This year I had a baby. I mean my wife had a baby, and I mainly made unhelpful suggestions and tried to stay out of the way. But I definitely looked after and bought up a baby. Which is utterly wonderful and life changing and ridiculously difficult and panic inducing and boring, often all at the same time. Aside from anything else, having a baby means that you can't live in the same way any more. One of my favourite memories of consuming media is playing the PlayStation RPG Grandia in my bedroom as a 16 year old. I would sit on a cushion on the floor in front of my 14 inch Beko CRT TV and chain smoke as I played. After placing the pad on the floor in front of me, I held the cigarette with my right hand, and moved the left analogue stick with my little finger and ring finger, and manipulated the rest of the buttons with the other fingers. This worked pretty well, because Grandia doesn't involve any fast paced decisions (at least, not when I played it). In many ways, despite having quit smoking years ago, this is my favourite memory of childhood, the endless free time, and the utter disregard I had for my body. Now it seems an impossibility, for better or worse. Same story for getting obliterated and watching four Bollywood films in a row, or staying up all night pass the pad speed running Sonic 2 for some bizarre reason. Now media has to be snatched in corners of the day and late at night, often to be put down after only a few minutes because I can hear a faint and muffled cry, or because my darling child is chewing a clump of dust or wires.
This is a list of stuff I played/heard/read or watched for the first time in 2021 that I liked. In some cases I have tried it out before but this is the first time I've properly given it a go. In some cases, I might have checked it out in 2020, or definitely in late 2020, I can't be bothered to be exact or pedantic. approximately 1% of this stuff was actually released in 2021, and I will get round to watching it or whatever in a decade, minimum. It is in no order.
GAMES
Gnosia
Achingly gorgeous and wonderfully frustrating suspicion simulator
Shin Megami Tensei V
Flawed but breezy sort of open world apocalypse fun
Return of the Obra Dinn
Monochromatic fantastical bureaucracy, like sudoku with killer crabs
Breath Of The Wild
Charming and engrossing explore-em-up, way too big for it's own good
No More Heroes 3
Uneven, vaguely unfinished feeling and nostalgic romp with moments of brilliance and moments of tedium
Disco Elysium
Breathtaking and wonderful and unfortunately unfinished: will return when the sprog is a bit older and my memory of the first half has faded
Robotics;Notes
Passable robot themed VN nonsense with an obligatory twatty protagonist
The Witness
MYST done right, MYST done bearable
Paradise Killer
Dreamy open world stylish wanderer
FILMS
Palindromes
Woozy, dreamlike and gloriously hateful fable
The Lighthouse
High contrast, high jinks
MUSIC
Junko Ohashi - Crystal City
Smooth blind buy
Sumire Uesaka - No Future Vacancies
Ultra pop meze platter
Sumire Uesaka - Neo Propaganda
Almost as good as above
Autechre - Eps 1991 - 2002
Five hours of brrrrrpt chk pow chk brrrrrpt
The Future Sound Of London - Lifeforms
1994-core
Surgeon - From Farthest Known Objects
Actually good techno
Phew - New Decade
Reliable old school noise stalwart
Scott Walker - Tilt
Big spooky negachansons
Blink 182 - Dude Ranch
Don't care, mate
Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion
URGH!
Cradle of Filth - Dusk And Her Embrace
Tongue in cheek extreme black metal shenanigans
Darkthrone - Eternal Hails....
Ol' reliable
Immortal - Pure Holocaust
No-nonsense and ridiculous at the same time
Lovebites - Awakening From Abyss
Ultra polished hypermetal
Melvins - Stoner Witch
BAAAA BAAAA CHUGGA CHUGGA BAAAA
Herbie Hancock - Secrets
Quite funky
Will Haven - WHVN
Filthy suburban metal
BOOKS
Capitalist Realism
Energising and depressing in equal measures
The Beach
Breezy page turner about societal collapse
Closer
Bleak and unpolished
My Loose Thread
Fleeting and disgustingly beautiful
The Sluts
A vile, exhausting and utterly wonderful novel
The Marbled Swarm
Gloriously verbose and nightmarishly harrowing
The Get Rich And Become God Method
Perhaps the funniest book I've ever read, literally painful to read, my IQ has halved
Cop Killer
Fun and filthy pulp mess
Submission
Ohhhhh, it's a bit of a thinker
Antkind
700 pages of absolutely brain melting joy
Cows
The only book I've not been able to finish because it was so disgusting, so well done mate
Convenience Store Woman
Weaponised anti-quirk
Earthlings
Increasingly nightmarish and supremely affecting fable
The Diving Pool
Like suddenly realising every repulsive fluid your body is holding and that everything is awful and always will be: this is the best book I've read this year
The Employees
Glacially cold and distant artefact posing as narrative
Terminal Boredom
distracting sci-fi thinkers
Prison School
Hideous S/M filth combined with a school story oh god
Raw Hero
Blushtastic
Stardust Crusaders
Utterly bonkers adventure through the middle East
Goodnight Pun Pun
Devastating monolith of a coming of age story that dissolves in to hyperexpressive Battaillian Nightmare
Downfall
What if the author was a jerk lol
Maison Ikkoku
GET IN MY VEINS!!!
MONSTER
Breezeblock massive romp
The Princess Of The Never Ending Castle
Kago up to his kerazy and disgusting narrative tomfoolery
Attack On Titan 1-12
Utterly bizarre and inexplicably bizarre soap opera
Dorohedoro 8-11
Comfy as heck fetid hellish nightmare
Dai Dark 1-2
As above but in space
Fire Punch
Almost perfect blend of postapocaylptic brutality and disarmingly weird comedy
Chainsaw Man 1-7
As above but not quite as nasty and much more cute
The Animatic Apparatus
Exciting and engaging account of the power of fiction
Otaku and the Struggle For Imagination In Japan
Fun, if sprawling primer
Media Convergence In Japan
Fascinating to dip a toe in to Japanese media studies
Beautiful Fighting Girl
Extremely readable psychoanalytic reading of a particularly Japanese fixation on cute and deadly cartoon girls, worth reading if anything for the most succinct primer on Lacan I've ever read
Bleeding Skull! A 1990's Trash Horror Odyssey
Long awaited sequel to one of my favourite film studies books ever; it was worth the wait!
Daido Moriyama Remix
As close as possible to being a satisfactory precis of his career
Nauka i Praca
Aleksandra Waliszewska's gorgeous, creepy and somnambulistic monochrome paintings are painfully unappreciated
Japanese Video Game Obscurities
Delightfully enthusiastic dip on to a strange world
A Guide To Japanese Role-playing Games
Apocalyptically large and terrifyingly close to being comprehensive bible that nerds across the world have pined forever
The CRPG Book
Wonderfully entertaining and at least twice as good as actually playing any of the games in this book
Chizu
The ur avant guarde Japanese photo book, if anything too good for my grubby mitts to touch
Basic Fantasy and varied supplements
Ultra cheap ultra great copywrite skirting version of DND Basic edition
Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume 1
Amano-tastic
TV
Xavier Renegade Angel
Comedy as simulacrum, like having your will to live slip out of your eyes in the most wonderful way
Great Teacher Onizuka
He is not a great teacher
Re;Zero
I've no idea if this is good or not, but I was very sleep deprived and emotional
Superstore
This was awful but again, sleep deprivation made it my favourite show in the world for a few weeks
Kaiji
What if nothing good happened ever?