Movie, anime, podcasts and reads I went through during the first month of the year
Woah, a whole month just happened somehow. Here are a lot of the things I did during January of 2025!
Gaming
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age: This is like a bedtime fairytale and I have enjoyed every time I pick it up for like 20 or 40 minutes and I can always stop at a comfortable place, knowing the game will come back and tell me the story so far is also a great bonus. Amazing story and very enjoyable turn based gameplay, itās just solid fun and amazing characters too.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: Finally beat this little gem of a game, I shared my review recently so I wonāt say much more, play it if you like reading, making choices and card games.
Ridge Racer: Doing gaming on my PSP again has been fantastic, I finally gave a chance to this arcade racing game and I canāt believe I didnāt do it sooner. Absolutely addicting gameplay, the thrill and the adrenaline of each race and just getting better at it feels great.
Minecraft: I have been playing Minecraft for a bit late in the month, in a server Iām on with friends, we found the needed materials to finally beat go to the End and defeat the Ender Dragon!
Ys: The Oath of Felghana: Another PSP game that has proven to be great. Hack and Slash action RPG with a hint of Metroidvania style gameplay too. Interesting story and simple mechanics, and an absolutely amazing sountrack too.
God of War: Chains of Olympus: I literally played this like 3 hours in January of 2024 and never touched it again, and now Iāve returned to it a year later and I will probably beat the next 3 hours of gameplay left in February if everything goes well. Very fun though.
Balatro: Balatro is Balatro and Iāll keep playing it forever at this point.
Nintendo Switch Sports: I got addicted to Golf for some reason.
Manga
Hunter x Hunter: is my new manga for this year, Iāve heard great things about this one and so far I am enjoying it a lot. Iām following the journey of Gon (finally, a name I can remember) to become a Hunter and find his father! Surprisingly charming and some nice action as well.
The Way of the House Husband: Comedy manga about an ex-Yakuza who got married and does house chores and the like, itās fun!
Sakamoto Days: I really like the direction of the current arc but I am waiting for more chapters to come out before I keep going.
Frieren: Still amazing and very enjoyable, but itās on a break now so Iāll have to wait some time before continuing the journey.
Komi Canāt Communicate: Catching up on this one as well
Gantz: Well, I kinda forgot I was reading this but decided to give it another go, a bit too much at the moment but might return to it.
Elfen Lied: Read just a bit of it again, still interesting but didnāt grip me much.
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: Only read one chapter this month, beautiful.
One Punch Man: I am finally catching up to OPM, and itās been really intriguing all of whatās going on lately, looking forward to more.
Books
I finished reading Abaddonās Gate by James S.A. Corey as my first book of the year, it was absolutely fantastic! I wrote my review a few days ago so I wonāt say much more here.
I also finished The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie a few days ago, I still donāt write my review for it though. Still, it was a great piece of detective fiction and I really enjoyed my time with it, I actually read it alongside @isa and we chatted about our theories and suspects for a bit. Very nice mystery, I am liking Poirotās style more and more too!
Movies
Sonic the Hedgehog 3: First of the year, a Sonic movie! What can I say? Jim Carrey is abosolutely in the zone. And the last act has some absolutely bonkers action sequences, like what is going on? Honestly, good fun stuff.
The Moon: Korea goes to the Moon, some action, some sci-fi, some korean patriotism, absolutely insane amounts of melodrama.
Interestellar: Now this is some good stuff! This movie is still amazing, I so wanna watch it on the cinemas again now that is back for some time, but I might not be able to make it, still, it was nice to watch it again on a big TV screen.
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning: Well, I guess this is a movie that exists! Not the best of the MI movies, but enjoyable.
Inside Man: Interesting heist film, thereās a PSP on it, kinda neat stuff on it but I didnāt quite click with it.
Anime & Shows
Delicious in Dungeon: I finished watching this show late in January, but I have been watching it on and off with my sister for a while already. It was quite nice, a different flavor of fantasy to what Frieren does, very good, with great action and fun character interactions. It is like a Dungeons & Dragons turned into anime, and it delivers. The initial premise of making food out of monsters sounds like it might not be that hooking, but donāt worry, there are lots of other things that kept me entertained throughout the whole thing.
Dr. Stone (Season 4): Ever since I binged all the previous seasons, Iāve been expecting this one, I already watched the first couple of episodes and wow, I had missed these characters so much, good stuff!
Hero Inside: Ok so this is literally a kidās show, but itās somehow kinda neat? It feels like an old cartoon but today or so, in the good sense. In this show people can bring comic superheroes to life and control them using their imagination. But the action scenes are actually kinda sick, and the overall story is rather interesting.Itās only a couple seasons with less than a dozen chapters of 18 minutes each, Iām kind of looking forward to the next season.
Podcasts
Into The Aether ended the year fantastically with their Game of the Year Spectacular, and every weekly episode keeps adding to the listening time, so itās only natural it remains at the top!
The Rest is History has been pretty interesting, I have been listening to their episodes of America in 1968 and the different events that defined that time, as well as how it compares to current times today, very interesting series.
Iāve decided to not write as much about podcasts that I just listened to usually but canāt really say anything specific about them, still I do recomment them! They would be: Darknet Diaries, NPC: Next Portable Console, Casefile, Retro Game Time Machine, and Trash Taste
Device Usage
Laptop
I used my laptop for 68 hours
Firefox 41 hours
Alacritty 8 hours
Minecraft 6 hours
GIMP for 2 hours
Phone
I used my phone for 171 hours
YouTube 40 hours
Discord 21 hours
Mihon 15 hours
WhatsApp 15 hours
Tusky 14 hours
Firefox 11 hours
Signal 11 hours
Bible 5 hours
Finishing thoughts
Welp, there goes January. A lot of stuff happened huh. I am happy I didnāt use YouTube as much this time around. And coming back to my PSP, reading a couple books, I am happy with how it went!
