So, this year I've watched a decent number of anime, played a decent number of games, and watched a decent number of movies, with a lot of them being pretty great, so, inspired by some people that I follow doing similar lists, I decided to write a little about some of the things I saw!
Beastars (manga)
I got so invested in this manga I read it all in less than a week! The biggest highlights are probably the worldbuilding, which is super interesting, and the art in general, which I find super unique and nice to look at, with a sketchy look to it! The characters are also pretty fun, though it does have a bit of that problem where there are so many characters that a lot of them get a bit forgotten along the way (the manga does have a few chapters just focused on secondary characters that I find really cool).
I think the parts that's are the most divisive are the ending (which I personally liked TBH) and the metaphors that the manga tries to make related to the animal society: I've seen it being compared to Zootopia quite a few times, but I've also seen arguments about it being less a racism metaphor and more something about homophobia, or even about the way society treats people who committed crimes (I personally could also see some elements being about intrusive thoughts, learning to deal with them and the like). In general, it's a little messy, but I think it still works well enough.
In the end, It's a manga that's kinda horny, pretty wacky but also with some fun or serious moments that I think more people should read! The anime seems to be pretty good too, but it's art style is pretty different since it's a CGI show, and I believe it takes some liberties on how it places some parts of the story (I didn't finish it though), so be warned if you decide to go with it.
Dragon Half (OVA)
I don't know how well know this very short OVA series (original animation released on video, in this case VHS) actually is, but I remember seeing a lot of artists saying it was a big influence on them, and I can definitely see why now! It's not the most well animated thing ever, but it's full of charm, and the chibi style works well for the very light comedy show this is.
It's a fantasy series that does some jokes that aren't super original nowadays, but are still pretty funny (like the main character being a half-human half-dragon because her father fell in love with the dragon he was supposed to slay, and her having a crush of the handsome hero… that gets send to kill her), and it's a very breezy watch. Unfortunately I believe it's only 2 episodes because it got cancelled, and it doesn't have a very conclusive ending, but the manga is there for anyone that wants more of this world,
Fight!! Ickzen One (OVA)
Here's an slightly longer OVA series (3 episodes!) that's very different in tone than Dragon Half: it's horror, sci-fi, and very serious!
It's not super deep, but I found it interesting; it's pretty depressing in a way, with the main human girl losing her family to some aliens and having to control a giant robot to save everyone. I remember finding the ending a little confusing, but it still works, and has some good fight scenes.
Some things I'll have to warn about: it has a decent number of scenes of gore, and also some nudity (one of the main girls gets naked when she controls the mecha). Also, I've seen it getting labeled as a yuri/GL series, but I don't think the main two female characters really have a lot of ship tease unless you squint a lot (I know that the original manga has the two leads as more of a couple, but that was an hentai that's not easily available online, so it's a pretty different experience.)
Now, two of the main villain girls ARE a couple, but one of them dies pretty early on… Still, the surviving villain girl's angst about her dead lover is probably one of the best parts of the OVA, so it's probably not the worst case of "bury your gays".
The Apothecary Diaries (manga, plus some episodes of the anime)
This manga had not ended yet, so I just read all that was available at the moment, but I'll still write a little about it anyway!
It's a pretty fun manga in my opinion, with a lot of interesting characters (especially the main character Maomao, she's serious and unhinged at the same time) and a lot of cool stories where she has to solve little mysteries and also help people with her knowledge of medicine and drugs. Later it gets less episodic and has some more plot, but I personally found the beginning a little more fun 😅
I also found the all the drama with the royal family very interesting, though I'm not very familiar with these kinds of period dramas that take place in China, even if I know they are pretty popular, so a lot could be fairly cliche and I wouldn't know… Also, I found a little hard to differentiate between certain characters that had very similar hairstyles and clothes (that's an advantage of the anime, everyone has wildly different hair colors)!
Death Note (manga)
Yeah, despite it being one of the most popular anime series, I didn't know a whole lot about it before besides the general premise and the memes. Reading it was a real "oh, I get it now" moment, it really was as good as some people made it out to be… to the point it's a little hard to talk about it, don't know if I have many new takes on it.
Well, I loved Light, L, Ryuk and Misa (even if she's kinda left out of a lot of stuff by the end), found the mind games the characters play with each other super fun, and, unlike a lot of other fans, even enjoyed the second half! Yeah, Mello and Near aren't quite as cool as L, but they do have some of their own quirks, and by what I saw, are a little more developed in the manga (though I'll admit, the beginning of the second half drags quite a bit, so I get why the anime decided to rush through that part.)
I also discovered that the ending is controversial too, but honestly I loved it! I found it very satisfying to finally see Light finally getting outsmarted.
Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu
AKA: That one older Pokemon manga that has boobies in it and where Jessie/James is canon. I decided to read it to see if there was anything interesting in it besides the censorship, and in the end, there was! But it also had some big flaws for someone like me, who's a pretty casual Pokemon fan.
This manga was made as a spin-off to the Pokemon anime, which means it has a lot of characters that weren't in the games, that sometimes it clearly adapts stories directly from it… and that often it just skips certain developments because it expects you to have watched them in the show. For example, it only shows Ash getting 2 or 3 gym badges, and it barely shows him getting Pokemon. I don't need to see everything, but it feels a bit strange to read it by itself and not see a huge part of the plot happening.
I do think that, despite that, the manga has some cool things in it! The fact it was made really in the beginning of Pokemon's life as a franchise means the artist was allowed to take some creative liberties with the art style, and draw the Pokemon themselves in a really interesting way! They look way more feral than usual, which is cool. We also have some interesting stories that I believe are original to it, so it's probably worth reading it just for that. Also, we have weirdly hot Brock and Professor Oak alongside all the booby women, if that's your thing.
(also want to comment that I tried to read it via an fan edit that put the dialogue over the uncensored and unflipped original version, but they didn't actually finish it, so the second half I read censored…)
The Hunter's Guild: Red Hood (manga)
This is a really short-lived manga from Shonen Jump that got cancelled after only 23 chapters, but had a lot of fans that were very sad about it's demise. After reading it, I unfortunately I can kinda see why it got cancelled, even if I wish it didn't.
It starts out really well, with a good premise, good art and some interesting characters, but after that it goes to what could be called a training arc, or exam arc I guess, and it does lose a lot of what made the first few chapters cool, since I found the plot a little less interesting in this part and it introduced way too many characters at once. It also reminded me a lot of that part early on My Hero Academia where they have to do an exam to enter the school, showcasing everyone's powers, and seeing how it was still running on the same magazine, and how the art is a little similar (this author used to be an assistant on MHA), it probably didn't help this series a lot. The ending is also a bit too quick, but it's unfair to judge a cancelled series by it's ending;you can clearly tell it was supposed to have come after many different story arcs, but had to be thrown in there abruptly.
The best part of this manga? Buff women that kick ass. Namely the main mentor character, Red Hood, and Debonair the lady that's doing the training in that exam arc, both have really cool designs, and clearly are the breakout characters from it (they are the ones that had the most fanart at least).
Gunbuster (anime)
This is a six episode long OVA by Studio Gainax, and I went on without knowing a whole lot about it besides the fact I loved the artstyle, and came out having really enjoying it! Probably one of my biggest recommendations from this list.
The animation is amazing, and despite how short it is, I really felt for a lot of the characters, and they really managed to put a lot of cool fights scenes in it. The most interesting element though is probably the sci-fi elements it has besides the mechas, with the element of time dilation (time passing faster while they are in space) creating a lot of good drama, as the main character has to see the people around her aging while she's still really young.
It does have some romances that aren't able to be all that developed thanks to it's length (though I honestly didn't mind them all that much), but in general this is a strong choice if you want to watch more 80s anime, more mecha anime or if you are a big fan of other things by Gainax/Trigger. I genuinely cried at the ending, from how touching it was and how much I loved it.
Chainsaw Man (anime + Reze movie)
Another show that's really popular and that I'm really late for, but I really liked it!
Biggest highlights for me were probably the animation and artstyle, which are both super good and unique, and the characters, which are all extremely flawed and fucked up, but in a way that's very interesting to watch (the female characters in particular were a highlight for me, they are all really fun and unique… or just huge assholes that are still kinda complex, there's a reason why people love drawing fanart of them so much). The action's good, what we see of the worldbuilding in interesting, especially because it doesn't really feel the need to have a ton of exposition… In general, a really high quality show.
Though it must be warned that it's a very gory series, and that a lot of the elements of the plot would probably be very triggering for many (it deals a lot with sex and sexuality related to the teenage main character and the people around him, for example), so I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but I feel like many would enjoy it.
Also had the opportunity to watch the recent movie in theaters, and it was a great choice, as the super good fight animation is fantastic to see on a big screen! Reze herself also was another fantastic character, and I found funny that I'm pretty sure I had seen her "devil" design online, but didn't know it was a Chainsaw Man character? It was surprising to see her there I guess
Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun (anime)
Wanted something more light to watch after Chainsaw Man, and this show was a great choice! It's a really breezy watch, with most episodes having a lot of different stories and comedy elements to them, and a really good cast of characters that are all super funny in their own way. It makes fun of a lot of common tropes in romance manga and games, but in a way that isn't mean spirited, just showing how silly some things are when you really think about them or put them on a more "normal" setting.
