no shenanigans this time, for once, for the only time:

 

1) Albums, a top 10

2) perhaps a few media paragraphs if I can sum up TV and anime in a single post

3) Songs, a top 50 I think

 

just casually going for what I enjoyed this year

 

soon

Exciting! Hopefully I'll make a few discoveries along the way here.

ALBUMS

 

Just one of those years where my music listening dropped off after a stellar 2020 and 2021, which followed a dropoff in 2017-2019. It'll swing back. I tried to pull albums out from those I listened to lots of across the board rather than just one or two songs that dominated, as well as albums where I went back for repeat listens. And so I have these ten.

 

With nearly-missed out shoutouts going to POLKADOT STINGRAY - 踊るように，Nova Twins - Supernova, and Mori Calliope - Shinigami Note (EP), though certain songs from each of those are definitely showing up in the songs countdown...

 

10. Shoebill - Hikikomori Days

 

Definitely the most obscure album on this list, you can thank AOTY being one of my primary new music sources, as this cover art reeled me in and a very competent and at times hilarious bedroom mashup album awaited. This is all breakcore-esque mashups and remixes of turn of the century pop songs (with very amusing titles) which makes it kind of brilliant to listen through. Many might find some of these sacrilegious. Which only makes it funnier.

 

Best tracks from this are 'Ireland's New National Anthem (You're Welcome)', a glitchy combination of Bewitched - C'est La Vie and Westlife - World Of Our Own, and 'shitcorebabes', a track that I can only describe as 'About You Now' pulled kicking and screaming through a blender, but any and all are triumphs, if not completely original ones.

 

9. Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There

 

I've always got time for a post-rock masterpiece, and this has clearly dominated the review charts over the entirety of this year, certainly not without merit. Every time one of these comes up on a playlist, it's an emotional draw, altogether, it's absolutely devastatingly beautiful. Because I'm sometimes slightly less patient with bands I'm not yet familiar with, and I missed their debut album when it came out (though I've also listened to it now), I'm drawn to the shorter tracks here particularly and 'Chaos Space Marine' and 'Concorde' make an awesome two-track starter to really kick off the album. a 6-minute track is one of the shorter tracks, well yes. Not a weak track here. It's a bit of a tough listen which is why I've ranked it slightly lower than those above it, but if I was ranking them on composition and skill it would definitely make the top 5.

 

Not to say the longer tracks aren't brilliant, I've gone back to them less but 'The Place Where He Inserted The Blade', 'Snow Globes' and 'Basketball Shoes' are an incredible way to end the album. It's a triumph, for all the band, especially their frontman Isaac, who's given the musical world a true masterpiece before retiring.

8. ROSALÍA - Motomami

 

Rosalía I know has been supposed to be great for a few years now but this is my first real big exposure to her, a delightful alt pop album with lots of experimenting and a sense that you never really know what's coming next on it. I mean, there's so many genres, right from the beginning with 'Saoko' giving something I'd never have expected, an intense opening that gets the ride going. Then throughout it's some of the best and most adventurous I've ever found Latin music to be. 'Hentai' is most certainly the classiest song to ever have that title and a beauty besides, serving as a great emotional contrast to the hyper 'Chicken Teriyaki', there's retro callbacks with 'Delirio De Grandeza', and the track I've come back the most to is 'CUUUUuuuuuute' for fitting in under 3 minutes a microcosm of the whole genre-bending album.

 

 

7. Ado - 狂言

 

 

The debut album, read as 'Kyougen' (the name for a type of Japanese comic theatre, can also mean 'a ruse' or 'a trick'), by Japanese singer Ado, and the official birth of a star, many of these songs were from 2020 and 2021, with the album getting its release in Jan 2022. Ado burst onto the scene with 'Usseewa' ('Shut Up') in late 2020, a raucous pop track, this was followed by swing-influenced 'Readymade', a sweltering midtempo 'KiraKira', and the genre and club triumph that was 'Odo' and a stunning ballad in 'Aitakute'. Plus 3 more singles, all on this album before it was released. So I knew most of this already, but having it together and focusing on the singles that I hadn't listened to so much before it was released was a new experience. Plus there's some really good new tracks, like 'Domestic No Violence', which is really boppy despite... that title

 

Ado has the perfect vocals that I love in a pop star, quite husky, easily able to strain herself, and put emotion into singing hard, and she's accompanied almost inevitably by a great swing or electronic soundtrack, the people behind her at Sony Music know exactly how to keep pop music interesting and they've done a great job of this. She's young, but she's well on her way to being my favourite Japanese singer ever and that's some achievement. And all without being involved in an anime...

6. MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS - Awakening;Sleeping

 

I had listened to Mass Of The Fermenting Dregs a few times before this year, but it was only this year that their shoegaze beauty really came through for me with the release of August's Awakening;Sleeping, a album with lots of wistful feelings baked into every single track. That from the opening track 'Dramatic' to the 8-minute long and fantastically steady '1960' to the sparse and gentle 'After The Rain' to 'Birds And Rhythm' which is the one track here that could possibly fit on an anime, it's exactly the sort of advanced progressive nonsense I was searching for when looking among Japanese rock bands, and I had a period this year where I was putting this on first choice for quite a bit. The two collabs on it, are a bit of a weak point by involving other singers from bands that don't exactly fit with the style, but all of the solo tracks I keep coming back to.

 

There's a couple of points it gets really heavy as well, most notably on track 3 'Melt', which delivers some of the best hard guitar I've heard this side of 2020, and of course the triumphant finish 'Just', which takes everything great about the preceding 30 minutes and synthesises it into a fantastic sounding victory lap.

 

5. Ado - Uta's Songs One Piece Film Red

 

.... oh wait Ado did a whole album of songs for an anime. I've seen a handful of One Piece episodes a few years back but I'm far from being caught up, but the standard biannual cash-grab tie-in movie for one of the biggest anime franchises ever, apparently, I haven't seen it yet, isn't a cashgrab at all and is supposed to be quite a great film and story. In any case, the marketing and effort for this one has been quite a step up and I've heard a lot about this movie in a way I haven't heard about previous One Piece Films. It's also outgrossed so many previous attempts such that it's one of the biggest Japanese films ever now.

 

Most notably what I've heard is that it's a musical and the biggest new character, Uta (literally named 'Song'), has her singing voice done by Ado. And this album is all of the songs sung throughout the film. 'New Genesis' is one of the big ones, this one actually topped the Apple Music Global charts at one point, my favourites are the whirlwind of 'Backlight' and the beautiful 'The World's Continuation', as well the wistful 'Where The Wind Blows' and Uta/Ado's attempt at a pirate song (seeing as that's what One Piece is... about) on 'Binkusano Sake'. It's some brilliant dramatic pop, and though listened to as a whole it's clearly written for a musical, Ado's style is resilient enough (and I love it enough) that most of them can stand out as brilliant pop too.

4. Metric - Formentera

 

 

I got quite involved in Metric this year, a band who really are perfect for me with the swagger of Emily Haines fronting them and well-written synth pop/indie rock in every song they do. I went back and heard lots of their earlier albums, something I'd never gotten round to doing before, and while I'm not going to say whether Art Of Doubt or Fantasies or this one is my favourite, what's true is that they all have fantastic songs on them. Every song on here, the more I hear it, the better it gets. Of course 'Doomscroller' is a titan but other notable songs like 'All Comes Crashing' and 'What Feels Like Eternity' have brilliant hooks and tracks like 'I Will Never Settle' and 'Oh Please' are no different, plus there's other hints of progressivism here with 'Paths In The Sky' and the dread of the uncertainty-filled period that this album was written in apparent throughout all of it. At this age, many bands don't tend to recapture the spark, it seems like Metric have never lost it.

 

3. Mori Calliope - UnAlive

 

 

partly why I haven't been present is involving myself in the latest album from Mori, Sinderella - which is too new to put here. She's released two albums and an EP (Shinigami Note, which was... okay, though a couple songs from it are showing up in my songs) this year and that's just on the Mori side. UnAlive is her debut full-length album, and the last gasp of great music before she signed to Universal Music Japan who... slightly decreased the quality overall through mild corporate wiles and a focus on EDM. There's EDM on here for sure, but the producers are lots of the indie and anime bunch that came along with Mori. And the lyrics are some of the freshest she's ever done, she's retreading a bit of old ground with the newer stuff.

 

You have Eliot Tsu, a composer who specialises in fantasy soundtracks. He gives a very distinctive and pretty sound to the opening track UnAlive and the closing track Ouroboros, both of which are epic journeys with instrumental flourishes to accompany Mori's vocals, then there's an electro-swing section for 'Dead On Arrival' and 'Graveyard Shift', an experiment in club tracks with 'Huge W', 'Scuffed-Up Age' an honest-to-goodness RnB track that sings about the troubles of people in today's world. Then there's PrettyPatterns, the producer of 'end of a life' returning for another great self-introspection track 'Resting Power', and the impossibly sweet 'Lose-Lose Days' which seemed like a weak pop track when I first heard it but through the lyrics about 'smiling through the bad days' essentially, came to love it almost to my favourite on the album.

