time, what is
Somehow, this year has felt both shorter and longer than any others in recent memory - in between switching between three schools and daily covid regulation changes, health helter skelters and family joys and tragedies, a lot happened, and yet everything was always so much I barely had time to process it all. Travel this year was hashtag cancelled apart from three days in Rome with my mother and a training exercise week in the Spessart (debatable on the vacation ranking bc it was a lowkey bootcamp at times), but I did enjoy hosting friends coming by and exploring my region with them, of course.
But yeah, all this also contributed to how much new content I read or watched. But a tradition is a tradition, so here goes...
(And yes, I'm aware the year is not over yet, but not much could/will get added here - the new Spiderman and Matrix are coming out still, but idk if or when I'll see them, sooo.)
Streaming Series
When I hit a severe lowpoint in February, I got Disney Plus on a whim and pretty much devoured The Mandalorian in one sitting, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I have the right mixture of general understanding of the worldbuilding without the investment into the franchise that might me mad about certain things happening, and hey, murder dad adopting murder child was just very sweet. And boy is that theme catchy. And for a while the ton of fic served me well to survive my commute to work. Season 3, when!!
I also watched the first three Marvel shows (I have zero interest in Hawkeye and I'm not sorry). To my surprise, I ended up liking Wandavision best, in spite of having very little investment in the characters going in and even less in old sitcom tropes. The lowkey horror vibes of everything becoming more and more apparent were very well executed, and I did love Jimmy returning for the framing storyline. My most anticipated MCU show Falcon and the Wintersoldier surprised me by being rather grim and somber, considering the show seemed to come mostly of the back of their interaction and chemistry in Civil War and its press junket, so them barely using that was a bit of a shame. But they made up for that by revamping Zemo into a campy affable villain who seems like he's going to send Bucky christmas cards from prison now every year and pay off Sam's mortgage, just because. Loved the team-up episodes, so MUCH. The overall storyline with the Flagsmashers seemed unfinished and chaotic, though. Loki had a strong start and lived of the chemistry between Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston, but lost me with the whole "no, this is not a metaphor for self-acceptance, he IS hooking up with his variant". You'd think a veritable decade in the animaga fandom would have preapred me for selfcest.... it hasn't.
Animanga
The only anime adjacent thing I watched was Thunderbolt Fantasy Season 3 whenever my shitty internet let me, and that's it. I was looking forward to slime Isekai returning, but that one went full "Genoicide is fine, actually" on the viewer, so I dropped it like a moldy potato. SanFan remains pure joy, and keeps getting more and more insane every season. Like, imagine watching any episode of S3 after the first one of S1 - suddenly there's cyborgs, timetravel, Grimoire demons and nendoroid phones. Never stop this crazy train, Urobutcher.
In manga news, last year's discovery Jigokuraku wrapped up nicely as one of these series where I do recognise the ending fits the series and is what the author wanted, but still would crave a sequel because I love the characters ;A; The mangaka's new series Ayashimon runs in Weekly Shounen Jump proper, so I'm expecting less nudity and extreme violence, but hopefully not fewer colourful characters (Jigokuraku has the best bi character, don't @ me). Bleach had a random ass one shot this year..? It was fun to see many of the characters back in Kubo's modern style, but the story was just him dropping a giant ball of misery and peacing out again??? I'm so confused as to everything Kubo has done in the past 3 years??? One Piece is somehow still stuck in fucking Wano and I'm so tired at this point and Attack on Titan ended. The last few chapters I only read as summaries and it's all a whole lot. I'm still not sure where on the Imperialism-Pacifism scale this series lands as a whole, but it is interesting to look back at 2013 and the big SnK craze and compare how the worldbuilding and characters ended up.
Cinema
I managed trips to the cinema a full five times this year, and three of those were in the last two months. Movie theatres were closed for a good part of the year, and the first film I caught, Kimetsu no Yaiba: Demon Slayer - Mugen Train, still required me to get a PCR test in advance. The movie had an insanely successful run, definitely helped by the fact that thanks to covid, it had basically no competition, but I'm still a bit lukewarm on ufotable's trademark CGI-effect heavy style. It had the unintentional effect of making the action scenes look super SUPER intense and thereby making the comic relief scenes stand out like a sore thumb. The manga is overall much less flashy and allowed a more homogenous back and forth between gags and tragedy and action, so I maintain my manga > anime verdict. I of course knew what was going to happen going in, but I still ended up ;A; at Rengoku, booh.