I guess if you get frustrated by shows where the main romance doesn't actually get developed all that much this might be a little frustrating, but it wasn't all that bad for me personally, and I think the show has enough going on that this isn't all that important by the end. Really wish it could get a season 2!
Re:Zero (anime, first season only)
For some reason, I have a weird fascination with all the weird isekai anime that always comes out, but I had never actually watched one, so I chose one of the few I see people really praising, and really had a good time with it!
The main character, Subaru, is probably the most controversial element of the show as far as I could see (he's that typical "nerdy guy send into another work that makes anime references sometimes"), but I genuinely think he's a good character! He's kinda cringy and obnoxious, but on purpose, and despite being aggressive and selfish he's also shown to actually care about the people around him and want to help them, despite the fact he doesn't have a lot of powers.
That's actually one of the cooler elements of the show: the time loop ability he got when transported to the other world which he can only use when he dies, and how he has to find ways to solve his problems with it, mostly by talking to other people and trying to find allies that can help him! (I think I've heard that later in the show he might get some actual powers, but I have only watched the first season so I could be wrong). He also has the problem of viewing his relationships with the people around him differently from them since he remembers things from previous time loops that they don't, which leads into a lot of good drama.
Some other things I liked: Subaru struggles a lot, which made it really satisfying when he finally accomplished things; the worldbuilding is pretty good, I especially liked how we got to see a bunch of other women that want to become the leaders on the kingdom, and how flawed and interesting they were; and it was interesting to finally learn who Rem is, since I've only known of her as a very popular anime figurine until now (and I ended up actually really liking her, and finding her cute… the waifu-bait worked on me).
All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku
This is a shorter OVA series (only 6 episodes, like Gunbuster) and it isn't super deep or anything, but I had fun with it!
The main character, android catgirl Nuku Nuku, is probably the best part of it: she's energetic, funny, sweet, and really strong, which makes for a good protagonist in a action-comedy series; her relationship with her family is also sweet, even if the rest of the family is… dysfunctional (i guess that's a good word for a mother that attacks her husband with mechs and robots to get her son and android creation back in the first half of the show, though they get better later). The two henchwomen of the mother are also highlights, both are very funny.
I would say the fact that the show is so short does makes it feel as things are moving too fast sometimes? Like, episode 3 is about the family trying to make peace and live together, which feels a little too soon for a plot like that, but it still works well enough since it isn't a super serious show, so it isn't that bad. (there are two longer sequel series, but I believe they are both AUs, and neither seems to be as good so… I probably won't watch them 😅)
Anime I'm still watching: Aggretsuko Season 1
This year, I tried my best to play more games, since I've never been much of a gamer, mostly watching videos about them on YouTube and playing some pretty "casual" stuff (Minecraft, Stardew Valley, some random games I find on the browser…). Hopefully I'll play even more cool stuff next year, but here are some I can talk about from this one:
Forager (finished it for now I guess?)
This is a game I had seen a few youtubers playing, and wanted to try it out myself! It's a game about crafting and expanding the area around you, with a very cute art style in pixel art, which I found very chill to play. You have a lot of things to do and discover, and a few puzzles and dungeons to solve sometimes.
I think the main problem of the game is that it gets REALLY grindy by the end. I pretty much stopped playing after a while because while I had the materials do make some of the more advanced armor and items, it took forever for them to actually get done, and I had already unlocked all islands and finished all NPC quests, so I felt as if I had finished all I wanted to do.
Despite that, and the fact that I don't think the game will get updated anymore (I believe I read something about a lot of fights between the team and the developer, but I didn't see any good sources for that) I still think this is a pretty fun game to play once in a while! It doesn't have an real ending, so it's more of an "play until you want to do something else" kind of deal.
Potionomics (100% it)
I think I had seen this game talked about in a video about "cozy games", and even though the person didn't love it, I though it looked really cool so I tried it out: In it, you play as a woman that gets her uncle's potion shop, but has to participate in some potion selling tournaments to get the prize money and pay off the debt he left her with.
The game's all about getting ingredients and trying to make different types of potions, and them selling them in segments where you talk to customers and try to convince them to pay a little more for them. You also have a lot of characters you can meet and become closer to, and also usually gets certain things out of them (better ingredients, cauldrons, upgrades to your shop…), and I really loved all of them, pretty much everyone had some level of depth and a interesting story to learn about, or was at least pretty funny (you can also date most of them if you want! I ended up dating both Saffron, a carpenter satyr, and Roxanne, a mean and cool lady that's initially your rival).
I know that the game used to be criticized by being a little too difficult for some, but the version I played was from after an update that added some new difficulty settings that help a lot. While I don't think this is a very relaxing game (you have a time limit to do certain things in every in-game week, so you'll probably always be planning out what you'll do next) it is still a really cool game, and probably one of my biggest recommendations of this list!
