Everything I have Watched, Read, and Played in 2024

Ach ja, starting this year (last year?), I decided to track all the media I have watched, read or played. I didn’t really have a specific idea in mind, just that it would be fun to be able to look back and have a concrete list of everything, rather than just a vague memory. Initially, this started out as a simple media thread on Twitter, but I later decided to compile everything in a spreadsheet. To be quite honest, the media thread might not have been the best idea. While I liked writing down some of my short takes, at the end, it felt rather performative, forced and I imagine I just cluttered everyone’s timeline, since no one interacted with them anyway. It also most likely prevented me from watching movies and other short things in the later half of the year, since watching a movie always came with the caveat of continuing the thread, which I eventually just didn’t want to do anymore. Actually, I am rather glad that the year is over and the thread thereby completed, because now I can watch something and only write about it, if I feel the need to do so. I know, oh woe is me!

If you want to have a look at the entire list, I made the spreadsheet public. There is also the original Twitter Thread, as well as my mirror on Mastodon (Part 1 and Part 2). I tried generating an Unroll, but it seems like the thread is simply too long, lol :D. With that out of the way, let’s see what the year 2024 had in store for me.

My 2024 in Numbers

132!

This is the final number. Is it a lot? I… actually don’t know. Part of this whole ordeal is finding out and comparing it throughout the years, though, compared to the average person, it is probably a lot. I mean, unlike real adults, I have all the time in the world, as well as the interest to do so. Then again, it is hard to compare different media. Time-wise, you can’t really compare a movie to a novel to a game, so just looking at the number is worthless anyway and for my own sanity, I will pass on calculating the total time of it all. So, let’s take a closer look.

By Type

Looking at the distribution, one could argue that this is about to be expected. After all, I am an anime guy, right? Normally, I would actually say no. Since I have acquired a Netflix subscription, most years, I probably watch a good amount more movies than anime. There is a good reason for why this year, the numbers are switched. Also, I barely read anything this year… at least not many different things. Actually, the chart above is basically useless without a second layer of context, lol.

Score

The average total score is 7.215, which is actually about to be expected. I feel pretty confident in picking out things I like and I also only seldom expose myself to something deemed generally bad on purpose (exceptions may apply). The biggest outlier might be manga, but more on that later.

Lastly, I tracked whether I have already watched or played something before. Not sure what my expectations with that one were, but 13 out of 132, or around 10%, seems reasonable.

Now, since I obviously don’t know how to summarize my year in numbers, let’s finally talk specifics!

Anime

In 2024, I watched 65 anime in total. 12 movies and 53 TV-Anime, from which 38 were 2024 seasonals, which is no doubt the highest ratio I ever had, since I actually started watching seasonal anime regularly this year. In fact, this might also be just the most anime I have seen in a year since… certainly a few years. And all things around, it has been a banger of a year in this regard.

Watching seasonal anime can be fun, especially if you have people to discuss it with. If you are interested in my takes, I have written wrap-ups for each season. I thought about doing a huge ranking of everything that aired this year, but instead, here are just the anime I think you should watch:

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
Brave Bang Bravern!
The Apothecary Diaries
Delicious in Dungeon
Look Back
Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines!
KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World! 3
[Oshi No Ko] Season 2
Dandadan
Negative Positive Angler

The rest of the year was spent either catching up on some of the anime of 2023 or watching movies and new seasons with friends. I also rewatched the core Fate adaptations, which was a lot of fun… bar the original, which really didn’t hold up. Canaan and World Conquest Zvezda Plot also made it on the list, purely on their association to TYPE-MOON.

What everything else is concerned about, I finally caught up with some older anime again. Serial Experiments Lain certainly delivered on its reputation as a trip, Welcome to the N.H.K. beautifully expands upon its source material and with Revolutionary Girl Utena ticked off the list, I can finally call myself slightly more intellectual.

