2024 Media Wrap-Up

It is time for my 5th annual “what did I read/watch/play this year” blog post! You can find all the previous years’ lists here.

Before we start, a few notes on how I organize the lists:

1. I’ve ordered lists alphabetically, not in order of when I finished or what I liked most.
2. For tv shows, anime, comics, and manga, I marked down what chapters, seasons, issues, etc. I finished if I didn’t finish the entire thing. Since some are ongoing or very long, I figured it’s a distinction worth making!
3. If it wasn’t the first time I’ve read, watched, or played something, I’ve noted it.
4. If I explicitly decided to not finish something, I’ve marked it down in the completed lists but with a note of when I abandoned it.
5. Just because I finished something, it doesn’t necessarily mean I recommend it!

Books

I didn’t really read this year, huh? Wind and Truth was great (although I have some quibbles with some of the prose), and I’m excited to read more Cosmere books from Sanderson. Goal for next year - read more books!

• Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive - #5)

This Year: 1

Last Year: 8

Movies

Zach did not do his “one movie per day” thing again this year (understandable - it was ambitious), so I also was not pulled into watching as many movies this year. Of the new movies I watched this year, I especially loved The Boy and the Heron. I’m a huge sucker for Ghibli movies, and I thought the movie’s metaphors were a lot of fun to unpack and decipher, even if the reaction most of my friends I dragged to the theater with me was “wtf did you make us watch, Tyler”. Also, absolutely beautiful animation as always!

• Blazing Saddles (rewatch)
• Casino Royale (rewatch)
• Deadpool & Wolverine
• From Up on Poppy Hill (rewatch)
• I Saw the TV Glow
• It’s a Wonderful Life (rewatch)
• Mars Express
• Migration
• Nate Bargatze’s Nashville Christmas
• Nate Bargatze: The Tennessee Kid (rewatch)
• Ocean’s Eleven (rewatch)
• Ocean’s Thirteen
• Ocean’s Twelve
• SPYxFAMILY CODE: White
• The Boy and the Heron
• The Incredibles (rewatch)
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (rewatch)
• The Wailing
• Tucker and Dale vs Evil (rewatch)
• Willy’s Wonderland (rewatch)
• Your Friend, Nate Bargatze

This Year: 21 (11 new)

Last Year: 85 (68 new)

TV Shows

This year was the Year of Columbo for me. I made my way through all the original run, and got partway through the 90s revival. The original run is much better in my opinion, which to my understanding is not a unique opinion. It was very much a comfort show for me; I’d just have it on in the background while I was working on projects.

• Columbo (season 1-8)
• Game Changer (season 1-2)
• Dimension 20: Fantasy High (season 1)
• One Piece (Netflix) (season 1)

This Year: 4 (4 new)

Last Year: 5 (4 new)

Video Games

I played a ton of video games this year but… didn’t finish hardly any? Or forgot to mark them as finished? I know I finished FF14: Dawntrail this year so… I think I was just terrible at marking them down. Maybe tracking which games I play would be more interesting, but that might be a little much to track unless there’s an easy way to automate it. If you want a snapshot of what I played on Steam this year, here’s my 2024 rewind, although it doesn’t represent what I played on PS5 or Switch. (I did pick up a Steam Deck at the beginning of the year though, so I played even more Steam games than normal.)

• Yakuza Kiwami

This Year: 1

Last Year: 8

Anime

Not much anime this year either! I guess I mostly stuck to reading manga and playing video games. My group of friends that I watched anime with regularly pivoted to playing DnD most weeks, but I did manage to get them to watch Anohana with me on one of our off weeks - finally got them to watch a sad anime with me! And Solo Leveling was just kinda junk food fun that I watched on my own and then re-watched with my brother over Christmas break.

• Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day (rewatch)
• Solo Leveling (season 1)

• Solo Leveling (season 1) (rewatch)

This Year: 3 (1 new, 0 abandoned)

Last Year: 5 (5 new, 0 abandoned)

Comics/Manga

I’ve been continuing to really dive into manga this year. I’ve been trying to check out some older, formative pieces for the genre (namely Akira and Trigun, the latter of which I haven’t finished yet). Blue Box, Spy x Family, One Piece, and Chainsaw Man have all continued to be incredible. But some of the manga I started this year have become my favorites!