Awaria (beat it)
This is a shorter free game by the same creator of Helltaker! It has a really pretty 2D artstyle, and it's all about trying to keep a bunch of machinery from breaking while a bunch of ghost women are attacking you, with it being kind of a bullet hell game. It's also very gay, which I imagine will be fantastic for many that would like to kiss mean women who are trying to kill you (also pudding, there's a lot of pudding in this game).
It's also kinda hard, but it has fun gameplay and you can change difficulties pretty easily if you are annoyed by a level. It's worth trying out I think, you might have a fun, if slightly frustrating time.
Scribblenauts Unlimited (100% it)
This is an game with a pretty fun main mechanic, where you have to write things down on a magic notebook that can make anything appear, and also put adjectives on the people and objects around you to change them, and now you need to help the people with their problems using it to get stars and help your sister. You can choose how you want to help them too, and even be a little mean if you want to (which I wasn't… usually)
As this is a kid's game, most of the puzzles aren't too hard, and it's mostly a pretty chill time… with a few exceptions: Some missions later on were hard just because they need you to think a little more to find a solution, which is good, gives a little challenge to the game; the ones that were more of a problem were the ones that were difficult because of the Portuguese translation I was playing (which is the official one on Steam), which isn't bad by any means, but clearly had some trouble adapting some of the items, because some use more dated/specific names for them that I wouldn't have known to write without using an guide, and others simply did not translate well…
For example, one special mission where I needed to "give an demon their favorite food", which isdevil food cake in the original; we don't have any cake with a similar punny name here, so you inexplicably need to give him a normal chocolate cake. (weirdly enough, a similar mission for an angel got adapted pun, i'm guessing they couldn't find an sweet with "devil" in the name?).
Well, that's only a problem if you want to 100% the game though, and in general I would suggest for anyone that gets interested in this game to play it casually. It's a fun experience, despite my little problems with the translation.
20 Small Mazes (100% it)
Another shorter game that's free on Steam, and a very simple one: you are given 20 little mazes, each one very different from the other, and have to solve them! They are all laid on top of each other as if they were actual paper on a desk in front of you, and you can choose in which order you want to play them, though some you will need items from later in the game to solve.
Some mazes are easier than others, but it's unlikely that you'll get 2 hours of gameplay, it's a breezy thing that's probably make you happy for an afternoon!
Emily is Away (beat it)
And yet another free short game (sorry, couldn't resist trying some of these out), and one I recognized from watching someone playing it on Youtube, though thankfully I didn't remember the story very well, as this is a game that's very focused on the plot.
The whole game is presented as an early 2000s chatroom, where you are talking to a friend called Emily; the story is pretty simple college drama, but it's still interesting enough, it's fun having it in this interactive way, and there are a few choices you can make over the game (and some that you cannot). It has 2 sequels that seem to be themed around other sites, but I haven't played these yet.
Wonder Boy: the Dragon's Trap (beat it)
I have kind of an interesting story with the Wonder Boy series, as i'm pretty sure it was the first game I've ever watched someone playing on the internet (specifically of the Brazilian localized version, that changed the main characters for ones from a popular comic series from here), and got me interested in games in the first place! This isn't the game in question, but it's the one that got a remake that's easily available on Steam, and it also looked cool, so I decided to try it out!
The gameplay, that has you changing into different animals with different abilities and it's kind of an Metroidvania, seems to be very faithful to the original, with the graphics being the main thing that has changed, and they are beautiful! Very detailed and colorful, all 2d and hand drawn (though you can change back to the old ones if you want to). The thing is, that the old game was already kinda hard, full of secret passages and mysteries that it usually doesn't really explain to you, so you will probably not find all of them on your own, though it's pretty fun to explore around sometimes.
It also has a few new challenges to do after you finish the game, with some harder rooms to visit with each transformation and beat… but I didn't really feel like doing them at the moment. Maybe some other day I guess.
Coromon (beat it)
This is an indie game that's very clearly inspired by Pokemon, and is clearly made by huge fans, since I recognized a bunch of features that people wish would be added to the games, like having Nuzlocke as a difficulty setting. For me, who only watched other people playing Pokemon games before, it was a pretty fun time, and I really liked discovering all the mons that the game has to offer, and finding which ones I liked having on my team.
I'll admit though, while I found the story alright, with you being an researcher that has to travel around and save the world from aliens, I thought that the characters in it didn't get a lot of focus, and that some of the places you visit were kinda derivative (like the desert area being very usual "Indiana Jones explorer" type of things, and a Karate Kid mentor in another). but in general I think it's still a strong game!
Games I'm still playing: Persona 4 and House Flippers