 

strong, strong lyrical and emotional things going on here.

2. Diablo Swing Orchestra - Swagger & Stroll Down The Rabbit Hole

 

I fell in love with Diablo Swing Orchestra properly at the start of this year, thanks to their new album, Swagger & Stroll Down The Rabbit Hole. I was very much in the mood for swing metal, and this apocalyptic, lockdown-themed effort was the perfect soundtrack to go a little emo to. The orchestral overtures and dark journeys that the opening four tracks take you on is a journey that I can't recommend enough. I mean, the album opens with a track called 'Sightseeing In The Apocalypse', and the next track 'War Painted Valentine' is very clearly about living in a post-truth society. The triumphant Spanish-language 'Celebremos Lo Inevitable' is next, and the more explicitly electro-swing 'Speed Dating An Arsonist' adds a non-heavy interpretation of the band, it wouldn't be out of place on a Caravan Palace album.

 

The fun 'Jig Of A Century' is the fifth-best track on the album, the back-end isn't quite as demandingly great as the opening, but it's still all fantastic swing-rock that makes these guys one of the best and most unique bands around, a late track nod has to go to the choral mix of vocalists and heavy string sections on 'Saluting The Reckoning'. It always feels like the world is on the verge of ending with this album, and it's a fantastic ride.

 

 

1. DEMONDICE - Shut Up Get Happy EP

(alternatively, a version with this image on a TV screen while someone stands over it with a baseball bat, couched in uncomfortable brick red)

 

If there's one musical moment I was drawn to in 2022, it was the release of Demondice's Shut Up Get Happy. Hence why it was my avatar for most of the year on here, not withstanding that it's a very cool image in the first place. It was her first music since 2020's Alkatraz

not counting any of her releases as Mori Calliope

, it was a long-awaited insight into the unfiltered thoughts of someone who'd been shot to fame in quite unusual circumstances and hadn't really been able to speak about how she was feeling before this, plus I was deeply invested in her emotional state at the time of its release. When it released, it was about all I played for that week and certainly the first few days, I was on holiday and I was just looping it over and over again. At the same time there was a controversy spurred on by weirdos at 4chan about her other side's activities that got somewhat overblown into affecting her ability to stream AND in the confusion I managed to find my way into certain communities where we sit and profess our love for Karen all day (which is great, because having that comradeship helped calm me down, weirdly enough). It was an interesting time. The release of the EP, on 1st February, and a stream where she showed her face on camera for the first time since I began following her, was one of my favourite moments this year.

 

And that's partly because these 4 tracks are all just so devastating in examining Karen's mental state and sound among the best work she's put down in a career already filled with highlights. I haven't formulated my top 50 songs but they'll all certainly show up there, but more broadly, everything flows so well, from the stomping opener of 'Wanting, Getting, Wanting', to the real anger of 'Take The Bait', to the vulnerability shown in 'Dark Hour' and the hopefulness and maturity in closing track 'Fake Ass Gold'. There's a lyrical sharpness to all of this that I think might be getting dulled with the amount of insane work she's done this year

as Mori, comparing this to the lyrics on Shinigami Note and some of Sinderella, SUGH knocks many of them out of the park.

. 'Shut Up Get Happy' is about the dark side of becoming an online public figure and how humans react to that objectively pretty lucky yet quite trapping proposition, and while I'll get to this properly in the tracks, the sentiments in tracks 2, 3 and 4 are relatable to normal people also, even if this is primarily a vent album. She's fine by the way, of course, as track 1 says, she needs an outlet.

 

albums fini. yay.

TV & ANIME

 

Together as I was about 50%/50% on traditional live-action TV and anime this year. I probably watched the least amount of anime I have for about 6 years. Partly that was only going after really good series, partly that was just finding it easier to care about long-form live action shows. When characters aren't in jeopardy - they often aren't in anime, to keep them in the manga/series - and there's just less of a good goal or want for me to spend more time in that world, finding a good sci-fi, fantasy or historical drama show that DOES have all of that, then it's superior.

 

LIVE-ACTION TV

 

~The Expanse~ (2015-2021)

 

I spent much of my TV-watching time this year, at least at the beginning, watching the whole of sci-fi series The Expanse, which is probably going to take it for best overall series I watched this year. It's a 'hard' sci-fi (meaning everything is kept grounded in reality to an extent, Star Trek & Doctor Who are classic 'soft' sci-fis to contrast) set in a future where humanity has colonised the inner Solar System with new build colonies on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and a few further.

