts about TotK in the months leading up to release due to how close Nintendo was playing their cards to their chest. I didn’t want this to be a Saints Row IV, where the game is fun enough but the recycled map makes it feel like a rehash. Instead, I found a game that made me look at BotW’s map in a whole new light, brimming with so many more things to do and people to meet. Add on a better, more versatile set of tools, more varied dungeons and bosses, and a story that I felt was told somewhat better and we’ve got a real contender for my new favorite Zelda game. It was hard to tear myself away, but as this list shows, it’s been basically the only game I’ve played since it came out.

7/16: Sonic Prime (Season 2) - I liked the parts with Shadow and Chaos Sonic, but I’ve come to the sad conclusion that most of this show is just mediocre. More thoughts here.

7/18: We ♥ Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie - “I’m a dog, but I love Katamari Damacy.” Truer words have never been spoken.

7/19: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - Pretty good! It didn’t blow me away, but after how bad the Bay movies got I’m just thankful to have a decently cohesive Transformers movie where the human story is okay and I like the bots (although half of them needed more screen time), even if it is just another Hollywood blockbuster about two sides fighting over a macguffin that devolves into a big CGI battle against an army of nameless monsters in the third act. This is basically a mid-tier MCU movie but with Transformers, which won’t do much for most people, but again: the bar was underground.

7/22: The Venture Bros.: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart - God DAMN. A phenomenal ending for the series. While I would have loved to see a full final season to get some more one-off episodes in there, this doesn’t feel creatively compromised in any way–either due to the time constraints, or due to a desire to make it more marketable as a movie. It really does feel like they just took their outlines for the canceled final season and gently massaged them into the shape of an 84-minute movie, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s completely on par with the previous seasons. A hilarious and fitting sendoff for one of the greats of adult animation.

7/23: Beautiful Katamari - This was one of my first Xbox 360 games, but a frustrating temperature-based level made me put it down for 16 years. “Maybe it won’t be as bad now that I’ve beaten the first two games and am better at Katamari,” I thought. Nope! Still an absolutely dogshit level. But also, turns out the whole game is only like two hours long lmao. It’s still Katamari, so it’s still fun - the final level in particular, which seamlessly takes you from ground level all the way to space, feels like a logical endpoint for the series - but beyond that it just doesn't have the same soul without Keita Takahashi's input.

August

8/4: Doom Singer (Chris Farren) - I’ve been waiting so long for Chris and Jeff to do another Antarctigo Vespucci album, but god damn. This is the best of Chris’s solo work, and a contender for his best record, period. Every track’s a banger, with more energy than some of his previous solo work but also a good deal of variety. Favorite tracks: First Place, Cosmic Leash

8/4: Transformers Earthspark (Season 1) - This show had a bit of an uneven start, unsure if it wanted to have the emotional maturity of a more serious action cartoon or a preschool cartoon where the characters have little kid mood swings and outbursts and learn basic lessons. It also felt like it was speedrunning its Wholesome Found Family Dynamic with characters who just met, which didn’t feel earned. While these problems never completely go away (see: the cheap and corny way the otherwise very dark season finale suddenly resolves), the show improves quickly, and the positives outweigh the negatives. It’s so great to have a Transformers cartoon that feels fresh, giving us a post-war setting with a bunch of new characters and new dynamics between the Cybertronians and the humans. The returning characters are also uniformly great as the old veterans overseeing the new generation. (Reformed Megatron! Danny Pudi as Bumblebee! Steve Blum returning as Starscream! Keith David as Grimlock!!!) And those super dynamic action scenes! I can nitpick, but Earthspark’s a ton of fun, and easily the best new Transformers cartoon since Prime and Animated.

8/5: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (remaster) - Everyone who told me this game was a masterpiece was right. I had played the first chapter when it dropped as the demo for the iOS version years ago, but never went further than that until now. What a game. Absolutely incredible through and through. Great story, great twists, great characters, great puzzles, great art direction. Everything comes together so perfectly to form a totally unique, unforgettable package, a top tier video game murder mystery. Everyone should play this, preferably going in as blind as possible.