• Akane-banashi is such a sweet and genuine story about mastering the Japanese art of rakugo (solo comedic storytelling), and depicts it in such a cool way.
• I somehow jumped on Dandadan right before it started taking the anime world (rightfully) by storm. A couple early sequences which almost put me off of it, but once I got past those, it’s quirkiness and depiction of adolescent awkwardness and sincerity won me over. I’m always pleasantly surprised by what wild story direction the author takes it in, and the central romance is well written and very sweet.
• Ichi the Witch making the character such a feral murder-child obsessed with hunting was something I was very unprepared for, and all the characters facial expressions are golden.
• Kagurabachi is just amazing. Demon Slayer walked so Kagurabachi could run. I love that the protagonist is always level-headed and competent, and the stakes are always high enough that it sells how tense every fight is. Great manga, everyone should read it!

• Akane-banashi (chap 1-140)
• Akira (vol 1-6) (finished)
• Astra Lost in Space (chap 1-3)
• Beat & Motion (chap 23-45)
• Blue Box (chap 132-178)
• Blue Period (vol 1-13)
• Chainsaw Man (chap 152-187)
• Dandadan (chap 1-178)
• Gokurakugai (chap 18-23)
• Haikyu!! (chap 1-402.2) (finished)
• Hima-Ten! (chap 1-23)
• Hunter x Hunter (chap 401-410)
• I Have a Crush at Work (chap 1-104)
• Ichi the Witch (chap 1-16)
• It’s a Little Late, but I’ve Fallen in Love with My Childhood Friend (chap 1-27)
• Kagurabachi (chap 1-62)
• Kaguya-sama: Love is War (chap 272-281) (finished)
• Marriage Toxin (chap 1-110)
• Moriarty the Patriot (chap 52-68)
• My Hero Academia (chap 411-430) (finished)
• One Piece (chap 1103-1134)
• Oshi no Ko (chap 135-166) (finished)
• Sakamoto Days (chap 1-11) (reread)
• Show-ha Shoten! (chap 25-35)
• Solo Leveling (chap 1-151?)
• Spy x Family (chap 93-108)
• Summertime Rendering (chap 1-139) (finished)
• The Drops of God (vol 1-27)
• unOrdinary (chap 1-346)
• World Trigger (chap 239-248)

This Year: 30

Last Year: 29

Board Games

I am yet again unsurprised that Flesh and blood is as high as it is - I play multiple times basically every week. Arkham Horror has crept up to beat out Aeon’s End in playcount, but I think I played both more than I did last year. Blood on the Clocktower has been a great go-to party game - I ran it for 12 people on New Year’s Eve and loved watching everyone go from just talking and catching up while the game was going on to being invested in finding out who the Demon was.

Perhaps this is recency bias, but Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition and Dune: Imperium - Uprising might be some of my favorite games I tried out for the first time this year. I’ve been wanting to play TI for years, and my friends Matt and Monte came up for NYE and brought it up to play with Adam and I. It lived up to its reputation of being distressingly long, but I was invested and having fun the entire time, which is more than I can say for some games that are a quarter of the length! And Dune: Imperium has been sitting on my shelf for months waiting to get to the table, and after one round I was in love. Deckbuilding and worker placement? Be still my heart. (I also might be biased because I won both games.)

(Or maybe I just like games with “Imperium” in the title)

Total Plays: 615

Friends Played With: 94

Unique Games: 59

Unique Locations: 33

New Games Played: 25

Estimated Time Played: 428 hours

Days Played On: 169

Note: Friends Played With includes myself in each of them :P

Games tracked with the BG Stats app and summary compiled with a Python script I wrote

Thank you very much for reading! If you would like to discuss any of the media I finished this year with me, feel free to shoot me a message on Bluesky or Mastodon, I’d love to chat!