2024 Year in Reflection

AnimeReviewYearly

Dec 31

Written by Rei Caldombra 12/31/24

Last Year’s Reflection: 2023 Anime Year Review — Blog Under a Log

Hello everyone, 2024 is just about over for me, so I want to do my 2024 Reflection on the things I indulged in this year, both made by me and not.
I’ll be reflecting on what I watched and read this year and giving some favorites, awards, and that kind of thing. As we go along I’ll also be getting into some of my serious thoughts and recommendations as a creator and what I want to do going forward. I’ll be saying pretty much all of the anime and manga I have indulged in this year! Hopefully I didn’t miss any. Please be aware that every one of these may not be included in my writing, but do use the tags or search bar if you want to hear my thoughts on something here. I’ve said something about most of these. I primarily use the english titles but for the few I prefer in Japanese I use those.

What I watched and Read in 2024

Starting out with anime, In alphabetical order based on my preferred title, I fully watched- A Sign of Affection, Attack on Titan final season, Beastars Final Season, Dandadan, Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction, Dragon Ball Daima, Dungeon Meshi, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End + Mini, Girls Bad Cry, Helck, Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night, Kaiju no.8, Konosuba, Mashle Part 2, Monogatari Series, My Hero Academia, Parasyte, Re: Zero S3, Sound! Euphonium, Shangri-la Frontier, The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic, Train to the End of the World, Twilight out of Focus, Uzumaki, Vtuber Legend, Yuru Camp, Yu Yu Hakusho, and 365 Days to the Wedding. That brings me to a total of 29! It would be a bit higher if I also included things I just watched a few episodes of and dropped (like Shikanoko, Gushing Over Magical Girls, and Glass of God). Last year I fully watched 18, so that’s 11 more than previous. I’m glad I was able to watch a lot more this year like I aimed to. This number is more up to my standards lol, considering how much less time I have now as a quote on quote “proper adult”. Though watching more new series also had the result of not giving me as much time to get back to older series like I wanted to watch, like I mentioned in my 2023 Review. I do still want to go back to things I’ve missed, but I’ve always enjoyed keeping up to date with a portion of the seasonals. I’ve only been writing since 2023 but I’ve been a consistent follower of the seasonals for years. You can expect to continue seeing consistent coverage on seasonals from me in some form. But I will cover older stuff when I have the chance to watch and do reviews of them (like with Yu Yu Hakusho and and Parasyte). And for my more analytical content I will most often go into series that aren’t actively airing at that time. So hopefully I can cover a wide range.

Now for manga! I read (including ongoing series)- Bocchi the Rock and Kikuri’s Drinking Diary, Chainsaw Man, Demon Girl Next Door, Don’t Mess with me Nagatoro, Mieruko-chan, Omori, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Demonic Heartbreak, Shimeji Simulation. There are definitely some missing as I have read some individual volumes, chapters etc. here and there over time that I don’t have records or memory of at the moment. Anime is my preferred medium, so I watch a lot more than I read, but I do have many I enjoy. I will continue to have some coverage of manga, both through the series I have been continually covering (Omori, Bocchi the Rock and Demon Girl Next Door), and any I read when I get the chance (like Jojo Demonic Heartbreak). I really like all of these, but Bocchi the Rock is still my favorite. I love these characters. And this extends to Kikuri too because I also love her.

Now I’ll give some titles to some of the things I watched, like favorites, best, worst, etc. But first I have to tell you to NOT take rankings and things like this very seriously. How someone would rank things one day can be very different than another based on their feelings and multiple factors at the time. I don’t put a ton of stock into numerical grades and ordered rankings and stuff like that, so take it with a grain of salt. The same way I don’t give numerical scores in my reviews, I won’t here. I’m just doing this because it’s fun.