8/15: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Season 16) - Wow! Recent seasons of Sunny have been kind of up and down, with some interesting experiments (Mac Finds His Pride, the Ireland arc, etc.) paired with some comedic duds. Most of this latest season is standard fare for the series with fewer big creative swings, but it’s just hit after hit in terms of comedy. Not a single dud, whether we’re seeing Mac and Dennis try to start a rental business for inflatable furniture or watching the gang meet Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, believing the entire time that the latter is Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle. Even the attempts at topical comedy landed better. Easily the funniest season in years.

8/16: One Piece Film Gold - It’s easy to see why this one has kind of been forgotten in the wake of Stampede and Film Red, which revolve around established fan favorite characters, but this was still pretty fun. Perhaps a little too long, but it’s fun to see the Straw Hats fool around in a giant casino and do a heist. They definitely cranked the fanservice up even more than usual in this one, though, as I probably should have expected for a movie made alongside the anime’s adaptation of Dressrosa.

8/17: One Piece: Stampede - This one goes for a different kind of fanservice. While most One Piece movies are isolated from the ongoing plot and its expanded cast of characters, Stampede instead asks “What if we just put damn near every active character on the same island and had them fight?” The answer: a fun time! It would get old if all of the movies were like this, but after a bunch of movies that are just like “the Straw Hats are gonna land on another new island and fight some more weird guys” it’s fun to see characters like Law and Buggy and Smoker get in on the fun. It’s also nice to get a movie with the Wano era art style, and Usopp surprisingly gets some really good character moments in here.

8/18: One Piece Film Red - This really is the best of the One Piece movies, huh? (Baron Omatsuri is a close second.) It really feels like a change of pace after the last four with the most interesting and emotionally engaging story out of any of them. And even if the events of these movies are never canon, it still feels significant in my understanding of Shanks as a character as we move into the final phase of the manga.

8/21: Pikmin 4 - The opening hour of the game made me really question if they’d changed too much, with all the focus on your new dog unit over your Pikmin and the extremely dull, drawn out dialogue scenes with your new companions back at the base. But once I got into the swing of things I had a blast. This is probably my new favorite Pikmin game. There’s a great mix of activities here to keep things fresh. I also really ended up liking Oatchi’s role as basically your second captain who can also serve as your tank or a rideable mount. The Dandori stuff and nighttime missions in particular show off how useful Oatchi is for your multitasking without necessarily overshadowing the Pikmin.

8/22: Never Get Tired: The Bomb the Music Industry! Story - I literally backed this on Kickstarter eight years ago (my name is in the credits!) and then never got around to watching it for no reason. It’s on YouTube now, and Jeff’s got a new album out next week, so now feels like the perfect time to watch it. And man… what a great documentary. Obviously I’m just a fan of the band, but this also really spoke to me as an artist. Jeff wanting to stick to his principles and give out his music for free and play cheap all ages shows, his discomfort over the idea of selling merch, and the struggles that come with not playing the game like that… It's hard. They readily admit that Jeff is an idealist, that people fight him on this stuff, that he’s missed out on some big opportunities because of these stances, and that he’s had to compromise a bit on some of these things over time. But that incredible climax with their final show, including a full opening performance of the slowly building “Campaign for a Better Next Weekend” and the closing performance of “Future 86” where the whole audience is singing along as the members of the band are hugging and crying… it’s beautiful. This may have been a band where the members had to go back to their shitty day jobs after every tour because they weren’t selling out arenas, but their art meant something to people, and that makes it all worth it.

8/25: Nimona - I haven’t read the original comic (yet), so I can’t compare them too much, but it’s nonetheless pretty apparent that some things were softened and easy kids’ movie jokes were added by the studio to squeeze this graphic novel for teens into a PG animated movie. Regardless, the emotional throughline hits REALLY hard, particularly the very blatant trans allegory and the climax. (It’s no wonder Disney was afraid of this movie seeing the light of day lmao.) The animation is also very squishy and fun to watch throughout. Great movie.

