Reviews: emptying the 2024 truck

[roadrunnertwice]

I've been a bit quiet on the internet lately; most of my "ambient sociality" quotient these days is going toward a couple of discords I'm in. I'm working on some projects, I'm hanging out with folks in person, and I'm doing a lot of running and reading and playing games, and then there's work. And then there's the constant drain on our sanity and energy from all the fucking fascists running roughshod over the place!!

Well, anyway: I still review books and games and stuff, and I've got the whole remaining balance of what I read/played in 2024 sitting in the hopper (with the exception of Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education at the end of December, which I'll review as a trilogy later). Let's dump the whole thing at once! Looks like this batch is mostly comics.

Ryoko Kui — Delicious in Dungeon vols. 1–10 (comics)

Slightly out of order from the library, like the way we used to do it:

Apr. 16 (1, 3),
May 15 (5),
May 24 (2),
June 9 (4),
June 15 (6, 9, 10),
June 25 (7, 8)

I became aware of this comic some while back, and I initially wrote it off because I was like "I have experienced manga about Meat before, and y'all have fun without me." Big mistake!! Luckily, with the start of the current anime series, a bunch of my friends went very hard on this, and it convinced me to give it a proper look.

This series is something truly special. There was a tumblr post I — wait, yeah, found it:

"This is the highest compliment I can bestow, but Dungeon Meshi reads like it was written for, if not by, Terry Pratchett."

Yeah, I basically agree with that. The sincerity and curiosity with which the series approaches every satiric, surreal, or sinister twist really elevates it beyond what I thought plausible. It’s funny, it's touching, it’s gripping... don’t miss this. (And: While it definitely transcends its comedy gimmick of "monster-based cooking show," the cooking show segments really are funny and clever. The one with the skeletons fuckin got me.)

Bonus: a delightful short story by Ryoko Kui.

Anyway, I have like, what... four or five volumes to go? I should probably just buy the whole series, I know I’ll want a re-read.

Hiromu Arakawa — Silver Spoon, vols. 13-15 (comics)

May 20, 2024

Finally went back and read the final couple of volumes. I like this manga a lot! It's humane and curious, it's really funny, and it's...

I'm trying and failing to find some pithy and elegant way to say this, but I really like the worldview and morality of it. It's one of the few works that I've seen really examine this particular flavor of ennui that practically defined my high school life, where you perceive that the game is rigged and fucked but you aren't able to stop caring and check out like a proper '90s slacker hero and thus find yourself stuck between stations, vibrating with misery. Hmm, that makes it sound like this story is no fun, but actually it's great fun, because it's a story about starting from there and then getting your first contact with elements of the good life and things with durable meaning.

Bonus Level: Neon White

June 30

The y2k aesthetic of this feels incredibly spot-on! ...even down to the writing and voice acting. 😅😅😅

This is a speedrun-focused first-person parkour-traversal game. Ignore the combat trappings, which are basically a red herring; the largely passive enemies are there to function as route waypoints and exploitable terrain features. Each level is short, and you're meant to replay them several times to explore alternate paths, find the hidden dingus, and score that ace medal.

I enjoyed it a lot! It's got some very cool brainy traversal action, the soundtrack is killer (I bought it and it's in regular rotation)... and although the characters were intensely annoying and indescribably stupid, I actually did get invested in their story, their fate, and their cosmos in the final couple of acts.

Kimberly Wang — Thunder & Lightning (comics)

July 16

A grim and badass fugue about violence and celebrity — magical girl as drone attack, magical girl as social media propaganda op. Quality bad feels.

Jean Fhilippe — Leftstar and the Strange Occurrence (comics)

July? ??

I liked this! An odd tale from a techno-magical utopia whose rules are very particular but are never explained.

Bonus Level: 1000x Resist

July 23

This is really fucking good, and it made me feel physically ill multiple times.

Gameplay-wise, it’s a linear walk-n-talk. Story-wise, it’s a nonlinear and wide-ranging science fiction story about interrogating the horror of our own present and recent past. In large part it’s about the Hong Kong protest crackdowns and the generational wreckage trailing in their wake, and also about the COVID pandemic. But it's all filtered through a nightmarish, claustrophobic, feverdream neon future that combines the foulest vibes of Nier: Automata and Jason Shiga’s Meanwhile.

It’s gripping, it’s smart, it’s really well-executed, it’s very much worth experiencing. I don’t foresee replaying it.

Naoki Urasawa — Monster, vol. 1 (comics)

Aug ??

Tense, paranoid, and dramatic. I think this was maybe the series that really put Urasawa on the map, and I can see why.

Erin Roseberry — The Maker of Grave Goods (comics)

Oct. 12

(A Shortbox Comics Festival score. I don't think this is currently available anywhere, but here's the author's portfolio site, which might eventually lead the way.) EDIT: now available here

I loved this. Delicious art and composition, emotionally complex and intense, and operating with fluid grace at a level of SF sophistication that few even attempt.

Claire Weber — A Pretty Good Wizard (comics)

Oct 13

(A Shortbox Comics Festival score. I don't think this is currently available anywhere, but, portfolio site that has many sample pages from it at time of posting.)

This was funny and quietly bizarre.

Jeph Jacques — Questionable Content (webcomic backlog)

Oct 24

Yep: it's Questionable Content.

I used to read this strip back in the 00s and early 10s, but fell off at some point — it felt like it had gotten into a cul-de-sac or something, idk. Recently, someone told me that it had later leaned much harder into its latent SF elements, and that various new robot characters were the most interesting thing in it now, and I was curious. So I went back to the last point I vaguely remembered (I think right before Faye got sober) and made my way up to the present.

It’s a pretty good webcomic! It is in fact a better webcomic than it used to be. It had stagnated a bit when I stopped, and it improved significantly with the introduction of more AI characters with more interesting conflicts and problems. This actually freshened up the human element a lot as well: with a wider variety of drama to switch off between, there’s less need for filler and contrivance, and with a wider variety of daily life to switch off between, there's less pressure to avoid taking real risks with the social lives of the core cast. And for whatever reason, taking the robots seriously has let the comic explore some much more interesting questions about queerness and identity than it was capable of when they were just comic relief.

Sam Bosma — Fantasy Sports 2: The Bandit of Barbel Bay (comics)

Dec 10

This kicks. I can't even describe how delicious this art looks in the oversize printed editions! I think there's one more volume of this out there.

Carlos Sánchez — Rune: The Tale of a Thousand Faces (comics)

Dec 24

A mostly-conventional kids’ portal fantasy of the post-Amulet school, distinguished by stellar cartooning and coloring, charming characters, one especially good monster design, and a Deaf protagonist (whose native sign language doubles as a professional language among wizards in the secondary world).

I got this for my nephew and read it before gifting.