Galat's Best Stuff of 2024

TOP OF THE YEAR!

This is the state-mandated blog about shit-you-liked-this-past-year post, and the first post overall, meaning I totally knew how to format the html for this purpose, and I am NOT web illiterate. I watched a respectable amount of movies and several series this year, with a few books and games fully completed. This is not a numbers game of course, its a "did i get something out of it?" one. Also practically nothing here was released in 2024 itself, sorry. Without further ado here are the galat best of the year 2024 in several categories!

Best Obsession Overall : Gundam

"Gundam" is something i chose to get into all of a sudden this august after previously watching 20 episodes of 79 I have completed Gundam 79, Zeta, half of ZZ, CCA, 0080 and Hathaway's Flash. I built 6 kits from hg to rg to mg and would more if money and postal services permitted. Char Aznable has of course ruined my life, which I expected going in. There's genuinely something special about the way Tomino anime works and his thought process, and for all it's flaws the human moments of 79 and the absolutely astounding endings of both Zeta and 79 are one of a kind moments everyone should see...

I also just like big robots, and since gundam i have dabbled in watching some other robo stuff, slowly slouching through Ideon and Turn A. A new alt-UC Gundam is coming out in 2025, so I'll tune in then too probably...

The gang is all here..

Runner Up: Balatro and Slay the Spire

An astounding period of several summer weeks led me to accrue 50+ hours in Slay the Spire in a very short time period supplemented with of course the breakout indie hit Balatro. My obsession during this time was doubly funny because like most game genres im not good at these despite being 80% rng and simple mental rock-paper-scissors. I replayed Hades 1 and some of the early-access of two as well, but my failure to play action games proper jumps out first before my idiocy. So to sum it up: I lose to dogs at chess. i really really do.

Best Game: Fallout 1

God. Fallout 1. I played 90% of 2 and 90% of FNV, but I played 1 to the end. It successfully maintains a grim, occasionally funny but really just.. bleak world. I had read Canticle for Leibowitz some months after playing this, but there is of course an overlap between their apocalyptic worlds. Fallout 1 is quick as far as RPG games if you want it to be, and a little slower if you want to savour the strangeness and its fantastic music you've already heard playing FNV. The cathedral theme for instance is a classic. It lacks alot of the stuff that 2 onwards has including much of the kitschy americana vibes and referential humor, and being the first it's not bogged down by the weight of the later series making it unique in the series still.

(Contrary to popular belief 1 is a superior game to 2. But 2 has so much more content! Well exactly. 1 balanced its short time and comparatively small map near perfect to me. F2 has great areas, but for every good area like Broken Hills there's a write off joke town like Redding to take wind out your sails. Fallout 2 just began to strain at its own form, with the improvements on companions not satisfying all the other issues of a big game with a frustratingly constricted engine, and I hit the road when fucking Lo Pan showed up.)

Runner Up: Heaven will be Mine

Hot off the Gundam train for me, this game is a fantastic and short sci-fi vn that is a kind nod to all things Newtype with its own rules and takes on it all. Culture having its own material properties is cool... Plus lesbian mecha pilots (and Girl char aznable, Luna-Terra herself!)

Best "Book": Sacred and Terrible Air (PJOL)

Inauspicious studio ZA/UM (the meaning of that word only found in this book) had at one point in the 2010's conceptualized a kind of prelude to their universe that starts with it ending: a baller move, but unfortunately only in Estonian. Thankfully a few people actually speak it and tried their best to translate it (along with some MTL). If Disco Elysium, which I replayed this year too, ends surprisingly hopeful about the state of its world then PJOL here smacks it upside the head. A book about remembering, forgetting, the grotesqueness of nostalgia, and ultimately the destruction of the world at the hand of nihilism. If you liked at all the commie route of DE or the pale physics of it or want to see Kurvitz's SF take on hegelian history: read this! I went so far as to make my own cover and print out a copy of one of the translations (Group Ibex). That isn't necessary but if you want my file for it id freely give. Anyhow, the titular chapter of this book is genuinely maddening to me. Gotta love it, even if it's not the easiest or cleanest translation.

Runner Up: Atrocity Exhibition - J.G Ballard

Not even a book cohesively, a melange of headlines and superimposed shapes with labels: common theme words, character names, celebrities and politicians. Ballard's own life is all used to congeal the key words and phrases pf a book about and not about the death of his wife, his alien childhood and the great American highway. A prototype fiction for the hyper communication of Baudrillard, Mark Fisher's flatlines and the unimaginability of American media-politics and motor death drives of the 21st century.

Best Short Story: You May Dream - Izumi Suzuki

Suzuki ... a woman profoundly troubled: this story told it the best, a sad frenetic self-hate hate-friend relationship between two women... the whole collection reminded me of the Sheena Ringo and Utada song [Two Hour Vacation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPdlfIhzPEo) off of Fantome, a slightly melancholic and SF feeling across the board. Suzuki's SF is pretty unique and stylish in a subtle way that is hard for translation I'd think, like the woman herself, a secret contender in live-fast-die-beautiful of troubled intelligent women like Ms. Marilyn Monroe. Definetly pick up one of the story collections if your local library or store has them. Speaking of Monroe...

Runner Up: The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race

From the aforementioned Atrocity Exhibition. Ouhhhh JFK... what a Guy. What else am I allowed to say about him? I love Ballard's framing of the car as extensions and element of their users in such a visceral way. This one made me mildly interested in JFK conspiratories but I cant say i let myself get too into it. I said it already but Winner, Baudrillard, Fischer and Ballard have convinced me about the terror power of the American motor more than anything else this year.