8/26: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish - Spider-Verse really has done so much for animation, huh? This one was as good as everyone said. Beautiful use of stylized color and lighting throughout, and every time this movie very conspicuously shifted to different framerates for a flashy fight scene it owned. Very cute and heartwarming story, too, which thankfully gave its second act plenty of time to explore the cast and let them go on their journey, unlike a certain plumber movie that came out a few months later. Also I would let Death [redacted]

8/28: Holocure: Save the Fans! - This isn't really something I can beat, but I've been addicted to Holocure lately. I don't even watch VTubers aside from maybe seeing a funny Korone animation every now and then, this is just a really, really good freeware Vampire Survivors clone with a huge roster of varied characters to pick from.

8/31: HELLMODE (Jeff Rosenstock) - A new album from Jeff is always a major event for me. If there were any worries that he was starting to go soft at 40 (because one of the three singles off this album was a gentle acoustic piece), the frantic opening of this album put those worries to rest. The first two tracks are Jeff screaming out for help as he’s pulled in a million directions by the chaotic state of the world, a theme that becomes the thesis of the album. I’d say it lags slightly in the middle, but overall this is another extremely well-rounded record full of bangers that’s unapologetically Jeff, with possibly my favorite closing track he’s ever done. Favorite tracks: I WANNA BE WRONG, 3 SUMMERS

September

9/3: One Piece (live action, Season 1) - They did it. I can’t believe it, but they did it. While I have my nitpicks (Usopp and Sanji don’t get enough big moments to shine), this is an extremely solid and faithful adaptation of the first few arcs of One Piece with a great cast. For the most part the changes feel smart and logical, and the big emotional beats of the story are all there and executed very well. I doubted it a little in episodes 2-4, where the Orange Town and Syrup Village arcs saw some major changes to shift the action indoors, and the increased focus on the drama in favor of repeating every gag and battle from the manga 1:1 took a bit of getting used to, but by the end I was having a blast. It’s a different take on One Piece, but it still feels like One Piece. Genuinely very excited for season 2.

9/4: Pseudoregalia - A great little N64-style 3D Metroidvania focused on platforming and very satisfying movement. I always love entries in the genre that are less prescriptive in what order you have to tackle areas in, a la Symphony of the Night or Hollow Knight, and this one’s great in that regard. While there are a number of new moves to find, most of the map is open to you very early in the game, and smart use of your moveset can allow you to “sequence break” without even realizing it. (You would not believe how long I went without getting the wall run.) I do wish it had a map, but that’s already being patched in.

9/6: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk * - Not a bad game at all, but I quickly remembered how bad I am at skating games, so like… eh? Not sure I have much desire to play past chapter 2. Also the soundtrack is sadly kinda hit or miss for me outside of the obvious Naganuma tunes.

9/9: The History of the Minnesota Vikings (Dorktown) - Jon Bois never misses. Even as someone who doesn’t actively follow sports, Jon Bois is a master storyteller, using graphs and statistics and funny anecdotes to explore these deeply human stories. He can convey why people care so much about these teams, these people, and sports in general, and how our popular sports reflect on American culture. He could tell the story of just about any team or player in any sport and I just know I’ll come out the other side a misty-eyed fan. And what a fascinating cast of characters we have this time, with origin stories for everything from the Hail Mary pass to a Minnesota state supreme court judge to the Griddy. Nine hours well spent.

9/10: Timespinner - A fun and highly polished Metroidvania that maybe doesn’t quite have enough of its own identity in its quest to replicate Symphony of the Night…but also, like, this was pitched as a Symphony throwback on KickStarter in a pre-Bloodstained, pre-Hollow Knight world, so I can’t really blame ‘em! Stopping time to avoid boss attacks is fun, the pixel art is gorgeous, and I liked the dark science fantasy story about warring empires and meddling with time a lot more than I thought I would - lore journal text dumps and all.

9/14: The Decay of Sam & Cat (Quinton Reviews) - All the stuff at the end with Matt Bennett (the actor who played Robbie on Victorious and Sam & Cat) in this was really good and sweet. It’s that kind of thing that makes these videos feel like they’re still worthwhile on some level. But the padding and the things Quinton chooses to spend the colossal runtime on does drive me more and more insane with each passing Nick sitcom video. I don’t know how much longer he can keep this schtick up. I hope he’s able to move on to other things before too terribly long instead of continuing to extend this “miniseries.”

