Jane of the Year Awards 2024!
12/15/2024
Welcome to our second ever awards "show"! It's really more like a year-in-review or Jane Wrapped, but the framing amuses me. It's been a big year for me and the site, as it was the first full year of writing on it. When I have to think of everything I did in a year, suddenly I can't remember. I think it's safe to say I had a great 2024 though, and right at the end I've started my transition. So, pretty cool! Remember, this is just my best-of for what I personally played, read, saw, and otherwise bore witness to in '24. I am once again very proud to present my awards show with no commercials.
Game Of The Year!
Mother 3 (2006, Game Boy Advance)
Sorry to literally everything else I played this year, but this was a landslide victory. Nothing else was in contention for this spot. While I may have seemed a little critical in my review, it was out of a sense of admiration and love of the experience. In the months since, I think I've listened to at least one Mother 3 song every single day, otherwise ruminated on the story, world, characters, and development history. It's kind of gotten better and better the more I let it be a part of my life. I wouldn't take back some of my criticisms, but I think the spot Mother 3 occupies in my heart is getting very close in size to its Mother 2 counterpart. Anyone who hasn't played this game yet needs to.
Best Replay Of The Year!
Blaster Master Zero Trilogy (2017, 2019, 2021, Nintendo Switch)
When I wrote last about the Blaster Master Zero series, it was primarily about how the attention to story greatly enhances the experience. It's my favorite thing about the series, but don't neglect that all three games are extremely fun to play. Particularly memorable for me are some of challenging finale sections, and there's fantastic music through the entire trilogy. You won't regret meeting Jason and Eve, who still feel like personal heroes to me. I love them very dearly. Developer Inticreates seems to keep themselves busy, but I wonder if we'll visit the new world of Blaster Master again.
Biggest Video Game Apology
Final Fantasy XI (2002, PC)
Honest to goodness, I enjoyed 85% of my time on the current retail version of Final Fantasy XI. If you read my diary entries, you'll see that eventually I just hit a wall. Which is a shame, but I gotta do what I've gotta do. I hit wall after wall of trying to level up my character, and just had enough at a certain point. I have a few friends who are playing on the private server Horizon XI, which aims to recreate the more social aspects from early in the game's life. Final Fantasy XI probably has the greatest MMORPG aesthetic I have ever seen, I think what I played of XIV doesn't even come close. Then again, I'm a sucker for that entire era of graphics and rendering, so, feel free to ignore that last comment. XI is an interesting game that I don't regret my time in at all, but it gets the apology award for having me quit on it before I really go to do too much with other, human players.
Honorable Mentions:
- Pokémon TCG Pocket
I know, I know. I'm a huge stick in the mud. This is an apology to everyone else, but as soon as a mobile game gets to the "Here's all the currencies and timers we use to manipulate you!" part, I'm out. Which is a shame, because almost everyone online and in real life knows I love Pokémon cards. Due to a sense of...I guess you could call it pride, I've missed yet another chance to connect with people over something.
Worst Layoffs (w/ Commentary by Max Krieger)
Sony (But Also, Everyone)
The game industry found itself, somehow, with even more layoffs and studio closures than 2023. You'd have to ask true insiders and veterans, but a certain amount this can't still possibly COVID correction, can it? I have to hand the dishonorable mention to Sony, who shut down Firewalk Studios a mere 18 months after acquiring it. I know the world of capitalism is basically rotten to the core, but once again I find myself asking: "Why are you even allowed to do this to people's lives?"
The thing about Sony, and Firewalk, and Concord, is that this is not really an outlier the way it might seem. Yes, it's horrible. Firewalk's only project, Concord, got the plug pulled on it and even recalled from stores after just two weeks. The big, AAA game industry has been heading this way for years, and this is just where we've gotten because the problems that face game development are complex. I highly recommend some of Jason Schrier's books on these matters. Read "Press Reset" first, as you'll see the shades of those stories in "Play Nice" as well. Anyway, Concord is emblematic of every single issue in the industry. The game was in development for at least six years, eight by some reports. Firewalk gets bought up by Sony and gazillions of dollars funneled into, the exact amount is still disputed as far as I know. The game drops with a thud. Being a live service game, I guess there was just no hope for one more, in the most cramped spaces in gaming. No hope, just jobs lost.