The next cinema trip was anime again, a triple feature of Lupin III OVAs in late August. It was a spontaneous trip as I have no knowledge of the franchise beyond the absolute minimum, but I was just really missing the movies as a whole. The OVAs were much more noir, bloody and partially gory than expected (my impression of the franchise was more goofy slapstick type violence), and the fanservice, too, was absolutely wild. If that had not been part ('that' here including the female lead naked in an oilslick glas tank fighting a robot with a giant drill in his crotch area), I could recommend the whole thing just for the style of the gun fights in part one (Jigen's Gravestone) and the old samurai movie vibes of part two (Goemon Ishikawa makes it rain blood). There was some super nice animation, too, but alas, it will never be my franchise.
Autumn saw cinema releases return to pretty much normal, and the first I managed to squeeze in (quite literally, after a long day of taking my parents to a pumpkin festival in the neighbouring state) was Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. This one is a big case of "I wish I could like you more", but overall it left me feeling kind of meh about it. Maybe it was the dub, too, but the protagonist had little charisma and the most interesting thing about him was the plot twist about him having murdered someone, but nothing much comes of it. His sister was infinitely more interesting and charismatic. The comic reliefs grew stale pretty quick, and the movie just had a few too many flashbacks and exposition scenes for its own good. Shang-Chi will for sure be fun in upcoming ensemble movies but my expectations are managed.
That's even more so true for Eternals, which mostly ended up being a colossal waste of a potentially really cool premise. Seeing old Babylon and Acapulco as living cities on the screen was super cool, and the fact that comparative mythology was tied to the Eternals was an interesting approach. But the movie could not decide on whether the Eternals should be somewhat jaded and more human like in their quirks, sense of humour and speech, or static, robotic and detached from everything around them due to their insane ages and experiences. Multiple characters flopped back and forth between both extremes whenever the scene demanded it, and it made for a very disengaging viewing experience. My main takeaway was the end credits scene, because a vampire hunting dark fantasy Marvel movie sounds like a great way to bring some .... fresh blood into the franchise (sorry).
In between these two Meh-rvel movies, I watched Venom 2: Let there be Carnage, after having watched the first one during a sick day on my phone. Nothing of value was lost, considering I had seen most of the movie in tumblr gifsets at that point, and Tom Hardy's performance was as ??? as had seemed in snippets. The bickering with Venom was fun, and they really doubled down on that in the sequel, including all the LOL THEY BE DATING jokes. And the fiancé of the ex -gf was back and useful!! As Caro said, they did watch Ant-Man apparently. The antagonists made zero sense and were whatever, and it did feel jarringly like a movie from the mid-2000-comic-book-age (think Daredevil and Elektra). So with these three movies in a row, it did make me go, yeaaaah Endgame might have been the end of an era, really. But let's see.
But yeah, all this also contributed to how much new content I read or watched. But a tradition is a tradition, so here goes...
(And yes, I'm aware the year is not over yet, but not much could/will get added here - the new Spiderman and Matrix are coming out still, but idk if or when I'll see them, sooo.)
Streaming Series
When I hit a severe lowpoint in February, I got Disney Plus on a whim and pretty much devoured The Mandalorian in one sitting, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I have the right mixture of general understanding of the worldbuilding without the investment into the franchise that might me mad about certain things happening, and hey, murder dad adopting murder child was just very sweet. And boy is that theme catchy. And for a while the ton of fic served me well to survive my commute to work. Season 3, when!!
I also watched the first three Marvel shows (I have zero interest in Hawkeye and I'm not sorry). To my surprise, I ended up liking Wandavision best, in spite of having very little investment in the characters going in and even less in old sitcom tropes. The lowkey horror vibes of everything becoming more and more apparent were very well executed, and I did love Jimmy returning for the framing storyline. My most anticipated MCU show Falcon and the Wintersoldier surprised me by being rather grim and somber, considering the show seemed to come mostly of the back of their interaction and chemistry in Civil War and its press junket, so them barely using that was a bit of a shame. But they made up for that by revamping Zemo into a campy affable villain who seems like he's going to send Bucky christmas cards from prison now every year and pay off Sam's mortgage, just because. Loved the team-up episodes, so MUCH. The overall storyline with the Flagsmashers seemed unfinished and chaotic, though. Loki had a strong start and lived of the chemistry between Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston, but lost me with the whole "no, this is not a metaphor for self-acceptance, he IS hooking up with his variant". You'd think a veritable decade in the animaga fandom would have preapred me for selfcest.... it hasn't.
Animanga
The only anime adjacent thing I watched was Thunderbolt Fantasy Season 3 whenever my shitty internet let me, and that's it. I was looking forward to slime Isekai returning, but that one went full "Genoicide is fine, actually" on the viewer, so I dropped it like a moldy potato. SanFan remains pure joy, and keeps getting more and more insane every season. Like, imagine watching any episode of S3 after the first one of S1 - suddenly there's cyborgs, timetravel, Grimoire demons and nendoroid phones. Never stop this crazy train, Urobutcher.