9/19: Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales - AKA Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 1.5. It’s fun for the same reasons Peter’s first game was fun. I had a good time swinging around New York again in preparation for the sequel, and there’s a lot of cute stuff with Miles becoming Harlem’s neighborhood hero, but WOW did the Underground v. Roxxon conflict fall flat for me.

9/20: I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson - I understand so many posts now.

9/25: Spider-Man (2002) (rewatch) - It’s you who’s out, Gobby! OUT OF YOUR MIND!

9/25: Futurama (Season 8) - I was ready to be a hater, recalling the fact that Futurama has already had three “perfect endings” with the show getting a little weaker with every revival. Then I watched the first new episode on a whim and thought it wasn’t bad, so I was like, eh, sure, I’ll watch the rest. Overall Hulurama is hit or miss. There are chuckles to be had, and it sure as hell beats modern Simpsons, but almost every episode is either a belated take on an overplayed Topical Issue (the pandemic, Amazon, cancel culture, etc.) or a direct sequel to an old episode people liked. Or both! It’s also really noticeable that certain voice actors sound way older - Billy West is struggling with the Fry voice in particular, and it hurts his comedic timing. But just when all hope seemed lost after the nigh-incomprehensible toy-themed anthology episode, possibly the worst episode of the entire series… the last episode, where the Planet Express crew explores whether or not the universe could be a simulation, was really, really solid. Great note to end on to make me not regret my time with this season as a whole.

9/26: Spider-Man 2 (2004) (rewatch) - Once the GOAT, always the GOAT.

9/27: Spider-Man 3 (rewatch) - Revisiting this movie for the first time since I saw it in theaters… it’s not bad. It’s fine! It continues to have the heart and sincerity that make the first two movies work. It’s just not as concise with three villains vying for the spotlight, but I also wouldn’t cut any of them, necessarily. I guess Eddie/Venom would be the easiest, but Peter getting the black suit and giving in to his resentment feels too central to cut. (Yes, even with Emo Peter becoming a meme.)

9/28: Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake - I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this one, especially since I was never really a fan of the genderbend episodes in the original show. (At the time they mostly just felt like an excuse to crank up the teen romance stuff to 11.) But MAN. This was a fantastic coda to the original series. It made me care about Fionna and Cake and their friends as their own characters separate from their original counterparts, it gave the Simon/Betty arc a much more satisfying (if no less bittersweet) resolution than the original finale had time to do, and it even managed to be a multiverse story that didn’t make me roll my eyes in 2023. A+ all around. Makes me wanna rewatch the original show again. [spoiler: I did]

9/29: Meanwhile (aivi & surasshu) - It’s been a whole decade–they were busy with, you know, all the music in Steven Universe, among other things–but we finally have a new aivi & surasshu album! Their chiptune/piano fusion style is familiar, but they’ve definitely grown as composers in subtle ways. Favorite track: Time Travel

October

10/1: This is Financial Advice (Folding Ideas) - A lot of the nitty gritty finance law stuff turned into white noise for me, but still, great video. I had no idea that the GameStop stock craze devolved into this bizarre cult that thinks they’re going to crash the global economy and rise from the ashes as the new kings with the value of their GME stocks. Glad this video exists to try and balance out the narrative.

10/5: Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon DLC - Good ideas, absurdly frustrating and tedious execution. Full thoughts here.

10/10: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (rewatch) - I didn’t plan this, but very fitting that I would end up rewatching this on 10/10.

10/12: Half-Life Alyx but the Gnome is Self-Aware (wayneradiotv) - ha he! (Seriously though, that finale was a fucking masterpiece. The RTVS crew has an incredible knack for using the framing device of video game livestreams to blur the lines between comedy and horror, or ironic anti-humor and complete sincerity. I’ve never seen anything else like this.)

10/15: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Not sure how much I can say that hasn’t already been said. The most visually creative movie I’ve ever seen, grounded by some really excellent storytelling about Miles (and now Gwen) that’s probably better than his actual comics. But it also does feel like it’s about to end and then the movie just keeps going like ten times over lmao. Can’t wait to watch this a second time on a better TV.