 

Humanity's then divided into three main groups. There's the UN, a power owning Earth, with most of the population and wealth and a clear 'West' analog. There's Mars, a government and martial (slow clap) society with comparable military capabilities to the UN but a much smaller population, something of a USSR analog as these two are in a cold war of sorts as the series opens. And then there's the Belters, obviously the Third World of the three, colonists of the asteroid belt with little power, centralisation or weapons and normally abused by the forces of Earth & Mars, giving their more vocal cast members many parallels with revolutionaries and populist movements. Also a very distinctive accent. Also made me double take whenever I saw the name 'Belters Only'.

 

I love political dramas. I love political dramas in space with a bit of a fictional edge, as different horrors emerge from space throughout the series, all while every one of the three factions is normally millimetres away from declaring all out war on one of the others while the main characters navigate the tensions. Ending wasn't perfect, they could have gone for a couple more seasons given the source material, but it's 6 seasons of very well done and well acted sci-fi thriller. Every one of the main cast goes on a journey from the beginning to the end and performances from particularly Shohreh Agashdaloo (as a high-level politician in the UN), Wes Chatham (as a somewhat neurodivergent straight talk action man) and Cara Gee (as a captivatingly brilliant no-nonsense revolutionary leader) really nail it. I love Camina Drummer so much.

 

~House Of The Dragon~ (2022)

 

Got me back into Game Of Thrones again so much that I rewatched the first 3 seasons. Which is some feat after all of the fallout from season 8. House Of The Dragon is really good though, set in an earlier time with a civil war brewing over the Targaryen dynasty, this first season covers lots of time skips to show you exactly how the civil war is going to be set-up, and I think it did that pitch perfectly. It's full of the great slow scenes that I loved early GoT for, all the political maneuvering, all to lead to a war that has some similarities to the Anarchy of England in the mid-1100s just as original GoT had some similarities to the War Of The Roses.

 

Matt Smith is great as the slightly unstable Daemon Targaryen, Paddy Considine a standard-bearing role for the slowly dying King Viserys Targaryen, and numerous other great performances by young and old actors alike. Particularly good are both actresses (there's one notable timeskip in about the middle of the season) for Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, the two lead female roles - the daughter of the king and his heir, and the king's second wife and mother of Rhaenyra's half-brothers. And Corlys Velaryon, known as the Sea Snake. His wife Rhaenys Targaryen, the so-called 'Queen Who Never Was'. Hand of the King and Alicent's father Otto Hightower. The very creepy and yet compelling Larys Strong, a cripple and Master Of Whisperers. It's like Game Of Thrones again, back when it was good, with a specific focus on keeping it good, the entire story is out already in a "history book" called Fire And Blood, which I've read since. So there's no chance of a rushed ending. It details the full outcome of the civil war, but in more broad strokes, future seasons of the show will surely go into more detail and get perspectives that were not "recorded by Westerosi historians". Fire & Blood details the first half of the history of the Targaryen dynasty from Aegon the Conqueror to just after this civil war, The Dance Of The Dragons, finishes - and during its retelling of the Dance, it often gives competing accounts from different historians for the parts that went on behind closed doors - the HOTD TV show then confirms or denies one or other of the records, and sometimes goes a completely different way altogether. And whether you read that or not, House Of The Dragon is fantastic TV.

 

~Rings Of Power~ (2022)

 

Rings Of Power got far too much hate online. It's good. And it's a Lord Of The Rings story set in the Second Age. Which we would otherwise never get. Any dramatic potential for a big-budget TV show is not in Tolkien's appendixes as they were written... unless you condense the major events that happened over thousands of years and set them up to take place over at most 20 human years. The condensing I don't mind, and it was great to see Númenor and the potential for political drama there in future seasons. The halfling parts were pretty odd and teh show could have done without them, plus I'd have preferred more time and intrigue spent at Eregion, but it was a commendable attempt and Durin/Elrond/Disa had great chemistry in the Dwarven parts, while Arondir as a completely original elf was a great mainstay to see the location that had the most jeopardy in it, the Southlands. House Of The Dragon won this war though.

 

~Peaky Blinders~ (2012-2014)

I saw the first 3 series of this this year, a heavily fictionalised account of gangs in Birmingham during the interwar years. Peaky Blinders is a good watch, but it does completely rely on the charisma and menace that its main man Cillian Murphy as Peaky Blinders gang leader Tommy Shelby brings to the role. Also it really does the communists at this time dirty

by killing its main communist character off-screen between series 1 and 2

. The complete control the main lot have over the legal system at times also seems... odd. But it's very tense and does its dramatic scenes well, enough to enjoy it.