The standout favorite series of mine this year are Girls Band Cry, Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night, Dungeon Meshi, Frieren, Sound! Euphonium S3, Train to the End of the World, Twilight out of Focus, The Attack on Titan Finale and 365 Days to the Wedding. Please be aware that all of these are not necessarily what I consider the BEST of the year (though I say what I think is best), it’s the ones I enjoyed the most and found memorable for one reason or another. Train to the End of the World I had a ton of fun with and it really stand out as unique. Girls Band Cry and Jellyfish had their interesting fake-competition for best girls band show. I thoroughly enjoyed both of them and think they both stand out as strong, but Girls Band Cry edges it out for me as more consistent and cohesive. Euphonium S3 gave me everything I wanted from a conclusion to the anime, it was beautiful in every regard. Twilight out of Focus is memorable for being the first BL I watched and making me want to watch more. Frieren and Dungeon Meshi also had a fake competition, but I have to hand it to Dungeon Meshi. Dungeon Meshi is just all around fantastic and is my anime of the year. I levied one line of criticism in my first impressions review, but since then it remedied that problem and blew me away with how thoroughly excellent it was. Frieren though is also absolutely excellent in pretty much all regards, but like with Girls Band Cry I gotta give it to the show that felt a little more consistent and cohesive. Both have minor flaws with excellent fantasy. 365 Days to the Wedding is the latest show in this listing, but that does not change that it is a romance I completely fell in love with. With the Attack on Titan Finale it came down to the Cliff Baby scene making me cry more this year than the rest of everything I watched combined, so I’m including it even though it technically didn’t air this year.

My biggest disappointment was definitely Shikanoko Koshitantan. Like I said in my review I do not think it is a bad show. But it just didn’t make me laugh as much as I wanted it to, and I don’t think it offered anything else. It committed the horrible sin of just being boring. That’s the only negative award I have, I prefer to be positive.

Let’s do some minor competitions. Best boy of this year is really tough between Legosi (Beastars), Itsuomi (A Sign of Affection) and Laos (Dungeon Meshi), but I’ll give the award to Laos. For best girl I’ll have the top 3 between Kumiko (Sound! Euphonium), Rin (Yuru Camp), and Kiui (Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night), with the award going to Kumiko. Now for a weab/otaku staple, the female characters I think are the hottest. This is between Rupa (Girls Band Cry), Seika (Bocchi the Rock) and Rose (The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic). This is extremely tough but I’ve gotta go with Seika, I want her to be my wife. Last competition is for my best couple. Between Giichi + Jin (Twilight Out of Focus), Momo and Ken (Dandadan) and Takuya and Reika (365 Days to the Wedding), I have to go with Momo and Ken for their beautifully done awkward and aggressive dynamic. I love all 3 of these couples though. Everyone has their choice of crown or tiara. Now onto Openings and Endings, there were too many good ones to name. My favorite Opening has to go to Beastars Final Season’s “Into the World” by issei and Ending goes to Dungeon Meshi’s “Kira Kira no Hai” by Regal Lily. Both of them can be described simply as “the vibes are immaculate” and both have great visuals.

Looking back on my 2023 Review, my main anime wish from last year came true! This year we got confirmation for Dorohedoro Season 2! I think it will be at least a year or two before we get it, but I’m happy enough just knowing it is happening. I’m still hoping we’ll get a Shimeji Simulation anime one day, I’ll probably hope for this every year until it happens. Playing off of that, my manga wish for 2025 is for Tsukumizu-Sensei’s next work. One broader wish I’ll make is that the more niche genres are able to get more anime adaptations. Sacrificing a few isekai for stuff like BL would be nice. I was very pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed Twilight Out of Focus so I would appreciate some new anime helping me expand my horizons a bit more. And I want to see the fans who don’t often get adaptations be happy.

Thoughts as a Creator

Now let’s talk about my content in 2024 and how I’ve felt. I started my website Blog Under a Log this year! In total I wrote 63 posts including this! I’m proud of myself for that. I did backdate the writings I made before the website to when I actually wrote them, but Blog Under a Log itself will be 1 year old in March. I’m glad I decided to make my own website rather than stick solely to Tumblr or make a blog within another website. It’s been very fun to have it truly be my own space. Another notable thing is that I was happy to have a listicle written by friend featured here! No promises but there may be more people writing here in the future.