How do you fix this? The problems are layered like lasagna. At risk of sounding sensational, I think it would be fair to say there have been fears of a "AAA Bubble" bursting in the last fear years. How is this sustainable? There's probably a dozen or so Concords that have either gone by or are coming, and we just don't know about it yet. How are you supposed to take people's attention away from Fortnite and Warzone? If you make games faster, we run into crunch issues. If you go indie, you run into deep uncertainty with anyone getting paid at all. If you let the developers take their time, well, what happens to the huge budget that you'll need to start making back?
How the fuck does this industry even work at this scale?
To find out, I actually asked game developer Max Krieger, who had a ton of insight and comments!
Disclaimer: I have no insider knowledge or access to any financial statistics or other secret sauce. this is all informed conjecture.
I think that the real heart(s) of the matter around this video game implosion has been mounting for a decade+, as you've said, but that the thing that crucially kicked it all off was when veil of speculative capital was lifted after heavy hikes to interest rates. What that exposed was an industry whose margins had become unacceptably small for the sheer amount of capital used to sustain them. once you take away speculation, the actual dollars-and-cents margin of average income for the majority of video games is absolutely precarious. Investors figured this out and have been pulling out en masse.
This has been a problem for tech across the board because so many platforms aren't profitable and have no clear path to profitability (remember how long it took twitter to make money?). Video games have it particularly rough for a multitude of reasons, though, largely because of the exponential costs of AAAA development and the fact that industry tools and pipelines simply have not been able to scale efficiently to meet the scale of crafting insanely ornate worlds. The reason why so many people say games "haven't advanced since the PS2 era" is because the graphics improving was the easy part. The hardest part, the part that continues to be the bottleneck where vast amounts of money get burned, is entirely in building content - art, design, interaction, you name it. The more games feel the need to out-spectacle one another and the more elaborate their systems become, the more humans need to build out insane minutiae that wasn't even part of the conversation 20 years ago. That, not graphical fidelity on its own, is the true cost of "lifelike game development". Until there is a drastic redefinition of how that production pipeline is managed (this is why goons in management are drooling over ai), There is no solution at scale, and margins will continue to be unacceptably thin. This is why this implosion is hitting the biggest games the hardest.
I am hesitant to call this implosion as crash, because a crash implies a crater in demand. demand for games remains strong - I think one of the big problems in video games right now is that they haven't yet identified that the "games industry" as a monolith no longer functionally exists. The /reasons/ people play - their motivations, the role they want games to play in their life - differ so fundamentally from one another that their market ecosystems are no longer comparable.
Turns out that we have some major redefinition of borders to do here, and if you do break the video game industry down into distinct reasons-for-play, the distribution of time and expenditure is extremely lopsided in ratio to development costs. to simplify it, imagine a 100 pound bag and you know the name of everything that's in it, but when you open it up Fortnite is 90 pounds and the other dozen games make up the other 10. The problem is that they were even sold in the same bag in the first place when they are fundamentally different goods. You can get away with masking that when interest rates are zero and capital is essentially free. Once that stops? not so much. And here we find ourselves.
If that wasn't bad enough, we're currently experience complete and total saturation of all available outreach/pr channels for informing new audiences about new games. this is the primary squeeze on mid-tier/indie games without a major brand (ip, big streamer/vtuber, etc) attached right now. i've seen several people say "marketing isn't working" as a general statement and i think that's accurate. again, the problem is that we're at the dying end of the era where "video game" was considered a hobby monolith, during a time where attention is simply divided too many ways to keep audiences engaged under such an enormous and incongruous umbrella. nothing keeps anything in the public eye for longer than a 72 hour cycle anymore - even big budget trailers and presser reveals can just be dust in the wind. it's only the games that play to the "hardcore gamer" sensibilities - which in and of itself is a lifestyle brand, matched in intensity and passion by many other types of gamer, for instance, the gachahead - that seem to perpetuate in this sphere, which is in turn leading to more insular focus on catering to their tastes. One only needs to look at comics or wrestling to see what a slow, doomed spiral that is. we have to exit it, sidestep, and build something new.