 

~The Crown~ (2022)

Season 5 of The Crown was really good again, yet again the Crown finds the best ways to generate drama out of historical events while not exaggerating all that much - the biggest discrepancy I noticed this season (1991-1997) was John Major mediating in the Charles-Diana divorce as well as talking with Charles about becoming king, where there's no suggestion he did anything of the sort in either case. Also Major had much less of a presence than Thatcher and Wilson before him, somewhat understandably, but it made his scenes lose some impact. Most episodes are very well self-contained, the episode introducing Mohammed El Fayed's rise to power was spectacular I thought, as were the episodes on the Martin Bashir interview. Again, I'm not interested so much in inter-personal drama of the monarchy as much as it impacts British society, but I thought this series kept it very well together.

 

~The Boys~ (2019-2022)

I love superheroes. By which I mean I love shows that deconstruct superheroes as the slightly fascist defenders of the status quo that they inherently are. Belief in the superiority of a few chosen individuals? That can have little or no accountability while they accept deaths of bystanders/victims as collateral (just like cops at times, huh)? And especially in this universe, used as agents of capitalism to sell meaningless tat that keeps a megacorp dominant in society? Yes, yes and yes. It is just amazing while watching The Boys how much of this world revolves around the heroes as real celebrities with their faces on every brand imaginable, and somewhat unsettling knowing that it's not too far off how real corporations work. And Karl Urban's William Butcher in The Boys is the perfect attack line against all of that, especially up against Homelander, the Superman-alike turned into MAGA hero - they've done great at updating what I presume was some goofy mid-00s references in the comic for the present day, there's even an AOC-lookalike. Plus there's the impossibly attractive Karen Fukuhara as Kimiko and her chemistry with Tomer Capone's Frenchie that are great to watch together, as is the very morally good Starlight and her couple pairing with main guy Hughie. Very well done show and it looks like future seasons will just get more political, so that'll be fun to see it come out in a way that makes it look less like a TV show to watch and more like advanced social commentary on the current state of the USA especially in the latest, in season 3 - though even season 2 seemed like a blatant commentary on some of the USA from 2018-2020.

 

huh, I guess that got longer than I expected. Summing up all the anime in the next post then.

Well I've heard 3 of your 10 albums and no prizes for guessing which ones. ROSALÍA and Black Country, New Road are obviously getting all the critics' love but for very good reason, I wasn't really taken by what I heard from BC,NR's debut and was slow to get into this album too but 'Snow Globes' was the single that made it click and I ended up loving pretty much all of the album, some really special songs on there. And the only possible negative about 'MOTOMAMI' is just somewhat of a lack of cohesion but she nails every sound she goes for so still AOTY x Metric I actually don't think I've seen popping up on many if any of the critic lists on the other hand which is a shame, 'Doomscroller' is a major highlight of the year of course and plenty of other good tracks on there.

 

The rest are all a bit too Iz-core for me to comment but MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS remains an iconic band name and 'Just' was a tune. (also huh at the spoilered parts of the #1 post)

Well I've heard 3 of your 10 albums and no prizes for guessing which ones. ROSALÍA and Black Country, New Road are obviously getting all the critics' love but for very good reason, I wasn't really taken by what I heard from BC,NR's debut and was slow to get into this album too but 'Snow Globes' was the single that made it click and I ended up loving pretty much all of the album, some really special songs on there. And the only possible negative about 'MOTOMAMI' is just somewhat of a lack of cohesion but she nails every sound she goes for so still AOTY x Metric I actually don't think I've seen popping up on many if any of the critic lists on the other hand which is a shame, 'Doomscroller' is a major highlight of the year of course and plenty of other good tracks on there.

 

The rest are all a bit too Iz-core for me to comment but MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS remains an iconic band name and 'Just' was a tune. (also huh at the spoilered parts of the #1 post)

 

I normally need to hear more of the critic's best taste albums as normally, if they're in any way close to what I like, it'll be great. Metric need to be on more then I guess. Thank you for looking through Bré!

 

I have been suffering under some unconfirmed unwellness, but I will resume this soon.

Ooh, you've watched a lot of my favourite shows this year. The Boys is really good and a great satire on the world today and from both political angles in the United States, this series wasn't quite as good as the last for me, but still largely very good. House of the Dragon was a real win for me and redeemed Game of Thrones for sure, I did try with the Rings of Power but though it did have some standout scenes and the whole thing looked totally beautiful, it was just too slow and too many characters for me overall, I will stick with it for the second season though and there's still potential. I have been interested in the Expanse as well, heard very good things.