Movies and TV-Series

Unlike with anime, I don’t think I have seen a single movie from this very year. I did, however, start rather strong by continuing my masochistic journey down the Purge franchise. These movies suck and are the only reason why there are scores under 5 on this list. Beyond this, I think I can generally group the movies I have seen into three categories:

I think I will call the first category “Stuff I have vague memories of from when I was younger”. This may include stuff I have seen the trailer of as a child, but never got around to watching it. Stuff like Ghost Rider, which was rad as hell, R.I.P.D. which, despite its premise, wasn’t rad as hell, a rewatch of Real Steel and Transformers and even movies like V for Vendetta or Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. However, due to my arbitrary rules, this also includes Finsterworld, which I have seen in german class and Sommersturm, which a friend of mine has also seen in school.

The second category is for The Classics™, which I, somehow, have not seen or it has been more than half my lifespan ago. Think Starship Troopers, Donnie Darko, Jurassic Park, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Forrest Gump, Jaws and Mission: Impossible.

The last one is for all the movies, which I have specifically sought out, either because I have heard they are good, or because I think they would be fun. Here are all the bangers: Snatch, The Social Network, A Few Good Men, Bullet Train, Master and Commander, Godzilla Minus One and Some Like It Hot. All of them are certified HansiMcKlaus™ recommendations.

Technically, there is a hidden fourth category for movies I watched with friends. Think How to Blow Up a Pipeline and I Saw the TV Glow and all that leftist woke stuff.

Animation wise The Sea Beast proves that children entertainment isn’t doomed completely just yet, The Boss Baby turned out to be a decent movie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie is actually great.

Unlike with anime, I feel like my potential backlog for movies is truly endless, either in regards to must-watches, or stuff I really have to rewatch, so I doubt I will ever feel like I don’t know what to see and next year will probably shoot up in terms of the number of movies I will have watched.

I also saw a few TV-Series this year. Jury Duty is about a fake trial with only one guy not being in the known and whose production and story truly was blessed by cosmical luck to allow everything to happen in the way it does. On the other hand, the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender turned out to be rather underwhelming, being mostly a watered down version of the original cartoon. On the other other hand, Parasyte: The Grey clearly shows how you can not only bring something into live-action, but also change it up to make it truly your own, without alienating what makes the original great in the first place. Lastly, Murder Drones finished up its run of confused hormonal robots either killing or saving themselves… actually, I kinda lost the plot with the last one, but it’s decent.

Manga, Novels and Visual Novels

Normally, I would classify visual novels as games, but for the sake of this post, I think this grouping makes more sense.

Simply looking at the numbers, it feels like I barely read anything this year. In parts, this is because I am only counting completed media. I still have several manga series being published and the same goes for my reading of KonoSuba. Also, to be frank, there were barely any new Girls Love manga being released this year in Germany. Like, c’mon, you know that it is the only thing I read! I also couldn’t find the motivation to start most series in my backlog.

With that being said, I read some actual novels this year. Fellow(?) AniTuber(?) picti mundi published his first novel Kafka, neu sortiert, which is, like, honest to god just a good low-key mystery framed around an author vacationing in Germany’s northern isles compiling Kafka’s life work. On the other hand, From Truant to Anime Screenwriter: My Path to “Anohana” and “The Anthem of the Heart” is Mari Okada’s autobiography, which gives a lot of insight into her childhood and how it influenced her works.

For what the few light novels I did read are concerned, JK Haru Is a Sex Worker in Another World is about the inherent sexism of the typical isekai set-up, Welcome to the N.H.K. takes a brutally honest look at the life of early-2000s NEETs and Sexiled: My Sexist Party Leader Kicked Me Out, So I Teamed Up with a Mythical Sorceress! is your generic revenge power fantasy, but viewed through a, at times rather lackluster, feminist lens.

The manga front looked a lot more dire. My Younger Senpai, A Witch’s Love at the End of the World and I Can’t Believe I Slept With You! were rather underwhelming, Futari Escape is alright and Composing Spring in This Room Where Cherry Blossoms Bloom at least has a theme, even if I personally didn’t really care for the romance. The only really good manga I read this year is My Alcoholic Escape from Reality, which is another entry in the “It sure feels weird reading about how Kabi Nagata’s life turns worse at every possible corner”-series. Let’s just hope she gets better… *looks at the name of the sequel*… oh no.