10/20: Sonic Superstars - A mostly really solid and fun 2D Sonic game that’s unfortunately dragged down by an extremely hodgepodge soundtrack and some overly drawn out boss fights. I spent HOURS trying to beat the final boss of the bonus scenario (which is required for the true ending in this one) before giving up. Really a shame that that’s the note I’m leaving the game on, because I otherwise enjoyed it, but ah well. More thoughts here.

10/27: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 - Another good Spider-Man game from Insomniac. Liked the story more than the one in Miles Morales, but maybe not as much as the first game. Extensive thoughts here.

10/28: Venom - Was in the mood for more Venom after the game. As expected this was not a very good movie, but the dynamic between Eddie and Venom made it a fun watch. Tom Hardy is constantly about to shit his pants in this movie. It’s great.

10/28: Venom: Let There Be Carnage - I had a way better time with this one. Is this a good movie? No. But it cranks the insanity of the first movie up to 11. Goofy as fuck in an extremely watchable way.

November

11/5: Pluto - An absolutely masterful series that anyone interested in sci-fi needs to watch. The anime adaptation was great, and I immediately understand why people who’ve read the manga speak so highly of it. Really makes me want to get into Astro Boy more, and also read some of Urasawa’s other works.

11/18: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off - Wow, just wow. When news of a Scott Pilgrim anime broke I was cautiously curious to see if we’d get a more direct adaptation of the comics, and instead it veered off in the exact opposite direction in the best way possible. This is almost entirely a different story, one that’s in conversation with the previous versions (sometimes in very meta ways), and I think it’s really valuable to see O’Malley revisiting these characters with new things to say about them. The major story divergence gives us a chance to examine the characters from a new angle - particularly Ramona, who’s the real protagonist of this version, and the evil exes, who completely steal the show. This was a great reminder of why I fell in love with this series as a teenager. I now genuinely hope we get more Scott Pilgrim.

11/22: Void Rivals (Issues #1 - #6) - The first arc of the new Robert Kirkman series that kicked off Skybound’s new “Energon Universe” is now complete, and I’m left thinking Void Rivals is… okay? I thought the first issue was a decent (if not particularly original) sci-fi comic with an appealing art style, which just so happens to also briefly have a Transformer in it so there can be a Big Surprise. And the series still hasn’t quite shaken that feeling to me. It’s an okay sci-fi series that arbitrarily dedicates a couple of pages of every issue to something from Transformers, but I’m not really sure what the shared universe stuff adds to Void Rivals, or what Void Rivals adds to Transformers and GI Joe. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

11/22: Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History (Defunctland) - Yeah, gotta be honest, I only got halfway through this one. It seems like Kevin just 1) really wanted to push himself creatively and 2) make a love letter to Epcot, and while I respect that, I think it suffers as a historical documentary. It’s Fantasia but for the creation of Epcot. That might be very impressive on a technical level, but it feels more like a piece of Disney propaganda than prior Defunctland videos due to a lack of context and nuance.

11/24: Aperture Desk Job - A short, sweet, and funny little tech demo for my new Steam Deck set in the Portal universe. More effort was definitely put into this than was strictly necessary.

11/26: ESCHATOS - I am not good at bullet hell games, but I enjoy them from time to time and I really love this one’s FM synth soundtrack, so I picked it up on a whim in the Steam sale. I only beat it on Easy, but still, I had a lot of fun with it! It’s straightforward but very flashy, with the camera dynamically zooming around from set piece to set piece at ridiculous speeds and each level segueing directly into the next. The lack of a powerup system on the main mode in favor of just needing to know when to use your different shot types makes it feel very approachable.

11/27: Lunistice - A great little 3D platformer with a good soundtrack that I had fun hunting down all the secrets in. This is an easy recommendation for fans of games like Kirby or Klonoa - whimsical games set in colorful dream worlds where the underlying story can get a bit more somber. (Although the story in this one is mostly told through mildly cryptic lore dumps, so your mileage there may vary.)

11/28: Spark the Electric Jester 2 - The leap from 2D to 3D here is impressive, but this is very clearly a rough draft for Spark 3. Very, very fun Sonic-style 3D platforming, but the combat is lacking and the storytelling is just kinda bad. More extensive thoughts on this and the above two games here.