 

I've been largely a bit rubbish with albums, but Ants from Up There was really good, the three highlights you picked were definitely mine too.

Anime Of 2022 + Avatar

This won't be every anime I watched this year, just the most notable ones - and it is a lot less than previous years anyway.

 

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008)

 

I recently realised, due to it not being a Japanese anime or a live-action TV show, that I forgot I spent this summer watching all of A:TLA for the first time (and didn't put it in my post in the TV forum). As it's one of the greatest shows ever and all. Just gonna edit that. Regardless of whether it counts or not, fantastic story, great influences used in the way that each elemental nation has parallels to real-world Asian nations (particularly Earth as China and Fire as Japan, but also Water as Arctic tribes and Air as Tibetan monks). Very perfect hero's journey, glad I finally got around to watching it.

 

Chainsaw Man (2022)

Actually quite like many of the live-action shows, Chainsaw Man is being done by a writer who really wants to shake the anime industry into needing good thriller writing. Chainsaw Man creates a world dogged by late stage capitalism, where monsters called Devils terrorise people - and so there's a job called Devil Hunters with both public and private arms. Into that you get Denji, a young very dopey guy who melds with a devil and can produce chainsaws out of his head and arms at will. His sole motivation is getting female companionship which is presented in a very dorky way, rather than anything creepy. It's a very fantastic set of characters overall as well though, the mysterious Makima, the insanely confident Power, experienced devil hunter Himeno (who has become my avatar because I love her style), the serious Aki... all great to watch. And you really never know where the story is going next. It's a late arrival but I think this is my favourite anime of 2022, though that would probably be an uncontroversial choice.

 

Spy X Family (2022)

I've watched just over half of this so far, I've started on the second cour but haven't finished it. Like Chainsaw Man, SxF set the anime community alight. Unlike Chainsaw Man, Spy X Family is far more wholesome and did because it's just so nice to watch. It's about a spy who in a nation that's about to be on the brink of war with his nation, creates a fake family for a spy mission. However the woman and child he recruits for his spy mission are respectively, an assassin and a telepath. They become an ostensibly real family, the Forgers (no, this name isn't suspicious). Only the child knows the truth about them all, the adults are unaware of all of the others' special abilities. Which leads to great reactions and lines, especially as Yor (the wife) is very beautiful and quite possibly the anime lady most fawned over this year*, and Anya, the child, is impossibly cute. Jeopardy isn't completely absent either, they're still doing dangerous spy stuff and it's kept realistic - one notable episode where they hire out a whole castle for practice spy hijinks aside.

 

*just ahead of Makima from Chainsaw Man, I'll bet, the best way for an anime girl to lead polls is for her to have a 'please step on me' quotient and trust me, that's better than most alternatives.

 

Odd Taxi (2021)

Odd Taxi is a perfectly well contained story. Like a Tarantino film. It may look from the outside like just another 'everyone has the head of an animal' stories but this was so perfectly placed it was a joy to watch. Well worth it no matter your anime inclinations, this is proper prestige TV and I shall say no more about it for risk of spoiling. Probably my favourite anime I watched in 2022, different from those that came out in 2022.

 

Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War (Ultra Romantic - S3) (2022)

Kaguya finished, will probably go down as one of my favourite shows ever, everything was wrapped up very well and with some great sketches on the way out. There's some great focus on Ishigami, the hopeless secondary male character in the final innings, more of Chika being the force of nature that sometimes defines the show, but of course, the best thing was Kaguya and Shirogane, played to perfection by their voice actors, as they finally find the right way to move their relationship forward.

 

Tengen Toppa Gurenn Lagann (2007)

finally finished watching this with a watchalong, the original Trigger anime in that it's set in a wasteland of humanity and at the end they go to space. Mechs don't often interest me outside of Evangelion much but the character dynamics in here were great.

 

Akudama Drive (2020)

Something done by the author of Danganronpa, a cyberpunk story about designated criminals (the word Akudama means something akin to 'baddie'). Quite trippy and abstract at times, and a very well done story on the perils of authoritarian laws, facial recognition and such. Good cyberpunk stuff.

 

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)

Also cyberpunk, this time set in the world of the game Cyberpunk 2077 - which somehow is popular enough for spinoff media. This one is about a boy called David who joins a gang and adds more and more cybernetic parts to his body. It's a good ride if maybe far less joyful than Akudama Drive is at times.

