Over the past three-odd months I watched and read a bunch of anime, manga, and novels.
Books:

Amusing Ourselves to Death
There was also a dating how-to book—I forgot the title and don’t feel like digging it up…
Novel Hathaway’s Flash
Manga:
Look Back
Dandadan (still serializing, so I didn’t finish)
Goodbye, Eri
Anime / film:
Girls Band Cry
Gundam: The Origin, 0079, Char’s Counterattack, Hathaway’s Flash, Z (unfinished…), Mark I (very short)
Blade Runner 2022: Black Out (short)
Dune parts one and two
Paprika
Dandadan anime (first three episodes…)
Look Back
Arcane season 2
Serial Experiments Lain
Perfect Blue
Millennium Actress
Tokyo Godfathers
Cowboy Bebop
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie — Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
All of the above only got written down after I sorted it from Fedi—I can’t remember what I watch on my own.
Chronological notes from Fedi (all vnil.de—the self-hosted instance nuked the site and bounced).
Once it was on paper I realized I’d consumed a lot…

Girls Band Cry

I hadn’t really watched girl-band anime before; I only tried this one because a friend pushed it.

Two friends swore by it—after I finished I had to agree, it’s great, hahaha.

Aside: ad break

While scrolling Fedi I saw a repost about Kon Satoshi; I came to his work later, but I liked that quote—dropping it here.

Gundam: Hathaway’s Flash

I’d looked up watch orders, but still started with Hathaway’s Flash. Some shots and the line “How do you tear down a tangled system—while privilege exists, corruption will grow” pulled me in.
Extra screenshot

Gigi is absurdly pretty.

Gundam: The Origin

Two Char’s???

Later someone gets killed and swapped.

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Of course, like the human brain, every technology has its own biases. Beneath its material shell it tends to show what it is meant for. Only those ignorant of technology’s history believe it is perfectly neutral. Here is a joke that mocks such naivety: Edison might have announced the electric lamp sooner—except each time he turned it on he would only hold it to his mouth and say, “Hello? Hello?”
Of course that is only a joke. Every technology has its agenda, a metaphor waiting to be unpacked. Printing, for example, clearly leaned toward language. We can imagine a world where printing served only to reproduce photographs—and where the Catholic Church of the sixteenth century did not object—if that were true, the Reformation might never have happened. As Luther put it, if every household had God’s word on the table, Christians would not need the Pope to interpret it for them.
Misinformation does not mean false information; it means misleading information—ungrounded, irrelevant, fragmented, or superficial—information that creates the illusion of knowing many facts while drifting further from the truth. I am not saying TV news deliberately deceives Americans; I am saying that when news is packaged as entertainment, it inevitably deceives. I said earlier that TV news gives audiences entertainment, not information; the harm is not only that we lose real information, but that we lose the ability to tell what counts as information. Ignorance can be fixed—but what if we mistake ignorance for knowledge?

Gundam 0079

My blood pressure spiked here.

Iconic moment.

Give Fraw Bow a good ending 😭

Amuro, you have no heart 😭

Hehe.

Gundam: Char’s Counterattack

Hathaway, my Hathaway 😘

Hehe.
Quess is a bit too unhinged… I don’t get Hathaway killing Chan… though the danmu hinted there’s more to it.

Hathaway’s Flash — the novel

I reread Hathaway’s Flash while reading the novel. Both editions came from Z-Lib; the left column is a newer retranslation.
The film only hints at a Char-like reincarnation—not Amuro’s.

Kenneth thought again about the triangle between himself, his staff, and Mafty.
Unable to bear the organization yet unable to escape, he chose to be a soldier.
(If I could live exactly how I wanted, I might have become Mafty’s ally…)
How many self-aware people have felt the same sigh.
Yet for ordinary people, staying alive takes everything they have. Once they find a way to survive, they can only keep walking that path.
Ordinary people will never meet Earth Federation brass; more importantly, they have no room in daily life for politics’ hazy abstractions.
“Mafty Navue Erin, king of the just prophets—that name is you, Hathaway Noa. I know.”

Newtypes are terrifying. You can also see Hathaway here is still immature, quick to anger.

“If there were a way never to err, it would be to build the perfect dictatorship.”

I thought they kept Char’s Counterattack’s Chan-kills-Quess beat; turns out it’s Hathaway killing Quess.
Again and again, things Gigi blurts out without thinking come true.
Gigi you’re killing me 😭
Still—if this were Char, once he sensed how dangerous Gigi was, he’d either use her or have already engineered her death.