A great template of how we need to adapt, and one that is flourishing right now across all forms of media let alone games, is horror. It's a genre that knows why people come to it - to be frightened, unnerved, to think about uncomfortable things in an exciting way, to reflect on the existential - and understands its common appeal. It's able to build communities of people who have that in common that are strong because of that shared ground. It's able to maintain its own news cycle, and even its own streaming services like Shudder. It's not exclusionary, but it knows its identity is everything. That's the strategy we're going to have to apply to games - to figure out the why of a distinct group, appeal to it, and build a community. see also: the sims, nancy drew, factory/simulator games, etc. these are distinct industries!
The problem is, these lines aren't drawn yet, and there's a good chance that when they are, many chunks of the industry will have a much smaller base of regular buyers than previously thought. that's gonna take a readjustment of scope, outreach, everything. the era of a rising tide of income from megahits raising all boats in games is dead. Without those boundaries defined, investors will be nervous, marketing will be scattershot, apex predators will devour each other, and the bloodbath will continue. But it's gotta end sometime. Just gotta hope we end up in the right spot when it does.
Concord being a poster child of an industry going screwy doesn't excuse Sony's decision to just let everyone go. As I said last year, I wish everyone, anywhere, who is facing uncertainty in the game's industry, the best of luck. I hope you find something new that works for you.
Pokémon Card Of The Year
Teal Mask Ogerpon ex (Twilight Masquerade)
Instead of pretending that I played other tabletop or card games this year, as last year's category implied, we'll just bring it back as a Pokémon TCG category.
This one was a tough call, but I'm going with Teal Mask Ogerpon ex from the Twilight Masquerade set. Ogerpon is the driving force behind the power of not just one, but two of the most powerful decks in recent times, Raging Bolt ex and Regidrago VSTAR. Extra energy attachments and card draw are both powerful, and Ogerpon ex can be a pretty decent attacker by itself. I ended up buying a playset for my Hydrapple ex deck, which didn't run super cheap (by Pokémon standards, anyway), and I would later put together Raging Bolt itself as a backup meta deck. I think we'll continue to see Ogerpon find its way around even after Regidrago VStar leaves the format in 2025.
Honorable Mentions:
- Fezandipiti ex (Shrouded Fable)
- Dusknoir (Shrouded Fable)
This card is so strong that borders on hilarious. I mean that in a nice way. You also get to declare "Skibidi" at your local, so what's not to love about that? The best part about Fez's excellent draw ability is that it doesn't even have to be on the field when your Pokémon gets Knocked Out. You can just opt to Fez afterwards, or get your knocked out Fezandipiti ex back from the discard pile and use Flip the Script anyway. It's existence has dampened Iono's power a bit, which has all kinds of interesting repercussions, but Fez's ubiquity makes it a solid contender for card of the year.
This card is fucked up. It just is. It's not ban worthy or anything, but the advantage that Dusknoir and its little brother Dusclops can make is very, very much worth giving up a prize in the right situation. It fixes all kinds of math for decks like Dragapult ex, and powers up Charizard ex to a major degree. At locals, a Gholdengo player completely bodied me by resolving two Dusknoirs in one turn. It was kind of sick.
Anime Of The Year
Girls Band Cry (2024, Toei Animation)
Girls Band Cry was the secret anime that found it's audience anyway. Not initially licensed for anywhere outside of Japan and France, the sheer will of Nina Iseri and her bandmates seemed to seep out into the real world. That real life story and charming production was just as enjoyable to me as the actual fiction of the show. To help explain what made GBC special, I've recruited my my friend Emily, who had a great take.
What ultimately makes Girls Band Cry stand out among its contemporaries is it's unabashed connection to the ideals of rock music and DIY music culture throughout history. Togenashi Togeari's members drink, scream at each other in public, drop out of school, flip the bird, and ultimately turn down a record label deal to forge their own path.
