Renako is truly one of the great thinkers of our time:

I wrote about one of my favorite anime of the year so far, Rock Is A Lady's Modesty, and how the show fundamentally understands rock music's historical role as counterculture. It's "Be Gay. Do Crimes" but with a guitar, and provides some very good screen grabs like this:

Also, sometimes she just looks like this, which is pretty cool:

Even more than usual this year:

LOZ Wind Waker: Again, this is my first one of these, but its aged really well. A timeless art style blended with the sense of adventure that comes from the open seas. Bright, but also melancholy and post-apocalyptic in ways BOTW would riff on. Some of my favorite versions of these characters.

The House In Fata Morgana: Manages the very difficult task of putting you through all this dour, borderline edge lord gothic misery before coming out the other end with all these nuanced things to say about social expectations, forgiveness, and restorative justice. Definitely my favorite VN.

Citizen Sleeper: Combines TTRPG systems with an affecting and deeply grounded take on people coming together despite living in a shattered world. Beautiful prose and Amos Roddy's score tie together this clear-eyed but optimistic glimpse at the future.

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Nier: RPGs are games about you and your little guys and this one has the best little guys.

Automata: A sweeping, brutal, mostly tragic, partially hopeful take on systemic violence and otherization.

Both: Incredibly memorable use of game mechanics as metaphor, and some of the best OSTs ever.

Yakuza 0: The melodrama, hot-blooded earnestness, brotherhood, Kiryu fucking Kazuma, a guy who really wants to punch Kiryu Kazuma, hitting 8 billion guys who all have the same animations with a baseball bat, an incomprehensible overarching plot with the most wonderfully straightforward pathos: 10/10

Resident Evil (2002): A masterful remake that cleverly tinkers with the original's scares and introduces reanimating Crimson Heads, an evil idea that makes backtracking hellish. Immaculate fixed camera angles and B-movie bliss. Still haven't recovered from seeing its boxart for the first time.

Pokemon Silver: I'm not sure if this was literally the first game I ever played, but it definitely is the one that permanently altered my brain chemistry so that I'd spend the rest of my life playing way too many videogames. Added smart changes to this formula that's still going strong decades later

Hey, let’s give this a shot.