Some of my favorite things (2025)

Greetings, friends, from your favorite NEET. Oh what a year it has been, “full of high highs and low lows” as I wrote to some friends the other day. While I had some professional success this year (presenting in Korea, having two articles come out, having a JSMG issue I co-edited come out, co-presenting with one of my students, and then having more than a few Exciting Things in the works), my university contract unfortunately expired and I am still without a job, academic or otherwise (and not for lack of trying either, I might add). My, ah, sabbatical has afforded me a not unsubstantial amount of free time to devote to media consumption and I thought I’d share some of my favorite things from this year. 

Books 

I think it’s finally safe to say I am enjoying reading again. Grad school kind of killed my desire to read in my leisure time, but over the last few years I’ve been trying to reclaim this love. I started and finished a full 26 books this year (not including the two that I dropped), and finished a few others I had started a while ago. I might even be able to finish another two or so before the year ends! Graywolf Press's Into English (2017) is probably my favorite poetry collection I read this year, an anthology that contains 25 poems, three translations of each poem, and then critical commentary on the translation for each poem. My favorite novel was Han Kang’s The White Book (2016, 2017), an incredibly poignant book defined by sparse, introspective, and poetic prose that meditates on death. It reminded me in some ways of Barthes’ Camera Lucida, another one of my favorite books. Han has quickly become one of my favorite authors—I also read Human Acts (which I bought at her bookstore in Seoul!) and Greek Lessons (just finished, borrowed from the library), and I am looking forward to her essay collection that is due out in 2026. 

Movies 

I have dedicated quite a bit of time to film since my schedule opened up, especially going to the theater when I can (I once went 3x within the span of a week, but that’s definitely not been the norm). Ryan Baron’s Two Sleepy People (2025) was such an unexpected treat and probably my favorite film of the year. While you probably don’t recognize the director by his given name, perhaps you recognize him by his TikTok handle, AmericanBaron (and if not by name, maybe by being that one guy who has incredible chemistry with himself). I have always enjoyed his shortform content (some of it pushing generic boundaries to 10+ minutes) and thus wanted to support the film he scrapped together as well. Well, I say scrapped together, but no, this was a proper film that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was very… me (listless sad boi light existentialism… oops). Anyway, it’ll be in theaters again January 23, so go check it out! Another film that pleasantly caught me off guard was Jules Dassin’s Never On Sunday (1960). When I was in NYC on my usual pilgrimage to the Strand, I stopped by the rare books section and heard one of the employee’s gushing about this film she and a few other employees had recently watched. I asked her about it and she happily gave me the name. It admittedly took me a while to get to it, but what a film! A funny and acutely direct take on what we (think we) know, how we know, and what it’s all worth. Finally, I also finally watched Kurosawa’s Ran (1985)… yeah, enough said. (Okay, maybe not—the one thing I’ll say is that while watching it I remarked that any of the shots could be paintings… I then found out that he did indeed paint many of them. Brilliant.) 

Games 

So, uh… I’ve not really played many games lately. I will give a shout out to Unbeatable (2025) which just came out just a few weeks ago. It’s a Shibuya punk action rhythm game where music’s illegal. I played the demo at MagFest a few years ago and it’s been my most anticipated game since then, but, uh… my computer couldn’t handle it. RIP. But I did play one game, a game that I lost count of how many people recommended to me… a game that’s been winning alllllll the awards. Yeah, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025). I can’t really say why people were recommending it to me specifically without spoiling a few big plot points. So probably look forward to a separate review/essay on it at some other point. 

For those of you who haven’t played the game: 

And for those of you who have~ 

Anime 

This has been an interesting year for anime. There have definitely been some great shows that have come out (to say nothing of movies—looking very specifically at you, Reze Arc), but in looking back, very few new things reallyyyy popped out at me. Dandadan and Apothecary Diaries both got new seasons, and I especially enjoyed the latter. But I think of the completely new anime, my vote has to go to the spring season’s Kowloon Generic Romance. Akin to Clair Obscur, I can’t say too much without spoiling the show. What I can say is the show critically examines memory and nostalgia separately and does not conflate the two. The show’s animation reflects this a bit as well, animated in a kind of 90s anime aesthetic. (Also, Wednesday Campanella did the OP, bless.) Oh, also a shout-out to ep. 5 of City the Animation, and ep. 11 of Apocalypse Hotel.

Art 

I went to quite a few galleries and museums across the year and across multiple cities. When I was at Hanyang University for the Audible Futures conference, I happened upon one of Nam June Paik’s TV Cellos and, I think, both amused and confused my bemused colleagues by just how excited I got.

Also in Seoul, I visited Eden Pottery, which was technically a store, but essentially functioned as a ceramics gallery. I was really, really blown away by both the craftsmanship and the range of ceramics they had—from affordable celadon to I-can’t-imagine-how-many-millions-of-won-this-costs porcelain moon jars.

Finally, I was kind of caught off-guard just how incredible the Cleveland Museum of Art is, especially for being a free museum. I missed Murakami’s Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow by a few weeks (though a friend sent me a card from the exhibition and I did catch his JAPONISME → Cognitive Revolution at Gagosian in NYC), but made up for it running into Patricia Ruiz-Healy at the print show they were hosting that weekend. Anyway, my favorite piece there was a porcelain piece, Forms in Succession #11 by the Japanese artist Nagae Shigekazu. Finally, shout out to my first visit to The Met and to the Huntington Gardens and Museum. 

Music 

So, I’ve started playing my horn again somewhat regularly. I performed in the URVGO’s spring concert (congrats to the group for winning the New Student Org Excellence Award!) and then started playing some duets with an old friend upon moving back to SATX. I also finished my first piece (at least in the Werktreue tradition) in over a decade (if not two) and even have a possible set scheduled for early January 2026. All that to say, I’ve started listening to horn music again. Natural hornist Anneke Scott’s Songs of Love, War, and Melancholy (2015) is really phenomenal and her performance of Gallay’s “Fantasie sure une cavatine de Belisario de Donizetti” is exquisite. Moving to the electroacoustic, I stumbled across Andris Mattson’s FLUGEL recently. The set up is incredibly exciting to me conceptually and, I mean, c’mon. It’s flugelhorn. It’s gonna be good. Back at UR, a really interesting philosophy student reached out to me out of the blue to talk about Evangelion since it was listed in my bio, even though he wasn’t in any of my classes. In that conversation, he suggested I listen to Shortparis, a Russian experimental rock band, and I’m forever grateful for the rec (here’s my fav of theirs). Finally, my most-played song of the year was Itsue’s (イツエ) “words tell a lie” (言葉は嘘をつく). I had actually saved this song ages ago, but it randomly came up on my shuffle and quickly ended up on repeat across the rest of the year. Then: s/o to Ejae/Huntrix’s “Golden” from K-Pop Demon Hunters and AiNA THE END’s “On The Way” from Dandadan S2. 

Thanks for sticking around if you made it this far. Mark Cho (yes, that Mark Cho) was joking with me that most people don’t read these things in full/carefully after I messaged him noting that two of his images still had the stock text attached to them. It’s been nice being able to see and catch-up with so many friends across the year, across the country, and across the world. What a treat it is to know so many truly amazing people. And what a tragedy it is that it costs so much to live. Here’s hoping that 2026 offers more in terms of long term (paying) professional opportunities. If not, you’ll have to deal with an even longer one of these next year.