There's an inherent rebellion to Girls Band Cry that is just not present in even the most ambitious girls band anime. Bang Dream!!! and it's ilk tell stories of high school aged girls who come together to chase a dream but with the edges sanded off in a way that's decidedly corporate, while Girls Band Cry positions the corporate idol band as an antagonistic force by comparison.
Honorable Mentions:
- My Deer Friend Nokotan
- Fate Stay Night (2006, Studio DEEN) or Fate/Zero (2011, Ufotable)
Why, exactly, did I fall in love with this gay little deer? I was extremely close to placing this one as the winner, but the GBC experience was just a one-of-a-kind. While I was a little iffy about the original manga, the anime adaptation ending up winning my heart over wholly and completely. I think I was already warmed up to it by Nokotan's pure cuteness and chaotic antics from the comic, but I went into overdrive after the show.
This is the year I began getting to the Fate franchise. I know, everyone begged me to just read the visual novel, a remastered version of which also came out this year. I have a friend who I watch anime with, and this is just the thing he wants to do that I've consented to. So far, we've seen the 2006 series, Fate/Zero, and are working on Unlimited Blade Works. 06 and Zero have both had their quirks, my reactions to which could be their own article. The 06 anime was one I greatly enjoyed because it seemed antiquated in terms of its storytelling. Anime doesn't move that slowly any more. I'm also very fond of its artstyle compared to Ufotable's, and seeing an anime from the mid 00's again was a personal joy.
Women Will Get Together Of The Year
Birdie Wing (2022, Bandai Namco Pictures)
In terms of sheer yuri per capita, I don't think anything I saw quite matched last year's I'm In Love With The Villainess anime adaptation. But Birdie Wing came really damn close.
I need to watch something like this again. Birdie Wing brought a sheer level of drama with intensity that I wasn't expecting. It also fell victim to the classic "just completely fucking blowing it at the end" syndrome that so many anime used to have. It's rare that an anime feels genuinely unhinged, but Birdie Wing brings so much to the table and doesn't seem to care at all that they seem like disparate ideas. Sure, a girl's youth drama and sports are like peanut butter and chocolate. But the mafia? Layered amensia? Parentage questions? Cancer? Scheming by older generations of the family? It's kind of hard to put in words if you haven't seen it. Golf mafia is where it starts. I don't think campy is the right words. It's insane.
Leads Eve and Aoi are beyond adorable, whatever you make of the rest. It's easy to root for them when things are on, cheer when there's a little kiss, and throw your phone across the room when it looks bad. I just wish I could see them again, their time together is far too often interrupted by the nefarious force known as the plot. Still, these girls win the award for the ravenous hunger I developed for seeing their relationship develop. Fly high, ladies.
Manga of the Year
Bocchi the Rock (Yen Press)
While the English release of Bocchi started last year, four volumes came out this year, where the story has continued well beyond the anime adaptation. I've written about Bocchi the Rock since before this website's creation, and my love for it has only gotten stronger as the official release steadily drops. All of the things that made the anime great are present in Aki Hamazi's work. It's laugh out loud funny, but the characters aren't completely static, and you're always learning a little bit more about them through the great jokes. Hitori Gotoh, in particular, is really starting to step up to the plate and become a braver girl. It's heartwarming to see all of these girls take steps forward towards their dreams. Bocchi the Rock gets it all right, being a hilarious comedy, while the youth-drama elements keep you turning the page when they come up. I absolutely love Bocchi and you should too!
Honorable Mentions:
- Land of the Lustrous by Haruko Ichikawa
- Kagurabachi by Takeru Hokazono
Last year's award winner ended, and dying to know how the story concluded, I read scanlations ahead of the official release. Shame shame. It was amazing, scary, beautiful, and all of the things I said in last year's awards. Nobody has done it like Haruko Ichikawa.
This was part of last year's debut nominations, but now we can say for sure that Kagurabachi has had a knockout first year. Hokazono's cinematic influences give the series a stone-cold coolness that I haven't gotten anywhere else. Kagurapeaki, indeed!