It was also in 2024 that I started making YouTube videos on my writing. My single most successful video by far is my video on ‘Let Characters Keep Their Secrets - Writing Analysis"‘ at 25k views. I do not consider myself a big “numbers” person, and I will get more into that side of things, but it does make me happy that I was able to make something that got a lot of interaction and success. It means a lot that a thought I came up with resonated with a lot of people. To go more into the YouTube production side of thing, initially I made videos of basically everything I wrote. But I have pivoted away from that framework. This makes sense if you’ve seen my Youtube uploads slow down significantly while still putting up things here. I found that pressuring myself to always make videos on everything I write and have them up same time or soon after makes the creative process much more stressful for me. It made the process of getting things done so much more difficult when I treated writing and making a video as “one thing”. These are separate avenues that I will be treating differently. I’ll get more into that at the end, and this is a solid segway into the next section.

I’m going to talk about my thoughts as a creative now that I’ve been properly doing this for an entire year straight. Keep in mind that these are just my thoughts at the moment, and the recommendations I give are just that, recommendations based on my own perspective and viewpoint. It may not fit anyone, I’m just saying how I feel and giving you food for thought. Sorry if I sound preachy lol. After this I’ll go back into me as a creator and what to expect in 2025.

I had a lot of stuff this year I wanted to make but couldn’t. I’m not beating myself up too much about it, but it sucks to have the desire and the ideas but struggle to make them happen. It is good to push yourself to try harder, but you have to do it in a healthy way. For anyone else out there that wants to get into creative hobbies, I encourage you to not fall into the “grindset” unless your primary desire is to become a professional at it. And even then you should be cautious. I think most people who are involved in the indie Vtuber community know how much people would come and go. There’s many reasons why someone would stop making content as a vtuber, but a big reason in this community was because people saw the big vtubers, especially the corporate ones, and thought that’s what they had to do. So they do all the social media outreach, get all the formal assets, force themselves to be 100% consistent, put on a persona, only play/do/stream whatever is trending etc. Many of these (but not all of them) being things they did not enjoy doing. In the end, many of them end up burning themselves out. And it’s sad seeing people lose their passion towards creating things. I’ve fallen into this sort of thinking at times this year, worrying about if I’m taking too long to get to topical series, if I am being too positive and too neutral, if I should prioritize quantity over quality, etc. to be more “optimal” for success. But when I am in the right headspace, I can tell thinking like this isn’t making me happy. My priority is making things because I enjoy it, and after that because I hope others can enjoy it. Success is nice and I would love to make money from this hobby (I’m not going to act as if I didn’t make a Patreon), but I want to keep it secondary to my own creative fulfillment. I don’t want to do click/rage bait titles and thumbnails, so I will resist the temptation and not do them. I’m going to talk about the series I want to whether they are popular or not. Slice of Life is my favorite genre, so I will talk about those series a lot even if they are not even half as popular among English-speaking audiences as they are in Japan. I don’t want to jump to extreme conclusions and use intense language in my writing and stuff like that just because algorithms promote that kind of thing. I want my voice to stay mine, and I encourage you all to do the same in your creative journey. I can’t promise you that objective/financial success will come guaranteed if you stick to just being yourself, that’s not the reality of the world in my opinion. But I think you will be fulfilled and happier with yourself if you don’t compromise your vision too much. Don’t let the world tell you that your creative passion has to be monetized, that you can’t take breaks, or that you have to follow the trends of the big creators. If you want to become a pro and make money from your hobby, all the power to you. It’s not like I never do things because I think will be more liked or optimal or whatever. I just encourage you to go about it in a healthy way. And if you don’t want to go pro, don’t force yourself to or do the things people say you have to do. You’re you, and your creative passion is yours. Don’t let it be squandered, nurture it in your way. You can take in advice like you are right now reading this, but it doesn’t mean you have to follow them.