December

12/2: Fortnite (Chapter 4) - This was my first full chapter of Fortnite, after having been roped into the game by the siren songs of Zero Build mode and Goku during Chapter 3. This means it’s harder for me to compare this chapter to previous ones, but still, Fortnite remains a genuinely very well made Battle Royale shooter that’s a blast with friends. If I have any complaint about this Chapter, it’s that they would regularly introduce zany ideas and then slowly reel them back in, whether it was the Augment system or the increasingly mundane movement items. It also felt like it was a little too easy to get the perfect loadout in every match, meaning the final showdown would almost always be against players with Slurp Juice and gold shotguns. And I missed the smaller mid-season map updates of Chapter 3. But overall I still had a really good time, and look forward to playing more for the foreseeable future.

12/4: Plagiarism and You(Tube) (HBomberguy) - This will get written off by many as “YouTuber drama,” but this really is an excellent video essay that feels like the kick in the pants that YouTube needs. If video essayists are gonna be a major source of information for so many, then they gotta have standards. I also think it does a good job of highlighting the people that have been plagiarized and trying to drive more attention their way in an attempt to right those wrongs.

12/6: Transformers (Skybound comic) - We only got the first three issues of this in 2023, but I just HAVE to say something about how incredible this series is here. Daniel Warren Johnson is knocking it out of the park. This is the new bar for Transformers. The hand-inked art is extremely dynamic and full of character, and the story is using the familiar beats of G1 Transformers but doing very new things with them. You can tell this from the very first page, but the emotional scene of Optimus accidentally crushing a deer in the forest and realizing how fragile life is on Earth sealed the deal for me. And yet in the very same comics Optimus can do suplexes and clotheslines and lord knows how many other wrestling moves on Decepticons, and it doesn’t feel like tonal whiplash? These comics just fucking rule, and anyone with even the slightest interest in Transformers should be reading them.

12/8: What We Do in the Shadows (Season 5) - [spoilers] WWDITS has very much settled into being a status quo show. Every season has its own little arc where one or two things change to keep things interesting, but then everything returns to normal by the end. Guillermo finally becoming a vampire, only to become a human again in the end, might just be the most egregious example of this yet. But also… the show’s still really funny? And I continue to be happy that Kristen Schaal has stuck around as a series regular as the Guide. So it’s hard to complain. I could see the show running out of steam over the next few seasons, but it’s still hitting for me right now.

12/12: Pony Island - Finally got around to this since the trailer for the sequel dropped. I feel like playing this years later in a post-Inscryption world where Pony Island is a known quantity kind of lessens its impact, but still, it’s a fun and funny puzzle game where you try to hack your way out of a possessed arcade machine. I’m not sure I found it particularly scary, but I’m not sure it’s supposed to be? The way the game messes with you during the Asmodeus “boss fight” was probably the highlight for me. I also like being able to say things like “The part where you have to not kill Jesus was so hard. I kept getting terrible butterfly patterns.”

12/16: Breaking Bad VR but the AI is Self-Aware (wayneradiotv) - As always, Wayne and co.’s commitment to the bit is unrivaled. This kind of got interpreted as just a way to troll HLVRAI fans, but so many moments in this genuinely made me laugh out loud.

12/18: Soul of Sovereignty Prelude - As someone who would list Cucumber Quest as a big creative influence, I was naturally very excited for this first chapter of GGDG’s new visual novel. Their mentality of both scaling things back in terms of labor while also going more shamelessly self-indulgent in terms of storytelling after burning out on making webcomics has really spoken to me, and WOW, the end result of that new process of theirs is shaping up to be something really special. The art and music are sparse but extremely evocative, giving you the rough sketch of the world and letting your mind fill in the rest. The story blends literary high fantasy vibes with the style of fantasy seen in ‘90s JRPGs (you can definitely tell this came from an idea for an RPG), but rather than constantly winking at the audience and making self-aware video game references it plays these storytelling ideas extremely sincerely, giving them real dramatic weight while still indulging in fun tropes to their fullest extent. While it’s a far cry from their most famous work with much more mature content, GGDG always excels at creating characters and worlds that immediately grab me. I can’t wait for the rest.

