October 19th - October 25th 2026

TV

• A Certain Dark Item - Episode 2 - 3 | J.C.Staff | 2026 - Fuck yeah, Totally Spies is all grown up and so hot and it just gets better!
• Journal with Witch - Episode 2 - 5 | Studio Shuka | 2026 - This show is a perfect example of excellent pacing. Your emotions with transit across simple, comforting slice-of-life, to deep, heartwrenching traumatic moments, and finally to truly inspirational highs, and the magic of this show is naturally transitioning from each emotion, and never overstaying in one emotion for too long. I have cried twice in these 5 episodes so far haha, and am really loving it more and more as time goes on.
• Cyberpunk: Edgerunners - Season 2 Episodes 1 - 4 | Studio Trigger - Pretty disappointing so far. Sigh. Edgerunners season 1 was one of my favorite stories of 2024. It was brilliant and colorful. The characters were deep and so vividly Cyberpunk in aesthetic and action. The story of David and Alice was painful and real, and even for a lesbian like me, that song sends me into the throws of emotion every time I hear it. It ended as it should have and was just hype. It was energy. It was so refreshing and angry and punk. This season is about a new set of characters (though in the same universe as season 1) animated by Studio Trigger and with a new team of writers and directors. To be honest, it sucks. The narrative is incoherent, the character aesthetics are fine, the character motivations are non-existent, and it feels like the writers are figuring out the point of the show as it was being written and produced. It lacks the punk personality of season 1 and it also lacks any form of stakes. Put simply, I don’t care about any of the characters and in the world of Cyberpunk, I don’t care when they are inevitably brutalized and killed. The animation style is fine. It’s clearly more Japanese than the season 1 animation, which was painfully American (I personally liked it, but again subjective). No, the show is boring and that’s the most painful part. Hoping they salvage something in the latter half.
• DanDaDan - Season 2 Episodes 1 - 3 | Science Saru - Sigh. Dan Da Dan was my top anime the year season 1 came out, and here are again, a subpar season 1. Unlike Cyberpunk season 2, Dan Da Dan doesn’t feel like a new creative direction moreso it is receding into a normative shonen. The first few episodes feel more like Demon Slayer than it does season 1 Dan Da Dan, and that fucking sucks. It’s boring and predictable and all the flare from the weird and unnerving moments, the amazing use of color theory, the symbolic animation (like with the running speed - the emotion of speed rather than the literal version), and the heartful slice-of-life is all gone so far.

Movies

• Time Warp | Allison Berg - A very moving documentary about a small town in Wyoming putting on a “shadow cast,” where the actors enact the film live on-stage while the movie is simultaneously running, of Rocky Horror Picture Show. I attended the Tacoma Film Festival for this one, and wow, was I completely unprepared. High-key I didn’t like those fakas that run that place. I walked in to catch a showing while my girlfriend was playing DnD, and I didn’t know it was this whole to do with people in costumes and photo ops and whatnot, I was just a girl showing up and the usher lady was all rude. Anyways, the movie was really special. For anyone familiar with smalltown life and/or conservative family, it’s a pretty authentic story of where and how queerness and masculinity are negotiated, especially in a very libertarian state where people can be violent or laises faire about these things. More than anything it was two hours of re-realizing and feelings vulnerability and risk and the weight of what our current political climate has done to us. It was hard to open myself up to those

Books/Manga

• Blood, Sweat, and Pixels | Jason Schreier | 2017 - Done!
• I Don’t Know Which is Love | Volumes 2 - 3 | Tamamushi Oku

YouTube

• I Tried ALL BuzzBall Flavors So You Don’t Have To | 𝓨𝓔𝓑𝓼𝓱𝓸𝔀 - 𝓓𝓪𝓲𝓵𝔂
• Night Train | Bond Henry | Red Barn Radio

Games

• DEMO: Probably Stolen | Questing Goose Studio - Holy shit, I played this demo for 3 hours. Tbh, I do hate when developers allow for such a long demo. While I really, really loved playing it and got lost in the new mechanics, I fear that there is no way I would play for another 3 hours to get back to where I was on the full release. At first blush I thought this was a cyberpunk version of Restory, and the other merchant clone games, but this is much more significant. The demo is very heavy handed with tutorialization (e.g. they tell you about a mechanic and then the next customer tests you immediately). The conceit is that you are a merchant in the lower levels of a cyberpunk-themed colony. You traffic in the mundane (e.g. toilet paper and water) and the exotic (e.g. contraband and weapons). That’s a cool concept, but this game brings in whole crafting systems more reminiscent of Minecraft. You can make wine, refine minerals, and purify water. There are a lot of other crafting mechanisms that I just didn’t see. There is also a risk factor with which factions you align with, and who you screw over. There is a surprising amount of depth to this game that unfolds with good pacing.
• DEMO: Sovereign Tower | WILD WITS GAMES