The 2024 Kami Awards
I thought it would be cute to frame the classic end of year list of stuff I liked as an awards show. I don't actually have awards to give nor people to send the awards out to but it's more of a metaphorical thing. You know what I mean. Thanks for reading :]
Game of the year - Balatro: Okay, look. I don’t play that many video games these days. I don’t have the energy. So, it's very rare to have a game that is literally hard for me to pull myself away from. I played like an hour of Balatro on my phone while waiting to be seen by a doctor in the summer and I knew there was magic in that app. I literally chose not to install it on my computer because it would take away too much of my time. I’ve had this shit installed since Christmas and I've already logged in 14 hours. I’m in the tank for real.
Anime of the year - Look Back: I’ve been fighting a war against the Fujimoto dickriders since I’ve been made aware of that guy's work. I was there for Chainsaw man chapter 1 dude. I done seen it all! Look Back is one of the things I’m willing to give him all the credit for. And this adaptation is a dream. Everything is captured beautifully. The animation is great and full of little flourishes of human touch, very intentionally so. The soundtrack is unreal dude, it’s just all there. I wrote a blogpost about it earlier this year so i don’t want to re-hash all those points over again but yeah man this is absolutely the Anime of the year. It’s a gem.
Album of the year - Why Lawd?: Premium house cleaning music and what I fully believe will be a modern classic. Anderson Paak and Knxwledge are both in peak form here playing off each other perfectly. Paak was lowkey in the Chance the Rapper camp where the guy was too happy to drop music that I think would reach me but now that he's post divorce we're seeing him deliver on a new level. Does wanting that make me a bad person? Maybe a little, but try to tell me that this isn't more impactful than whatever the Silk Sonic songs are about. And I like that album! However, Paaks raspy RnB ballads and occasional rap reprieve are so on point here and Knx is one of the best producers out now, despite how much of a cornball he can be. Delightfully lo-fi drum loops and soul drenched samples are usually his thing but he provides steady and snug drumming and pretty instruments all over this thing. Some of the production doesn't even seem like him at first but his stamp is always present in the rich textures all throughout. It's not too long and all the features are good. My only real complaint is that I wish the album art was a little more interesting. There was super stiff competition this year on the musical front but this was one I think I'll be keeping in rotation for a long time.
Book of the year - Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Okay, I didn’t read any books from this year. I don’t even know what came out fr. But what I can say is that of the books I did read, the best one was “Flyboy in the Buttermilk”. Man, Greg Tate has such a way with words. Obviously right? He’s an author after all. But the thing is Flyboy is a series of essays about music and black culture and they are written with an energy that's hard to find in even the best of fiction. Front row recounts of the shows of people like George Clinton and Miles Davis is so surreal to read; and the way he describes music is nothing short of electrifying. His description of Miles Davis Quintet is legitimately brain bending. Some of this book has aged poorly but a lot of it is pretty evergreen since it’s about the struggle of being Black in America and I think it's absolutely a worthwhile read if you care about black art. Which by the way, even if you think you don’t, you 100% do.
YouTube Video of the Year - POWER OF THE ELEMENTS: Everything: There is a fucking mountain's worth of context that you'd be lacking if you just watched this video blind. I think it's practically impossible to fully understand why this video is so good. It would honestly take a blog post dedicated to it just to catch you up on the lore. You need to be familiar with the power creep of the last 3 years of Yugioh, know about Jaxel’s career as a Youtuber, about Yugitubing (This is the term for it but damn does it look awful spelled out) in general and know the JJK references to The Strongest. That’s a lot of required reading man. But to be honest that's all kind of supplementary to the core idea of the video. Which is to ask the question of; Is it worth trying to make something perfect, is that even possible? It’s a similar question that Look Back asks, but in a much less straightforward way. Really good stuff and I watched it at a time when I was asking myself much the same thing. If you'd prefer something more digestible while still being a similar lane and surprisingly well directed for a Youtube video I'd recommend, You’ll Never Be Ready by Nathan Zed.
TV show of the Year - The Bear Season 3: Okay so this is kind of a freebie, The Bear season 3 happens to be the only TV show I watched this year. But! It was still good. I’m willing to bet that even if I had seen more stuff this would still be highly ranked, maybe even still the best. It gets a lot of criticism from people that I'm not gonna get into here because it's not really worth it, all those people are wrong and I barely remember what all the whining was about anyway. It was a transitional season of the show as it gears up for the fourth and final season and I can’t wait to see it through to the end.