 

other anime I watched include the indomitable Lucky Star, the classic anime parody, Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt, a very crude anime comedy from 2010 but apparently it's finally getting a second season soon, and other anime that I haven't finished yet.

Ooh, you've watched a lot of my favourite shows this year. The Boys is really good and a great satire on the world today and from both political angles in the United States, this series wasn't quite as good as the last for me, but still largely very good. House of the Dragon was a real win for me and redeemed Game of Thrones for sure, I did try with the Rings of Power but though it did have some standout scenes and the whole thing looked totally beautiful, it was just too slow and too many characters for me overall, I will stick with it for the second season though and there's still potential. I have been interested in the Expanse as well, heard very good things.

 

I've been largely a bit rubbish with albums, but Ants from Up There was really good, the three highlights you picked were definitely mine too.

 

I also felt the last season of The Boys wasn't going as far as the second season in particular did. But it does look like the next season will be a big one. I'm also definitely giving RoP another season, I hope they take some of the feedback they got from it last time, the constructive parts at least, and use it to improve it.

 

I think you'd like The Expanse as it keeps everything quite realistic, I was always being recommended it until this year and now it's complete, all of the seasons now stand together as fantastic TV, each season is relatively self-contained but always leads very satisfyingly to the next one. With one exception, there's a subplot in the last season that has no connection to anything else and doesn't make sense because it's connected to the books that didn't get adapted but now the show's cancelled.

 

Thank you Chez!

Songs

 

This probably is not exhaustive, I may have missed songs, I scanned my most played list of the year, discounted songs I've done in an EOY before and those that are definitely not this year (but some are from before 2022), and organised 50 of them into some sort of order.

 

 

50. MASA WORKS DESIGN - Rondon Slag Pathy Hi

49. Mori Calliope - Make 'Em Afraid

48. Cyan Kicks - Hurricane

47. Metric - All Comes Crashing

46. Achille Lauro - Stripper

 

I start with a vocaloid song by MASA WORKS DESIGN, a producer who makes vocaloid songs that all end up sounding psytrancey. 'Rondon Slag Pathy Hi' is one of their most famous songs, though it got a bit of further attention this year with a focused EP built of remixes of the song, including an 'Insomnia' version and a current events version called 'Rondon Political Officer Job'. Fun stuff. Following it, a track from Mori's mid-year EP Shinigami Note called 'Make 'Em Afraid', though 'Kamouflage' wasn't far behind it. 'Make 'Em Afraid' has a huge Eurodance breakdown which makes it possibly Mori's best club track yet and is very addictive.

 

'Hurricane' was the early best song from last year's Eurovision season, from a great young band called 'Cyan Kicks' who I'd love to see more of some day, they ended up coming 2nd I believe. Metric's 'All Come Crashing' was a great highlight off of Formentera, and one of the best Eurovision entries this year was the high-quality rock that Achille Lauro blessed upon San Marino.

 

 

 

45. Diablo Swing Orchestra - War Painted Valentine

44. Mori Calliope (feat. Hoshimachi Suisei) - CAPSULE

43. Courting - Loaded

42. Takanashi Kiara - Do U

41. KANARIA - Queen

 

'War Painted Valentine' is a fantastic DSO track about living in a post-truth world, with sides setting up for war and battle sonically in the song with voices sarcastically saying to each other 'My truth is better than your truth', a great rock track. Also a great rock track was one of my favourite discoveries from BJSC this year, the limitless energy and fantastic guitar backing of Courting's 'Loaded'.

 

Two vtuber tracks to recommend here, one a collaboration between the two best vtubers, Mori Calliope and Hoshimachi Suisei. 'CAPSULE' was the former's big label debut and is very anthemic with both of them taking up vocal duties and Mori adding in raps where appropriate. The other vtuber song is 'Do U' from Austrian Hololive vtuber Takanashi Kiara. She's had a rather too high voice for me to truly enjoy many of her pop songs before, as much as I think she's one of the best vtuber streamers out there, but 'Do U' is something else, like a properly well produced K-Pop song with excellent production and rhythm.

 

'Queen' is like the second vocaloid song in 10 as I regret to inform you yet again nearly every BJSC entry of mine is taking up a position in here, though not necessarily in the order of my caring about them because I care about all of them. 'Queen' is a beautifully energetic pop vocaloid song and well worth a position in here, had me mildly obsessed with it since it came out.