In manga news, last year's discovery Jigokuraku wrapped up nicely as one of these series where I do recognise the ending fits the series and is what the author wanted, but still would crave a sequel because I love the characters ;A; The mangaka's new series Ayashimon runs in Weekly Shounen Jump proper, so I'm expecting less nudity and extreme violence, but hopefully not fewer colourful characters (Jigokuraku has the best bi character, don't @ me). Bleach had a random ass one shot this year..? It was fun to see many of the characters back in Kubo's modern style, but the story was just him dropping a giant ball of misery and peacing out again??? I'm so confused as to everything Kubo has done in the past 3 years??? One Piece is somehow still stuck in fucking Wano and I'm so tired at this point and Attack on Titan ended. The last few chapters I only read as summaries and it's all a whole lot. I'm still not sure where on the Imperialism-Pacifism scale this series lands as a whole, but it is interesting to look back at 2013 and the big SnK craze and compare how the worldbuilding and characters ended up.
Cinema
I managed trips to the cinema a full five times this year, and three of those were in the last two months. Movie theatres were closed for a good part of the year, and the first film I caught, Kimetsu no Yaiba: Demon Slayer - Mugen Train, still required me to get a PCR test in advance. The movie had an insanely successful run, definitely helped by the fact that thanks to covid, it had basically no competition, but I'm still a bit lukewarm on ufotable's trademark CGI-effect heavy style. It had the unintentional effect of making the action scenes look super SUPER intense and thereby making the comic relief scenes stand out like a sore thumb. The manga is overall much less flashy and allowed a more homogenous back and forth between gags and tragedy and action, so I maintain my manga > anime verdict. I of course knew what was going to happen going in, but I still ended up ;A; at Rengoku, booh.
The next cinema trip was anime again, a triple feature of Lupin III OVAs in late August. It was a spontaneous trip as I have no knowledge of the franchise beyond the absolute minimum, but I was just really missing the movies as a whole. The OVAs were much more noir, bloody and partially gory than expected (my impression of the franchise was more goofy slapstick type violence), and the fanservice, too, was absolutely wild. If that had not been part ('that' here including the female lead naked in an oilslick glas tank fighting a robot with a giant drill in his crotch area), I could recommend the whole thing just for the style of the gun fights in part one (Jigen's Gravestone) and the old samurai movie vibes of part two (Goemon Ishikawa makes it rain blood). There was some super nice animation, too, but alas, it will never be my franchise.
Autumn saw cinema releases return to pretty much normal, and the first I managed to squeeze in (quite literally, after a long day of taking my parents to a pumpkin festival in the neighbouring state) was Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. This one is a big case of "I wish I could like you more", but overall it left me feeling kind of meh about it. Maybe it was the dub, too, but the protagonist had little charisma and the most interesting thing about him was the plot twist about him having murdered someone, but nothing much comes of it. His sister was infinitely more interesting and charismatic. The comic reliefs grew stale pretty quick, and the movie just had a few too many flashbacks and exposition scenes for its own good. Shang-Chi will for sure be fun in upcoming ensemble movies but my expectations are managed.
That's even more so true for Eternals, which mostly ended up being a colossal waste of a potentially really cool premise. Seeing old Babylon and Acapulco as living cities on the screen was super cool, and the fact that comparative mythology was tied to the Eternals was an interesting approach. But the movie could not decide on whether the Eternals should be somewhat jaded and more human like in their quirks, sense of humour and speech, or static, robotic and detached from everything around them due to their insane ages and experiences. Multiple characters flopped back and forth between both extremes whenever the scene demanded it, and it made for a very disengaging viewing experience. My main takeaway was the end credits scene, because a vampire hunting dark fantasy Marvel movie sounds like a great way to bring some .... fresh blood into the franchise (sorry).
In between these two Meh-rvel movies, I watched Venom 2: Let there be Carnage, after having watched the first one during a sick day on my phone. Nothing of value was lost, considering I had seen most of the movie in tumblr gifsets at that point, and Tom Hardy's performance was as ??? as had seemed in snippets. The bickering with Venom was fun, and they really doubled down on that in the sequel, including all the LOL THEY BE DATING jokes. And the fiancé of the ex -gf was back and useful!! As Caro said, they did watch Ant-Man apparently. The antagonists made zero sense and were whatever, and it did feel jarringly like a movie from the mid-2000-comic-book-age (think Daredevil and Elektra). So with these three movies in a row, it did make me go, yeaaaah Endgame might have been the end of an era, really. But let's see.