Best Movie: Peep "TV" Show

Not a movie of pristine quality any which way, here we continue our little obsession with Definitional Historical moments as containers for human emotion: we have gone from the atom bomb to JFK and reached the last gasp at the semblance of modernity: 9/11. The Japanese reaction, counterpart to Ballard's Hiroshima and the end of sense there, is explored here in the equally dislocative Peep TV Show. A focal point in the film is the depression of Goth-lolita Moe, in her Gobelins dress, her increasing entrenchment into the simulated realities of her voyeur peers. Social outcasts, hikkis, bored and paranoid salarymen are examined: elements characterizing a still familiar landscape of internet users. Now more than ever since the age of 9/11 one sees the sense that "Everything has gone crazy" as the film says, totalized techno somnambulism. So, we can (if it so pleases) peep at the bodies on the screen... just a bit.

Runner Up: Madchen in Uniform (et al)
If I hadn't watched Madchen in Uniform on the second last day of the year I'd have made it no1 maybe. But instead im thinking of the overarching theme of love and understanding triumphing over all fash shit which is never not peak: Madchen, But Im a Cheerleader, 1987, the Handmaiden and Dead Poets Society to some extent all did this well (to diff levels..) For BiaC, the camp and crazy colour schemes of this film are top notch and Natasha Lyonne's presence sells me on it in particular: the film is maligned by some but those who get it get it. Madchen though is on a different level and its hard to comprehend how it was made in 1931, but its influence is definitely proven at least in the Japanese landscape funnily enough. Long live our beloved Miss Von Bernburg!

Best Manga-Oniisama E

Oniisama-e builds on Rose of Versailles' elements (which i had also read later in the year) and swirls in some class-S-isms: girls school and sorority setting, strong female friendships, first and sometimes last loves. I read the manga but the anime of course deserves a mention (haven't finished it) if you want Dezaki's slightly different, longer take. From what i've heard though the manga's ending is a little more bearable, and I thought it a little more subversive of the class S stereotypic conclussions for the lead. Filled with fantastic paneling, bizarre relationships and some great 70s looks!

Special Mention: They Were Eleven!
Moto deserves a mention, as i read a bit of both her SF and historical dramas this year. While Heart of Thomas is a kitschy yet pensive riff off of Demian, They Were Eleven! is a kind of bottle episode in 4 chapters. Its longer sequel leans into the planet-scale Guin-like worldbuilding and gender dynamics and is substantially longer but if you are after a good SF tale, it's here! The OVA also has a strikingly competent VA cast in both JP and ENG dub but I've yet to watch.

Best New-To-Me Thing: Transformers (MTME particularly)

I mentioned the robot thing already right. Those in the know know 2025 will be big about robots. With that in mind and because everyone who draws also seems to be into transformers I started watching some of the series. But further than that I bothered to read comics, which is not something I read much of outside of when I read the late buffy seasons as a kid. The MTME series, while not the first thing i read, has probably some of the best issues ive read and though it jumps the gun a few times, the ensemble cast is great. Each different series also changes things often fairly substantially, so characters I didn't much care about became more or less interesting (I still enjoy the decepticons more..) Comics are frankly a different ballpark imo to manga and actually 100x more deranged than any tv show or movie could be for these properties in their own special way. And while arguably me liking Gundam and adjacent more super-robo shows should have prepared me for this one, its also a different ballpark because the non-japanese TF media is really more similar to superhero shit which I know 0% about. Still, I am glad to have another robot based interest that lets you collect plastic models: my other new hobby though TF ones pale compared to gunpla in quality-price ratios.

Best Cassette Finds: Free Ones.

If you shop around cassette places in a relatively limited area, which can either be a city or a country or the whole of discogs depending on your definition of limited, you notice patterns. Some things were just not big on cassette even if they have a release somewhere and are very expensive and likely only found online. And some things are impossibly common, to the point you ask 'were people really listening to this that much?'. Lots of soundtrack tapes and one hit wonders. This is why i own a copy of Mili Vanili Girl You Know Its True .
Anyway, the best find is a free one, which came one day unexpectedly, when someone ditched what mustve been b stock stuff for free to their curb and this included a substantial array of cassettes among the vinyls and cds. Out of the pick I got, the Young Soul Rebels soundtrack and the Pointer Sisters' Contact are standouts. Elsewise, my most listened to tape is definitely Depeche Mode 101 cassette #2 (because #1 from the set has disappeared), which kind of turned me around on listening to live albums. Just Can't Get Enough is really built for an audience what can I say?

Best Abstract-ish Thing I Apppreciate: Marginalia

I saw Look Back in theatres and stayed for the directors interview portion and spent good time looking at concept/pitch materials for various productions and artists and writers... I realized that the behind-the-scenes is often just as interesting as the end product. Especially as someone who is pretty incompetent artistically at jotting my own thoughts and plans. The connective tissue that i share with in common other creatives is relegated to heavy handed use of margin lines and arrows pointing to better drawings of mine with explanatory text. Marginalia is the total scrap of the scrap, notes on the unpolished notes, but it does its heavy lifting in the corners of both sketch pages and exam books for me. It is also the methodology of how I translate line by line things which is bad form, but it works.

Next Year??

WHAT is to be done next year ... the great unknown. Here's a shortlist:

-Write more here when I can
-Watch many many movies
-Read more books outside of school
-Draw lots and lots of art

This year is pretty up in the air as far as years are considered which is novel in the sense that "novel" comes from "novus" both meaning new and strange. 2025 will probably be both for most people, including me, but I hope it will be a good one for everyone! I will try to update if not the journal here then galleries semi regularly this year, so stay tuned :D