 

'QUEEN' was really robbed, I can understand it being a DNQ but I'm really surprised it got as few points as it did. It was a good vocaloid tune! 'Loaded' also a fab and undeserved DNQ (got it on shuffle the other week so fresh in the memory) and we have a good DNQ from Eurovision here to boot, Achille was maybe a bit of a Måneskin pastiche but I still really enjoyed 'STRIPPER'. 'All Comes Crashing' actually isn't one of my faves from the Metric album, a bit of a false start to the era for me before the glorious second single, but it's not bad ~

 

40. Mori Calliope - Mera Mera

39. Goat Girl - Sad Cowboy

38. Black Country, New Road - Concorde

37. Dave - Starlight

36. Blackbriar - Fairy Of The Bog

 

yeah about 10 of this 50 is still Mori but that's what you get when she overworks herself, 'Mera Mera' was an unusual Indian pop influenced bop that was wildly mainstream for her, but it was a very interesting direction. To do, once, and I enjoyed it a lot - though that is every track from Shinigami Note now out, the remaining Mori tracks are UnAlive ones.

 

'Sad Cowboy' I got into in the middle of the year despite it and the album it's off being a couple of years old, a very perfectly put together indie-pop track that was my best performance in BJSC this year, I'll have to thank it for that.

 

My favourite track from 'Ants From Up There' is the emotional 'Concorde', something that Isaac clearly put nearly everything into, such that it's very easy to come back even among the rest of the highlights on that album. And then there's a rare mainstream hit in my chart as I got attached to 'Starlight' in part because it's Dave and he's normally great and in part because the way the 'Fly Me To The Moon' sample is delivered it reminds me of the Evangelion ending version of that song.

 

'Fairy Of The Bog' is a return from a band that I'd liked a couple of songs from before, but 'Fairy Of The Bog' has a greatly ethereal quality to it that puts it on the level of Amberian Dawn's best work, a lovely gothic metal track - the theme around a 'bog' in particular helped tie it to Jump King's Ghost Of The Babe stage - I spent a fair amount of time watching Mori's streams while she was stuck in the bog (for those who know the game, though I've completed the mainstream stage, I am not crazy enough to do this bog/Ghost stage myself), something ethereal and creepy like the game is in that stage was very needed.

 

'QUEEN' was really robbed, I can understand it being a DNQ but I'm really surprised it got as few points as it did. It was a good vocaloid tune! 'Loaded' also a fab and undeserved DNQ (got it on shuffle the other week so fresh in the memory) and we have a good DNQ from Eurovision here to boot, Achille was maybe a bit of a Måneskin pastiche but I still really enjoyed 'STRIPPER'. 'All Comes Crashing' actually isn't one of my faves from the Metric album, a bit of a false start to the era for me before the glorious second single, but it's not bad ~

 

there may or may not be a bit of subtle commentary about how all these non-qualifiers deserved far more considering they're making my highlights and most of the songs that did better are nowhere to be found :kink:

 

or perhaps that's less subtext and just text but it is quite a lot of 'non-qualifiers' from various song contests huh

 

35. Mili - world.execute(me)

34. Hoshimachi Suisei - TEMPLATE

33. Erika Vikman - Kateus

32. S3RL & Dorian Electra - Notice Me

31. Bloodywood - Aaj

 

The other of my slightly older BJSC entries (+oshama scramble which was the one I didn't include as it was also a bit old), 'world.execute(me)' ended up as one of my most-played songs of the year anyway. I love Mili and I've loved this one for a while but I got back into it proper with sending it, and showing off its indie tendencies was a great time.

 

I love Suisei. So when she came out with a rock song, with 'TEMPLATE', I got right into it, this one building off her brilliant 'Ghost' to further explore her feelings about the fragility of being a popstar and coming from nowhere to having fans of her as a popstar and as an anime girl. There's also a lot of dealing with parasociality and fan relations in 'Template', in this case it's people projecting their image of an ideal Suisei and her resisting that.

 

The rest we have a bunch of BJSC highlights, 'Kateus' was one of the best Finnish pop songs I've heard in a long time with a great production background, 'Notice Me' is typically great S3RL that grew on me beyond the contest, plus the juxtaposition of 'notice me senpai queen' made this feel like a great intersection of weeb* and gay culture.

 

*S3RL definitely does weeb culture, c.f. 'Waifu'

 

then of course there's Bloodywood who have not only built upon the songs I first found them with a few years ago ('Ari Ari') but outright surpassed them with the hugely powerful 'Aaj'. The production is better quality, the bars are more ferocious and the metal is harder. It's incredible.

 

Aaj is a fantastic song!

*S3RL definitely does weeb culture, c.f. 'Waifu'

This is exactly how I discovered S3RL.