12/18: Barbie - I’m only… what, five months late for the whole Barbenheimer thing? Perfect timing. Anyway! On the one hand, I get the critiques saying that this movie is just a major corporation funding a self-aware feminist critique of their own product as a marketing ploy. And I kinda agree with that. And the movie is a little too long, and I don’t really know what to think of the way the Barbie/Ken conflict plays out. Anthony asked me to summarize what the story ended up being about, and I had no idea what to even say. But also… I did still like the movie? We don’t get a lot of cartoonish, absurdist, fourth wall breaking comedies like this anymore, and this is a good one of those. Also the whole cast is great, the set design is kind of stunning, and the cinematography is consistently appealing. I wouldn’t say it’s a revolutionary work of feminist filmmaking by any stretch, but it’s a good comedy movie.

12/21: Dr. Stone: New World - Man, Dr. Stone is great. I’ve said this many times, but I just love that this series uses all the trappings of shounen that would normally be used to hype up the protagonist learning a new move to instead hype up things like the protagonist building a loom or a hot air balloon. It’s shounen Bill Nye. I didn’t completely love everything about the Treasure Island arc this season, but it all built towards a really fun climax with a lot of satisfying turnabouts where the heroes use their ingenuity to just barely win.

12/23: The History of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out World Records (Summoning Salt) - Truly one of my favorite Summoning Salt videos ever, even with how repetitive Punch-Out can get to watch. It’s just so hard to beat “and that runner… was me.”

12/24: Super Mario Bros. Wonder - What more can be said that hasn’t already been said? It’s the best and most creative 2D Mario game since the ‘90s. The only real flaws are that it’s a little easy, the Search Party stages are annoying in singleplayer, and I wish that every boss prior to the final boss wasn’t just some form of Bowser Jr. fight. But those aren’t nearly enough to drag the whole experience down. It was a blast.

12/24: Do a Powerbomb! - Got this from Anthony as a birthday present. This is the previous series by the creative team currently doing the new Transformers comics I was gushing about a few entries ago. Even with the high bar set by those comics, Do a Powerbomb! exceeded my expectations. Holy shit. An absolutely entrancing fantasy wrestling miniseries full of dynamic, energetic action and tons of heart. These comics where a guy wrestles a giant talking orangutan almost made me cry. Twice. An instant favorite.

12/25: Adventure Time (rewatch) - We ended up finishing our rewatch of Adventure Time (the main series, anyway) on my 30th birthday, which feels appropriate. I already kinda knew this, but this rewatch has truly confirmed that Adventure Time is my favorite TV series of all time. The entire show is even better on a full series rewatch. In hindsight, even parts that annoyed me when they aired end up being important parts of the beautiful tapestry that is this series. The many low points of Finn’s adolescent love life are important stepping stones in his growth as a person, which leaves him in an extremely satisfying place by the end. Jake having kids didn’t get to be a huge status quo change because they grew up instantly, but then they did a bunch of fun episodes about Jake’s relationships with his adult children that deepened him as a character. And most of the big lore questions they kept teasing over the years (“Where’d the humans go?” “Who are Finn’s parents?” “When’s Finn gonna get a robot arm?” etc.) ended up getting satisfying and creative answers, because the show left itself the room to figure those things out later. This is a truly special, one-of-a-kind series, one that lasted nearly 300 episodes and yet still seems like it was over too soon. And yes, I did in fact cry during the final montage, like I knew I would. I will always cherish this show with all of my heart.

12/25: Olive the Other Reindeer (rewatch) - Haven’t seen this one since I was a kid! It was a favorite of mine back then, and while it might not be quite as funny as I remember it’s still very cute, with a 2D/3D hybrid art style that remains very unique and appealing. As an adult I can also appreciate the cast they got for this, with like half the cast of Futurama bolstered by guests like Michael Stipe from REM and The Sopranos’ Joe Pantoliano.

