I’m hoping to keep this one a little less formal than my Best Games of 2024. Basically, I wanted to pen some of the experiences that I enjoyed throughout 2024 that weren’t video games. I won’t claim to engage with a truly diverse range of experiences, but, ever since 2023, I’ve made an effort to engage with things beyond the realm of video games.
Anyway, here’s some other cool things I enjoyed throughout 2024.
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Music
Music is always one of those things that I never feel comfortable talking about. Taste in music is highly subjective, and opinions on music are kind of like assholes – everyone has one. That doesn’t exactly make it the most fun topic to wade into. Doubly so when you consider yourself to have no subject matter expertise.
Regardless, there were 2 albums last year that really stuck out to me:
Imaginal Disk by Magdelena Bay
The first of those aforementioned albums was Imaginal Disk. It’s the second studio album by Magdelena Bay, and it’s a banger. There was a solid 3 weeks last year where it was the only thing I listened to while playing Wildfrost, doing housework, or writing.
I already kind of made mention of it, but I don’t actually have the music vocabulary to describe what specifically I like about Imaginal Disk. I know part of my enjoyment comes from how it blends a Pop sound with some Prog-Rock elements. That gives the whole album a vibe that you don’t really get from top 40 music. Plus there’s a lot of emphasis on string instruments, which I always appreciate.
As far as the stand-out tracks go:
To no one’s surprise, all of the singles, sans Tunnel Vision, are there. I think they’re all fantastic, though That’s My Floor is easily my favourite. Killing Time, and Cry for Me are also really fun tracks. Though, in fairness, I think about half the album only really works in the context of the whole album, which doesn’t make those songs great for playlists, or standalone listening.
The only other thing I wanted to mention about Imaginal Disk is the music videos. Image, Death & Romance, and That’s My Floor all had videos released alongside the singles. All 3 videos are super duper weird. That’s par for the course with Magdelena Bay, but I appreciated how all 3 felt like they were part of a wider narrative for the whole album.
I don’t know if there are any plans to release a short film with videos for the whole album, but I’d be up for watching something like that.
SHINBANGUMI by Ginger Root
The other big album for me this year was SHINBANGUMI by Ginger Root.
This, like Imaginal Disk, is ostensibly a Pop album, but one with a bit more of an older sound. Ginger Root has made several albums now with a City Pop vibe, which is how I originally stumbled upon the project. I think I was listening to the albums Mignonne, or Big Wave and then one of Ginger Root’s more popular singles, Loretta, was served up to me. Either way, I’ve been listening to Ginger Root for a while now, and was very excited about the release of a new album.
As far as favourite tracks go:
- There Was A Time
- All Night
- No Problems
- Giddy Up
Now one thing that SHINBANGUMI has in common with Imaginal Disk is that it too released music videos that tell a story across the album. However, Ginger Root actually produced videos for the entire album which you can watch on Youtube.
Honestly, the thing that makes SHINBANGUMI so special to me is those music videos. That adds a whole extra layer to the experience of the album. Waiting for each new video, and then watching it shortly after it was released felt like an event. And the first 5 or 6 tracks debuted alongside their videos. It was super cool.
If you’re going to give SHINBANGUMI a listen, I highly recommend doing so alongside the music videos. That does mean you’ll be locking in for about a 40 minute short film while listening to the album, but I think it’s worth experience SHINBANGUMI that way. It was a very different way to listen to an album, but I’m glad I was able to have that experience as it was a highlight of 2024 for me.
Film
There is exactly 1 film that I watched last year that I want to talk about: 2020’s Monster Hunter.
Monster Hunter by Paul W. S. Anderson
I borrowed the DVD for this from my Dad’s massive movie collection. I had high hopes that this would be a “so bad, it’s good” kind of situation. And I’m happy to report that it is.
Monster Hunter is one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen. It’s full of big, dumb action scenes, and the overarching plot is that of an Isekai. Despite this, every single actor takes the film super seriously, and that only adds to the unintentional humour that is strewn throughout the entire film. It’s genuinely laugh-out-loud funny at times, and the action scenes are all good fun.
Everyone needs to see this movie. It’s exactly the kind of entertaining popcorn muncher that I used to regularly see at cinemas before Disney sucked up all the oxygen with the Marvel films. Personally, I’d like to see a return to those days instead of continually watching a multi-billion dollar corporation flog corpses while chasing pre-pandemic revenue highs.
Books
Hilariously, the only thing I continued regularly doing after my 2023 Goal Posts challenge was reading books. Yup – the thing I had the hardest time bringing myself to actually start, is the only thing that actually stuck. Apparently, I enjoy reading. That’s one more thing that I can thank the Canadian education system for tricking me into thinking I hated. At least I was able to rediscover the joy of reading as an adult.
That said, I read about 2 dozen different books last year (not counting the 50+ volumes of manga), so I’ll just be covering the highlights here.
Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson
If I was going to name my author of 2024 it’d have to be Brandon Sanderson. I assume he requires no introduction as he’s widely regarded as one of the best Fantasy writers right now. We have a lot of adoration for older Fantasy writers who, in a lot of ways, pioneered the genre, and Sanderson is probably the closest modern day equivalent.
Of Sanderson’s vast catalogue, there were 4 books that I read last year: the Kickstarter quartet. That’s a series of 4 books that were written as side stories that take place within the same universe as Sanderson’s other books. Sanderson had to go through Kickstarter to prove that there was interest beyond his main series, which is why these 4 books have an association with the crowdfunding platform.
To address the obvious question of why I didn’t start with Sanderson’s more popular main-line books: I didn’t want to commit to a trilogy (or more). That’s just a little too daunting for me, so it was much easier to read these standalone books. That probably sounds silly because I ended up reading 4 different books anyway, but that wasn’t my intention when I started. Heck, we didn’t even own all 4 when I started reading The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook to Surviving Medieval England. I just thought the title was funny, and I needed something new to read.