Best unexpected surprise of the year - Girls Band Cry/ Challengers: There’s two things I want to bring up here and so I’m gonna cheat a little bit and talk about them both. it's my list anyway. Girls Band Cry is an anime that on the surface looks pretty unremarkable. Anime girls making a band is some shit you see happen all the time these days. But, few of those shows are written as sharply as this one. And while the 3D CGI animation can seem a bit off putting (and sometimes it just is) the show generally manages it well with pretty good animation and splashes of 2d artwork to round out some slightly more "jagged" edges. The show looks good more than it doesn’t and when it doesn't look good it's not always an animation thing, sometimes the lighting and compositing are bad. Which happens a lot in 2d shows too so I won't hold it against this one too much. It’s topped off by some great voice acting and decent music so all in all I enjoyed this show more than I thought I would.
Entry two is Challengers. I was NOT hyped about the adventures of Zendaya and her two freaked out white boys. Sorry but you cannot sell me on that premise, luckily that's only really a part of this movie which has so many more things going on. It's a surprisingly compelling story of twisted loves all set to some incredible music and choreographed through games of tennis. This movie really wowed me, especially for something that I almost didn’t go see. There are some truly inventive shots and camerawork on display in this movie too, stuff I’ve never seen before which is cool to experience. Even though it sometimes comes across as a bit goofy it never makes any scenes less compelling and for that alone it would earn an entry here.
Card of the year - Silvera, Wolf Tamer of the White Forest: This one is pretty self-indulgent. Card of the year - Folks. It’s Runick Fountain for the third year in a row! No but actually it’s Silvera, Wolf Tamer of the White Forest. I love all the White Forest cards and it was hard to pick just one, but this one gets the pick just because it's one of the best ones. I love flipping monsters face down and to be able to do it at quick effect speed on an opponents turn, potentially ending the turn when it procs is so satisfying. Cool artwork too and I freaking love synchro monsters.
Artwork of the year - i'm glad we had time: https://x.com/Dysfunct1ona1/status/1824562267536699458
It’s cliche to say but man a picture is worth a thousand words. There's so much in this relatively simple drawing that I just get lost in it. Gorgeous colors, nice textures and rough linework get me every time. I love when something feels sketchy and tactile. I had this as my phone background for a few months and it even loosely inspired me to write a short story which I also did this year. Love this one and I'm happy to spotlight it.
My Sunshine Award - Jujutsu Kaisen: I could talk for hours about JJK, this series means so much to me man. I always will. Was it rocky sometimes? Sure. But, ahh I can’t stay mad at it. It’s so good. It’s got some of the most best and most kinetic fight scenes in Shonen Jump recently complemented by a delightfully chewy power system that leaves so much room for experimenting and creative powers. Which Akutami uses to it’s maximum showing the limits of what it can do and then giving us characters that use that ceiling like a trampoline to do shit the other characters can’t even fully comprehend. JJK is some of the most fun reading a weekly manga has ever been for me and I will treasure it always. Gege Akutami, they can never make me hate you.
Thing I missed out on that I’m most excited to peep - Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction: This anime adaptation is one of the things I was most looking forward to this year. Unfortunately I never got around to watching it because of some trickery going on with the Crunchyroll subtitles. So I had to wait for some fansubbers to fix it, which they only managed to do a couple of months after the show was done airing. The manga is one of the best ones I’ve ever read and as a long time fan of Inio Asano’s work, I’m super glad to see a work of his get adapted. Especially since some of them are just kind of unadaptable. So I’m glad the one shot they may ever have at it ended up being a success; at least from what I’ve heard. I gotta tap in myself sometimes soon, I have it all downloaded so that'll be one of my first watches for the new year for sure.
Thing I'm most excited for in 2025 - False Memory: Studio's Tumble and Flint Sugar are something I'm always thinking about, I wrote a blog post about them earlier this year but extremely recently they announced that the full False Memory project is coming out next year. Fucking hell man, I'm so excited I barely know what to say. That shit might be life-changing. Plus its always nice to see indie projects actually come to fruition because so many of them collect hype for years and then just fizzle out.
And that's all folks! Thanks for rocking with me this year. It was a fucking brutal one to be quite honest but, all we can do is move forward. <3