Lastly, there are the visual novels. I started strong with Witch on the Holy Night, which is probably one of the most polished visual novels I have ever seen from a visual standpoint. The story is also great and it is nice to see the Nasuverse’s relatively simple beginnings. Speaking of Nasuverse, we were blessed with a remaster of Fate/stay night, which might easily occupy a top spot for favorite pieces of media ever. Another classic came in the form of The Song of Saya, which finally let me see Gen Urobuchi’s work in visual novel form. On the other hand, getting through Sakura Space was only made possible by the combined effort of two friends and me voicing it and trying to have fun alongside it. And finally, Slay the Princess plays a lot around the nature of multiple choices and the meta-narrative of the simple “saving the princess” idea.

Games

If we only take the first nine months into account, this category would essentially be empty, though that doesn’t mean I didn’t play anything in this timeframe. It is just that some games are hard to really “complete”, when there is no end in the first place.

Starting the year, I was overcome by a sudden yearning for the Attack on Titan Tribute Game after who knows how many years. I don’t know how many hours I spent in this game, but it is probably more than any other game I played this year. I still stand by my opinion that it has some of the most fun locomotion in any game I played and the many hours I spent in its racing mode only proves this point for me. Also, AoTTG2 released a few months ago, so I should probably check that out someday.

After having played Nations Forever some time ago, watching people stream it since a year and especially after the glorious Deep Dip 2 event, I finally installed Trackmania and the only reason I can’t praise it more, is that I, despite having over 125 hours in it, am still running the free version, which is severely limited. Blame Ubisoft and their questionable business decisions for that. You can only gain access to the full version of the game by buying a one year subscription for 20 euros… which I didn’t want to spend in the beginning and don’t want to spend now, because I don’t know how long I am still going to play it. Thus, limited Ranked, one rotating server and the Royal Mode it is for now and forever. Still very much fun, though.

Now to the games that can actually be completed. After years of wondering what it even is, Pokémon Conquest turned out to be a fun tactical RPG based on Nobunaga’s Ambition with a Pokémon skin. It is just a shame that you essentially always have to start from zero when beginning a new campaign and a lot of game mechanics turned out to be essentially useless or just busy work, because I enjoyed the actual gameplay quite a lot.

Fate/Samurai Remnant is a game I very much appreciate more for its narrative than gameplay. To no one’s surprise, I am not a big fun of Musou games, to the point I set the difficulty setting to the lowest and just spammed the void stance in my New Game+. Too bad the story itself feels severely undercooked, because it has some very good ideas and one of my favorite premises in the larger Fate universe.

Mind Over Magnet is a game developed by Mark Brown from Game Maker’s Toolkit, who documented the development of the game throughout the years for everyone to see and it was really fascinating to see the game slowly take form. The game is a simple puzzle platformer that can be completed in one to two hours and while I had my fun, I got the most enjoyment out of the development of the game itself and I really recommend anyone seeing the series of development vlogs.

For a bit of a blast to the past, FlatOut 2 is still the pinnacle of mid-2000s cool. The controls are close to unusable and the physics simulation doesn’t feel as impressive as it did almost 20 years ago, but it was still a lot of fun. On the other hand, Tropico 6 still holds up with its humor and presentation and I definitely appreciate some of the quality of life improvements over its prequel, though it is still not completely transparent in how all aspects of the game actually seem to work.

I’m gonna be honest, I am not particularly happy with how this post turned out. I had the choice between abandoning it half-way or completing it half-heartedly. I couldn’t find the right balance between writing about individual pieces of media and writing in general and the result just kind of sucks. Also, after having worked with professional tools, making charts in Google Docs almost killed me. I hate it. Maybe I will find a better way for next year and if I don’t, I can also just let it be. It feels like half my posts this year were just lists of all the stuff I have seen anyway.

And that’s about it. Have a wonderful new year ^^.