The year that just ended saw me build up the gumption to get out of a general languor that has lasted too long. For many it was a time period to experience all kinds of new art. For me, it was the start of knocking a variety of pieces from my backlog with that newfound will.
I tend to plan things out as long-term commitments; for this year the primary one was the "major" games directed by Yasumi Matsuno. I'd long heard the praises of his work, and as a player of the Final Fantasy XIV free trial I was aware that much of the writing followed in his footsteps. The overall experience was peculiar: the team he assembled made great strides in ever more technically advanced art direction, but often the compromises in bringing these fancier games to life led to stories that ever more clearly showed signs of missing chapters. His career is in the awkward position of the most well-known games also being his weakest outings. Final Fantasy Tactics has strong elements but fails dearly to strike a balance between political drama and fantastic quest, while Final Fantasy XII is great example on how a good outline cannot be brought to life by unsuitable writers. Only on Tactics Ogre—a game with a story so massive I was only able to complete one of three routes and had to leave the rest for later—did I get the sense of experiencing a complete story. On the other hand, while Vagrant Story had about half of its own scenario left on the cutting room floor, the smaller scale and better integrated fantasy elements made what is there very evocative.
Of course, XIV had its free trial expanded to include Stormblood this year, not long after I finished the trek above. The kind of story Matsuno tells requires certain kinds of authorial voices, ones like those held by Banri Oda and Natsuko Ishikawa. While the base expansion's scenario can be cramped and hobbled by both format and an ungainly first 4 levels, both writers demonstrate ample skill in telling a nuanced war story, in some aspects even surpassing Matsuno's outings, especially when it comes to the fantastical. That carries through the patch content as well, which brings to the whole a kind of whimsy that not even he'd cooked before. Some of it from the hands of Matsuno himself, whose softer reframing of past works through the Return to Ivalice storyline brought new perspective to them.
My other big undertaking this year was by happenstance. Somebody with a sterling reputation among some friends into Japanese music who seldom communicated before opened a Discord server for like-minded people, primarily to share the fruits of his "hunt" and discover new music he never knew existed before. The world of independent Japanese music, with its endless social bubbles and extreme in-person element requires guides, and so I became one for the niche I knew a lot about. His generosity has been boundless, and releases so rare I thought I'd never hear them in my life became accessible. Wataru Kamiryo's The Flow of Air might well be the greatest live album I've ever heard.
My newfound willpower also led me to dives through the discographies of other artists which piqued my interest: if you really like the Akira soundtrack, Geinoh Yamashirogumi made two other albums that sound like it, and beforehand about a dozen that go for all kinds of music traditions from across the globe that sound nothing like one another.
My latest obsession has been She Shell, a band led by Maki Fujii that only ever released two singles and a handful odd tracks in other places. In Soft Ballet he mostly stuck to being the industrial guy, with Escape as the big example of his chops elsewhere, but for this unit he tackled late '90s pop skilfully. Sin is my uncontested end-of-year favorite song; the hidden isolated parts at the end of the CD enhances the appreciation greatly. Unfortunately I've given multiple spins to all the albums by Suilen, the spiritual successor to She Shell, and while I do enjoy the material, this is the first time any of Fujii's music hasn't particularly stuck with me from the first listen.
Not happy that this post is a rambly late first draft, but I forgot to hit Save when I started it weeks ago, and once my mind is set towards doing something, its very hard to swerve it completely, so writing this was a kind of self-imposed obligation on the way of other writing, so here it is.