Of the 4 books, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter was my favourite, which is why I decided to use it as the anchor for this section of the article. It’s ostensibly a romance story which is why it’s my favourite of the 4. Sanderson isn’t exactly known for writing romance, but his take on the genre ended up feeling earnest, and refreshing. Romance books are very trope-y, and while I enjoy those tropes, it can be fun to read a story that doesn’t feel like it is beholden to them which is where I’d slot Yumi.
I’d honestly recommend all 4 of the books (Tress of the Emerald Sea, Frugal Wizard, Yumi, and The Sunlit Man), but if you’re only going to read 1 then read Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. It takes about 50 pages to really get going, but I found it nearly impossible to put down once it did.
My Dress-Up Darling by Shinichi Fukuda
I’m honestly still not entirely certain what inspired me to give My Dress-Up Darling a shot. I think I saw it on the shelf at Indigo, recognized it because a bunch of terminally online people lost their collective shit about it a few years ago, and decided that was reason enough to see what all the fuss was about.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think My Dress-Up Darling is really good. There’s a really nice slow burn romance between the 2 leads, which sees them moulding one another over time to improve their rougher edges. The male lead gets a bit more of the attention in this regard, but he’s also the most dense object in the known universe, so he has more room for character growth.
The other really cool thing about the manga is how it illuminates some of the mystery away from the world of cosplay. That’s not something that I’ve ever been particularly interested in, but it’s neat to learn about how certain techniques are used to achieve a desired look when cosplaying. These kinds of anecdotes are strewn throughout Dress-Up as Gojo, the male lead, learns about them to assist Marin, the female lead, with her cosplaying endeavours.
Square Enix has also done a fantastic job localizing Dress-Up into English. I think the single best example of this is how Marin is written as a valley girl in English. She speaks very informally in Japanese. The best way to capture this in English was to overuse the word “like” as a preposition, while also throwing in a healthy dose of slang words. This localization choice ends up conveying so much about Marin that would have been completely lost in a literal translation, and I love that about it.
However, Square also avoids over-translating in spots where a translation serves little, or no purpose. For example, I don’t really believe there’s any reason to remove Japanese honorifics when translating into English. Almost anyone that reads manga will already be vaguely familiar with honorifics, and they help to succinctly convey the relationship between characters. Besides, the publisher can always include a glossary at the back of the book to fill in any cultural gaps that exist. That’s exactly what Square does with Dress-Up, and I’ve found that to be very effective for filling in the gaps, especially when there isn’t a good way to convey the meaning of something properly in English.
Having said all of that, I will admit that Dress-Up would be better if there weren’t so many gratuitous pantie shots. I can say that with confidence because the later volumes of the manga substantially cut back on the pointless fan-service, and focus more on the characters. It’s in those same volumes where Dress-Up really started to become something special, and captured my heart.
I can’t wait to read the remainder of the story once it’s written, and translated into English. I think Fukuda is close to wrapping it up, which means I’ve got another 18 months, or so to go. Either way, I’m very excited.
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
The next thing I wanted to talk about is The Tainted Cup. This is one that Mir picked out for me when we were buying new books. I’d recently given Brandon Sanderson’s work a shot, and didn’t completely bounce off it, which is what usually happens to me when I try to read fantasy. As such, Mir thought The Tainted Cup might also work because it’s not just a Fantasy novel: it’s also a Mystery novel. As per usual, my wife’s intuition was correct.
I think the easiest way to describe The Tainted Cup is to call it a modern day Sherlock Holmes. That comparison might feel a little reductive, but the dynamic between the main characters Ana and Din mirrors that of Holmes and Watson. However, Bennett’s writing it’s far easier to digest than Conan Doyle’s classic series of books given The Tainted Cup was written in this century.
I really enjoyed how the story managed to balance both its world-building, and the breadcrumb trail of clues for the overarching mystery. That gave The Tainted Cup a much greater sense of place than the majority of the mystery novels that I’ve read. I suppose that’s my fault though because that aforementioned majority all take place in the real world, so authors rarely feel the need to interrupt the case with world-building. Regardless, I found those brief interludes added a lot of texture to The Tainted Cup.
Also, The Tainted Cup is one of the prettiest books in my collection. I know the old adage is to not judge a book by its cover, but that’s one really nice looking cover.
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
I’ll fully admit that I was originally too intimidated to start reading The Da Vinci Code because of its size. I’m glad I eventually got over that because it was one of the most compulsively readable books that I completed in 2024. Every single chapter leaves the reader with unanswered questions, and that compelled me to keep reading into the wee hours of the morning.
The book also has a lot to say about organized religion. I think it pussyfoots around taking a hard stance on anything, but that could also just be Brown having some tact and using nuance when discussing a complex subject. Either way, as someone who has strong opinions about organized religion, it was really interesting to go through The Da Vinci Code. Doubly for the few times that I went down an internet rabbit hole the following day when I began looking into whatever I’d read the previous night.
Of the different books I read this year, I feel like The Da Vinci Code is the least in need of a recommendation from me. It’s a classic for a reason. Go borrow a copy from your local library. They’ll appreciate the support, and you’ll (probably) enjoy it.
Okay – that does it for the non-video game experiences that I wanted to share from 2024. I didn’t watch any new anime, nor any new shows last year which is why I skipped including them as a subsection. I’m not exactly known for talking about anime though, so I doubt that’ll be much of a disappointment for anyone.
Either way, thank you for reading. I hope there was something here that piqued your interest, and gave you an avenue for a new experience. And I also hope you enjoy said experience.
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Frostilyte Writes 