12/26: Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio - Anthony and I capped off our Christmas with the most jolly and festive stop motion movie of all! Jokes aside, man, what a beautiful movie. The animation is immaculate, and we really just don’t get children’s animated films like this anymore. Ones that overtly feature real world politics and religion and so many other dark themes in a way that doesn’t talk down to kids or sugarcoat things. This one hits hard. We need more movies like this.

12/31: Oppenheimer - This was an interesting one. Despite being three hours, the way that first hour jumps around in time makes it feel like Oppenheimer is constantly being propelled forward through life at a breakneck pace, swept up by the rising tide of nationalism in spite of his personal left wing politics, never really reflecting on what he’s doing until it’s too late. Then when he’s no longer useful to the empire, he’s chewed up and spat out, only to eventually be honored as a national hero as a symbolic gesture. It’s a compelling story. However, I’m a little torn on how certain aspects of history were framed. Does the abstraction of the bombings detract from the true weight of those events, in favor of sympathizing with the man who built the bomb? Or is it clever a way to show how the realities of the war were compartmentalized away by people who were complicit in its most heinous acts of violence? One minute a bunch of physicists are talking theory, thousands of miles away from the theaters of war, and the next they’ve killed 200,000 people. So which is it? Eh, probably somewhere in the middle, I guess. But I liked it overall.

12/31: Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe - I’ve been really surprised by how good this rerelease is. It kind of flew under the radar for me. I liked the original game, but at the time it also almost felt like the New Super Mario Bros. of Kirby. It was a straightforward throwback game where you went through a grass world, then a desert world, then a water world, etc., and also they added four player co-op. But returning to this one after the kinda mid Star Allies has made me appreciate just how solid RtDL is as a Kirby game. I really like the updated graphics, too - yes, even the new cel shaded outlines around the characters - even though I didn’t think it looked that great in screenshots. Also the two new copy abilities (Sand and Mecha) are fun, the minigame collection is shockingly fleshed out to the point that they could’ve sold it as a standalone eShop game, the collectible character masks are fun, and the new epilogue mode where you play as Magolor is one of the coolest bonus modes they’ve ever done. This is a top tier Kirby remake any fan of the series should check out.

Ongoing things I followed in 2023 that don't have a blurb:

Halo Infinite multiplayer

IDW Sonic the Hedgehog (main series + specials)

One Piece

Chainsaw Man

My Hero Academia (not caught up)

The JOJOlands (not caught up)

Things I started in 2023 that I still need to finish:

Freedom Planet 2

Hi-Fi Rush

Live A Live

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Picross 3D Round 2

Rhythm Heaven MegaMix

Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team ProtoMan

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Spark the Electric Jester 3

Sonic Dream Team

One Piece (Wano arc, anime)

Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 (I’ve already read the Shibuya arc already in the manga, though)

Astro Boy (2003 anime)

Futurama (original run rewatch)

One Piece (manga reread)

The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee/Ditko era)

Scott Pilgrim series (reread)

And finally... my favorites of 2023!!!

Overall favorite game: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Favorite indie game: Pseudoregalia

Games remastered in 2023 that are now among my all-time faves: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, We Love Katamari

Most pleasant surprise in gaming: The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Favorite film: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Favorite live action show: Barry

Favorite anime: Pluto

Favorite anime written by a Canadian guy and an American guy based on the Canadian guy's old graphic novel series: Scott PIlgrim Takes Off

Favorite live action adaptation of an anime that I still can't believe they didn't fuck up: One Piece

Favorite Western cartoon: Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake

Favorite older cartoon I only got around to watching in its entirety this year: The Venture Bros.

Favorite documentary: Double Fine PsychOdyssey

Favorite semi-improvised semi-scripted absurdist comedy/horror/tragedy Twitch livestream performance art thing: Half-Life Alyx but the Gnome is Self-Aware finale (wayneradiotv)

Favorite manga: Chainsaw Man

Favorite older manga that I only read this year: Berserk

Favorite Western comic book: Daniel Warren Johnson's Transformers

Favorite album: HELLMODE (Jeff Rosenstock)

And that's a wrap!!!!! Happy new year, everyone! Here's to me maybe actually reading a goddamn book this year

#bobby writes #i don't have a writing tag so i'm making one now to save this and other things

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