Best Manga Debut
Centuria by Tohru Kuramori
Centuria comes from a former Tatsuki Fujimoto assistant, and it shows. Fans of dark fantasy like Claymore or perhaps Berserk will quickly pick up what Centuria is putting down. Our hero Julian is fighting for his life, and one precious baby, Diana. The MangaPlus comments section are abuzz every release about what could be in the works for everyone. Centuria's world is grim and violet, but not at all without hope and human compassion. I'm really, really hoping this one can get some wider attention where my beloved MamaYuyu could not.
Go into this one blind if you can. Get on MangaPlus and just give it a whirl!
Honorable Mentions:
- No Gyaru in This Class by Shigure Tokita
- Syd Craft: Love is a Mystery by Taishi Tsutsui
This one is so cute, it's become something I count the days towards. It's your typical slice of life comedy set up, but this one is all about how you can change at any time. Leading gal Mirei wasn't always a gyaru, and quite a few other characters are making changes to their personality and style. This is what makes it super adorable and just a little queer coded. Also, please read a few chapters to see how animals are drawn. You will not regret seeing that.
Syd Craft has been running for barely five weeks as I write this, but I don't care. The characters are really cute, especially Syd Craft's genderbending assistant Elio. And there's no way I'm not going to love a character named Inspector Souffle. I'm not holding out much hope that this one will last forever...I think 2023 taught me my lessons about that. Still, I've ended up loving this one so much, so quickly.
Comic Of The Year
Ultimate X-Men by Peach Momoko (Marvel Comics)
While Marvel's new Ultimate line of books this year generally impressed me, my favorite came out to Peach Momoko's Ultimate X-Men. As far as I know, this is Momoko's first time doing interior pages and she is fucking killing it! I love the water colors! But beyond the visual appeal, this has been almost nothing like traditional X-Men storytelling, which is cool. There are echoes of previous characters powers and storylines, but that's all they are, so it makes for something that feels genuinely inventive (for Marvel Comics, at least) rather than just streamlined. I even went ahead and picked up the trade for volume 1 when it came out, because I really dig it that much.
Honorable Mentions:
- Ultimate Spider-Man by Jonathan Hickman
I know, I know. Why isn't this the winner? This was absolutely the smash hit of the year, as far as the English comic world is concerned. I'm enjoying this series a lot, too. I'm just slightly on a colder side than the initial hype. Having a status quo where Peter is married to MJ and has kids is great, but that's not a good story by itself, which is what so much of the discussion seemed to be about. And, as is usual with me and Hickman, you've got to just let him cook for a while. He's the best seed planter in the world, but Ultimate Spidey isn't a forest quite yet. I have very little doubt it will be great, though. The set up of Ultimate's world has a lot of interesting things going on besides Peter, so it doesn't feel shallow or like mindless fanservice. We'll talk more about this one some day.
Movie Of The Year
Nausicaä: Valley Of The Wind (1984, Topcraft, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
I did not watch any new movies this year. Not a single one. I am sorry. Especially to Transformers: One. If I saw a movie this year, it was certainly a rerun. Except for being inspired to finally watch Nausicaä after receiving a cute sticker of her. Any movie with big bugs in it can't be too bad, but I loved Nausicaä. It's a gorgeous film, I'm a sucker for cel and paint photography. Nausicaä herself is a lovable character and it's hard not to love the messages about preserving and respecting the natural world. I've never been a huge Ghibli-phile or Hayao Miyazaki inspector, but Nausicaä is telling me that maybe I should be.
Final Thoughts and Thanks
Everything about this site and my life has grown tremendously this year. I didn't quite get to do one post every week, but hey, I was close! I think making sure the posts are good is worth a few days delay, and it's my website, so who cares! Myuahah! I saw an additional amount of tremendous support and traction this year for my articles. In particular, the recent Pokémon breakdown and my Half-Life 2 revisit saw a wider audience. For that, I can't thank you all enough!
Big things are coming for me in 2025, as I really get my gender transition kickstarted. I'm sure there will be an article or two about that! But I plan to keep the site largely as it is, blogging about whatever comes to my mind, at my speed. This site is still my pride and joy. Anyone who came to take a look, or told me it was awesome, or anything like that, you help keep the site going!
Thank you all for a wonderful 2024! Let's do it again in '25!
- Jane