To further go into this general point, don’t fall into comparing yourself to others. There are plenty of proverbs talking about why comparison is bad that we’ve all heard many times, so I’ll stick to just reminding you of this point in the context of online creation. I’ve struggled with comparing myself this year, especially during the times I struggled to get things done. Whether the reason was because of not having enough time and energy, legitimate procrastination on my part, or not feeling mentally well enough. I’ve seen other creators doing the kind of higher effort analytical and video essay content I want to do, talking about the series I want to, doing it more consistently and with more success than me. Everyone who spends time on the internet and posts anything will fall into this to some degree, it’s a symptom of being here. Anyone in any field will find themselves comparing to their peers. Doing that just made me feel worse about myself and what I’ve created. It is best to avoid it so you can focus on doing what you want to do for yourself. It is good to be involved in the community you create in, I will always encourage people to do that. But with the caveat that stepping away from it can also be beneficial so that you can focus on yourself without the influence of what others are doing. I like to read analysis and reviews and listen to video essays about media, especially anime and manga. That’s a big reason I’m creating this type of content myself. But I also am spending less time actually viewing said content so that I am less likely to make the comparisons. If this is the type of thing you think would help you, try it. Remember that just because you aren’t scrolling YouTube, Twitch, and other social media doesn’t mean you can’t talk to people. Just try to find the avenues to do that which are the best for you in the moment. Its ok to step away from particular spaces and just do you. I am going to make what I want to make first and foremost, and I encourage you to do the same. And be proud of what you make as best you can.

Into 2025!

Now that we’re through that, let’s get back to being positive and looking forward. I have a lot I’d like to do in 2025 as a creator but do note these are not firm committments and promises. I think I got better at writing over the course of this year, and I hope I can continue to improve.

I have a long list of ideas and WIPS for things I want to create and am excited to work on them! Trust me, I have no shortage of ideas and things I want to write about. The types of things I do will largely be the same as what you’ve seen. My main goal is to do more deeper analytical type of content. I broadly put most of my writing into 2 categories, Analysis and Reviews (like the actual categories I use on this website). You don’t need to take the distinction between them too deeply as they do overlap, but I’ll try to explain what the distinctions are to me since I haven’t really done that before now. My reviews are me talking broadly about something, generally saying what I like and don’t like about it. I absolutely do get analytical in them, but I don’t have a specific focus point outside of the piece of media. My analyses have that specific focus. I have a topic, thesis statement, argument, comparison, etc. that I am making and focusing my writing around. For example, my Yuru Camp article is centered around what I think makes it special as a slice of life cute girls do cute things show. I talk about what I like about it, but it’s to service my specific point. My Attack of Titan Cliff Baby post is about what the meaning of that scene is, rather than evaluating if it’s good or not. These are the type of things I want to do more of, but I still enjoy doing reviews and I do not consider them lesser. I enjoy talking about stuff I like, so I’ll write about them when I can. I really enjoy my reviews of the manga chapters especially. Analyses tend to take a lot more time and effort, involving coming up with topics and concepts, researching, rewatching etc. As such they are harder to bring to a close while also trying to stay current with things I want to cover that are actively airing. That’s been a juggling act I have struggled with this year and hope to get better at. If you enjoy either of these in particular, don’t worry as there will be more of both. I also plan to continue sticking primarily to anime and manga but want to talk a bit more about other things like video games.

You can still expect YouTube videos from me, but there will be less of them than blog posts. The content I label as analysis will have the priority for Youtube videos and will always get them if I can. Manga chapter reviews will not get videos, and other reviews will get videos if I can. I don’t particularly like editing so they will not be anything fancy in that account, but I will try to put in more effort than I did this year. I highly encourage you to become a free member on my Patreon and follow me on BlueSky if you want to hear about both places. If you only like one form of content though, feel free to just bookmark the website or subscribe to my YouTube. I’m happy if you are enjoying my content at all. I like doing Youtube so I can present my thoughts in a different way and show myself as my Vtuber, but writing and having Blog Under a Log is what I enjoy the most.

I would like to make more friends and mutuals in these spaces I’m involved in. I’m not a big user of social media, but I’ll try to be more social. Feel free to leave comments and stuff like that, I’ll do my best to respond.

I’m not big on streaming, but I would like to do some here and there. I would at least like to finish streaming Lock’s Quest on YouTube (I didn’t forget about it for anyone who saw those).

I hope everyone has a great new years and that 2025 will go well for us all. Thank you for any support you’ve given me this year, even if it was just silently reading/watching. I hope to see you next year!