December 8th - December 14th 2025

TV

• Ranma 1/2 - Really cute, soft animation with lovely colorful hair. This is a remake, so the original manga is from the 90s. What I miss about that era is that you could have gender play (Ranma 1/2) and cross-dressing (Princess Jellyfish) and you didn’t have to explain it. Queerness could just exist - this is much better expressed in Princess Jellyfish - and you kind of just got on with it, even if there was never an explanation as to why. Now, it would have to be wrapped up in identity terms, which come with rules and expectations and sensitivities.

Movies

• Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution - Third anime of just the past three months! And wow, what a let down compared to Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle and Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc. I am mostly just confused walking out of the theatre. The run time is about an hour and a half, which is closer to an hour of new content when you account for the season 2 recap and credits. The main content introduces Mai and Yuta, which was fine. They are interesting characters and I am excited to learn more about them, but the content for the price of admission felt laughably meaningless. It also introduces a whole new arc (“The Culling Game”), which we don’t even get enough time to learn about the rules of in the film. Where Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle played it safe, it at least was more than worth the cost of the ticket in sheer content overload. Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc is truly a work of art and is a standalone movie that I can recommend to anyone with any interest in anime. JJK: Execution was fine turned disappointing considering I payed to see a movie.

Music

• in the sea | kensuke ushio - My Spotify wrapped made me feel like a dull, predictable girl and not the femcel/pick-me I dream of (/s), so here’s something more niche (though admittedly still from a major franchise - yikes!). I’m realizing after falling in love with Chainsaw Man The Movie: Reze Arc, that kensuke ushio is THE MAN. So, here’s one of my favorites off the movie score.

Podcasts

• American Medieval - My annoying electrologist was playing this during our session and I hate to admit that it’s actually pretty good. This is the episode I listened to..

News/Essays

• Kensuke Ushio Dove Deep Creating The Emotionally Devastating Score For Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc | Aftermath | Isaiah Colbert - The essay that sent me down the wonderful rabbit hole of anime movie soundtracks/scores.

YouTube

• The Chess Scene in Apothecary Diaries Explained | Accented Cinema - Who would have thought? The chess and romance anime communities together at last! From one of my favorite YouTubers about one of my favorite anime, so I was always 10 toes down :)
• A Deep Dive Into Hot Topic | Dream Jelly - I adore this video essay! First time watching this creator, which I then immediately watched a few of her other essays. The delivery is free from all the overwhelming YouTuber gimmicks, which is really refreshing. This video in particular was really solid and gave me a lot of background and context on one of my favorite brands (then and now), and the three distinct eras that Hot Topic has gone through! Strong recommend.
• The Game Awards 2025 | TheGameAwards - My favorite Game Awards I may have ever watched! It’s been awhile since I was genuinely surprised by game releases and feeling E3-esque wonder and excitement about their trailers! Also, the Street Fighter cast and trailer were perfection. These goofy motherfuckers were sooooooo funny and I adored them. Can’t wait to catch it in theatres.

Books/Manga

• The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy At All | Volume 2 | 2025 - This series just gets better and better. We get more context and backstory from Mitski’s Uncle, which feeds into the drama of Aya and Mitski’s situation. I’m taking this one slow, but really enjoying the burn.
• Hungerstone | Kat Dunn | 2025 - Okay, second 19th century England fiction book. This time, the category is… blood. I am a few chapters in and am really surprised by the writing style. Having just finished The Fingersmith, the writing/tone/vocabulary are strikingly different, which isn’t unexpected, but it’s more significant than I expected. Nothing particularly crazy has happened yet, but the build-up is clearly there.

Games

• The Dungeons of Hinterberg | 2024 - Half-way through! I think I will take a week off and try to finish it off over winter break. If I do a dungeon a day, I will finish by New Year’s! I have to say this game is so painfully simple. Simple in that it is a game. It is almost nothing but game. I forget some of the earlier games in my life in how it felt like all they were, were mechanics. You are just in a world and using the mechanics. Conceptually, it is so easy to understand and you can see the building blocks of all the puzzles and the fighting. The developers really get all the mileage they can out of these individually simplistic, but holistically satisfying suite of mechanics. It’s such an easy game to have fun with.