Three Hundred and Sixty-Five XOXOXOs
As the year draws to a close, I'd like to highlight my favorite media that I got to experience for the first time in 2023.
For some reason, I always thought of these kinds of lists as lazy and, because of that, refrained from publishing them myself. But with its latest installment, I was once again reminded that Super Eyepatch Wolf's My Favorite Things series is, indeed, one of my favorite series on YouTube. I always discover something new with every video, and then I thought, hey, why not be on the other end for a change?
So, here's an unsorted list of movies, albums and other things that I had the pleasure to experience this year for the first time (that weren't necessarily released in that year), with a slight focus on two things:
- Variety. I hope that there is something in this list for everyone.
- Discovery. I'd mainly like to focus on relatively unpopular releases that, in my opinion, deserve more attention.
I suppose it would be fitting to start with the things I've already covered on this blog before. I'll keep it brief: Parannoul's After the Night is perhaps the best live performance ever recorded, it ends with a monolithic 46 minute long final track (which is more akin to a journey in and of itself), and – get this – it's free! You can download it on Bandcamp without spending a dime (though you really should).
On the other hand, there is Suzume, the latest film from Makoto Shinkai, which strikes a perfect balance between (or perhaps combination of) everything that makes anime unique, some pretty hefty themes and one of my favorite tropes ever (click here to spoil yourself). It also reignited my love for Shinkai's works in general, but that's another story.
The Lamb as Effigy (or Three Hundred and Fifty XOXOXOs for a Spark Union With My Darling Divine) by the, unfortunately, already disbanded Sprain is a monster of an album – that much is clear from its title alone. It is extremely varied, mercilessly brutal, unbelievably beautiful – and definitely not for everyone. If you know Swans (the band, not the animal), the best analogy I can give you is that The Lamb as Effigy is like going through their entire discography in one album.
The first track, Man Proposes, God Disposes reminds me of the works of Slint. Reiterations turns the brutality up to eleven: More screaming, more noise.
This song's to ear as candiru's to cock.
Damn right. Privilege of Being somehow manages to combine ear-piercing harsh noise with an immensely beautiful and rewarding undertone and climax. Margin for Error is, perhaps, the best track on the album, its final chord (which lasts for minutes) pure ecstasy. The Commercial Nude and The Reclining Nude, I will admit, I still can't tell apart, but the album gets back on track with We Think So Ill of You, which traces the footsteps of Reiterations, being just as brutal and arguably even more paralyzing. Finally, God, or Whatever You Call It can only adequately be described as the vocalist having a breakdown in the recording studio.
The Lamb as Effigy is, again, a monster, and definitely not something you can just put on in the background. But it is my second favorite album of the year, and if what I described sounds like your cup of tea, it might end up being yours too.
Phew. After an experience like this, you might need to calm down a bit. Ashizuri Suizokukan, a manga anthology by anonymous author panpanya is perfect for just that. It falls into the genre of Iyashikei, which The Guardian described as "soothing [manga] where nothing happens", but really, the essence of the genre is that, most of the time, you just get to spend a bit of time with some characters – something which can be surprisingly entertaining. Think My Neighbour Totoro or Laid-Back Camp.
In any case, panpanya somewhat pushes the genre's boundaries by combining the latter's usual aspects with the former's surreal style and storytelling, reducing the characters in this anthology to, at times, almost a blob, always while keeping the backgrounds highly detailed. And so, we set off, following the nameless protagonist to an aquarium, a museum, and a second Kyoto Tower, among other locations. Interspersed between the stories are various surprisingly captivating essays, mostly about different species of fish, always including beautiful full-color photographs.
If you end up reading (and liking) Ashizuri Suizokukan, I highly recommend panpanya's other work as well. Currently, only An Invitation from a Crab and Guyabano Holiday have been translated into English – both anthologies similar in vein to Ashizuri Suizokukan – but I'm hopeful that the others will follow at some point. Also, Guyabano Holiday includes a short story called Waiting at the Usual Spot which consists of merely two pages of three panels each, but it made me smile like an idiot after doing a double-take. What I just said will make sense when you read it, and it's amazing.
He told me the other day... There is an elephant in Manzhouli. It sits there all day long. Perhaps some people keep stabbing it with forks, or maybe it just enjoys sitting there. I don't know. People gather there, watching it sitting still. They feed the elephant food, but it takes no notice.
Thus begins the bleakest film I have seen this year, maybe ever. Clocking in at just under four hours, Hu Bo's An Elephant Sitting Still mainly revolves around four characters, their stories painted from all angles against the backdrop of the aforementioned elephant. It is not a tearjerker, but it is really depressing, and the reason I'm putting it in the list now is so that I don't end it on such a bummer note. It struck a chord with me, but even so (or perhaps exactly because of this) it is extremely difficult for me to talk about it, so I would like to instead present you with two excerpts from reviews on Letterboxd. First, David Ehrlich of IndieWire addresses the fact without which it is impossible to talk about this film:
Hard to sit through and impossible to forget, this torpid four-hour anti-drama is suffused with the sort of hopelessness that cinema only sees every once in a long while (Werner Herzog’s “Stroszek” and Béla Tarr’s “The Turin Horse” come to mind), and the man who made it — a former student of Tarr’s — killed himself before the world premiere of his monolithic first (and last) feature. His name was Hu Bo, and he was 29 years old.
Yi Jian writes:
The loneliest piece of filmmaking I ever dared to sit through, it left me feeling like I was isolated from the rest of the world for four hours and everyone had moved on without me.
Every thing stays the same, that's why it is more comforting to stay put and dream, continue hearing the elephant's trumpet echo from the other side of the mountains, never shattering this fragile illusion -- that things are maybe, slightly, better over there, where the elephant sits.
That was a lot, I know, but I believe it's important to not just ignore media with themes and stories like this. Still, if you need something to cheer up now (and I don't blame you if you do), here's a quick one: Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes by Junta Yamaguchi. Here's the premise:
A cafe owner discovers that the TV in his cafe suddenly shows images from the future, but only two minutes into the future.
It's only 71 minutes long, was made with a miniscule budget, takes place in real time and appears to be filmed in one shot (not really, unfortunately, but that fact hardly distracts from the viewing experience). It's hilarious, kind of tense for a bit, and overall just feels like a love letter to filmmaking. On Letterboxd, LeSchroeck writes:
Tenet minus about $199,500,000, minus western actors, minus IMAX cameras (or Arri cameras, for that matter), plus more fun, plus lots of passion for cinema.
And I couldn't have said it any better.
the flooding mentioned in the game is actually my tears
At some point in your life, there may come an experience that fundamentally alters who you are and changes you as a person, hopefully for the better. For me, that experience came in 2021, and it was a game, but it was not Rakuen. However, ever since then, I have yearned to replicate this experience, to play that game for the first time again, completely blind and not knowing what to expect. This chance would come in 2023, and this time, it was.
Rakuen is the first game by Laura Shigihara, who you might know for the, and this is true, Plants vs. Zombies soundtrack – but in some ways, these two games could not be further apart from each other. Once more, I am left speechless, as if missing the vocabulary required to articulate my love and appreciation for this game – but I think that experiencing it as blind as possible is the best course of action anyway, so for now I will just say that I haven't cried this much since that fateful day in 2021.
All in all, 2023 has been a slow year for me. With the exception of the last month or so, where I began the process of moving to a bigger city, it's been... well, ordinary, but it's also been a nice change of pace from the chaos of the last couple years. And, hey, at least I had some good films, albums, games and manga accompanying me along the way.
If you have any recommendations for me based on my picks above (or the other way around), please do let me know! For now, let's play some open chords and rejoice, for the Earth has circled the Sun yet another year.