“Mm… strange. Everyone in Mafty is so gentle. Even so, they’re still terrorists.” Gigi watched Hathaway from afar in the flashlight beam. “Isn’t that how people are?” “Everyone on Earth could be Mafty’s ally. It’s just that terrorism wins no praise.”
Love this stretch.
“Every Gundam belonged to the Federation, yet rebels always piloted them. And every Gundam ends the same—no head, burned frame, scattered wreckage… but even without Gundams, the spirit of rebellion survives.”
I cried.
“…Everyone’s already done dying. I can do it too.”
How do you get the entrenched to give up their advantages willingly?
Asking Earth dwellers to move to space on their own is impossible, right?

You cheer when Mafty humiliates the high and mighty, want them to punish hunters who rough up residency checks, yet sneer when Mafty drives people off-world. Most people on Earth only want to protect their own interests, don’t they?
Comments also said Mafty’s base is in space, so they need hearts on Earth first—which makes sense: most people won’t vote themselves off the planet, no matter the appeal. You can’t ask the majority to chop off their own hand.

Personally I find Hathaway’s ending brutally dark—though UC rarely ends kindly. If Hathaway’s flash could change the world, Char and Amuro would have changed it long ago. In the end nobody knows how to break the Möbius strip; plenty see the Federation rot, yet dragon-slayers become dragons. Hathaway’s light shows others a path, but they sour fast once they walk it. Char thought wiping old humanity and letting Newtypes understand each other would fix things—but he and Amuro were Newtypes who understood each other perfectly and still killed each other. So Char’s Newtype idealism doesn’t land either. How to make the world better? Tomino offers no answer; no one does—only Amuro’s “I believe in human possibility.” That line is less an answer than a little comfort Tomino leaves kids stuck in this dark universe.
Forgot which Bilibili video comment I lifted this from—I copied it straight into my phone notes.

It’s not that whichever side Gigi joins wins—she’s more a goddess of fortune. Between Mafty and the Kilkeer forces, Gigi Andalucia reads as a symbol: Hathaway’s lust, his leftover obsession with Quess, Mafty’s rush versus Kilkeer’s weight, preparation, and readiness.

Gundam Z

The second Amuro!

No…
If your hands stay clean when you kill, you don’t know pain.

Yamete yo hhhh

How do you say nothing and open with slapping Kamille? Why can everyone slap Kamille?
He kicked Kamille unconscious—is this guy an idiot?

Again! I lost it laughing.

Gundam Mark I

LMAO eyes that can see space.

Char is too cute hahaha

I’m dying.

Blade Runner 2022: Black Out

No screenshots—two links instead.
[Shinichirō Watanabe’s Blade Runner]

🔗 https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1kS421X7C3/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=ac6decec08a33fb19bbff86d280d6a7d
[Blade Runner: Black Out 2022 — prequel short to 2049, directed by Shinichirō Watanabe]

🔗 https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1L54y1j7ba/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=ac6decec08a33fb19bbff86d280d6a7d
Also: Watanabe’s new LAZARUS is slated for 2025.

Dune parts one and two

I watched these sleep-deprived on a tiny phone screen—so take this with salt.
Binged both Dune films overnight.
Overall I didn’t like the duology—it feels preachy, all prophets and destiny, so much runtime proving the prophecy. The guy who fights Paul at the end got endless setup—birthday, mental illness—yet it all felt like it existed only for that brawl. Pacing felt off.
Nothing stuck visually; it’s not in Blade Runner 2049’s league. I haven’t seen The Wandering Earth, but I’d guess it’s closer to that tier? (Half-joking.)
A friend thought Paul was playing hard-to-get earlier—he wasn’t. The turns feel abrupt because prophecy keeps steering the plot: Mom uses Voice, Paul drinks blue water; blue water reveals bloodline, so he must act like that bloodline—with zero setup, the story jerks sideways.
Acting felt shaky too—running, duels, and brawls each had moments that snapped me out.
Near the end there’s a line (I think from Chani); I paraphrase:
We let prophecy and fortune-telling enslave us (throw in MBTI-style tests while we’re at it).
There’ll probably be a Dune 3; without breaking the prophecy Chani stays odd, and the Bene Gesserit need dismantling too.

Another weird beat: in Dune when mother and son walk the sand, there’s voice but almost no sand sound—felt uncanny.

Maybe nothing stuck because the phone screen was tiny… everyone was asleep so I had to watch on the sly.

Aside: ad break

A film-major friend told me someone huge in their field (name forgotten) kept viewing diaries since high school. I thought—how many films, how deep would that understanding go? Hard to imagine.

Paprika

Another film that left my spine tingling. I watched twice—once at home over National Day, once back at school with a friend at our desks.
“In terms of how they surface repressed consciousness, don’t you think the net and dreams are alike?”
I liked an analysis I saw once—can’t find it now…

Dandadan — anime and manga

The art rules—I love it.
The last beat is hilarious.
“My name is Takakura Ken.”

？？？？

GADDEM
I didn’t keep up with Dandadan; production’s slick, but the plot is basically air—nothing I wanted showed up in the anime (?
Might finish it someday.

Look Back — film and manga

That face—I’m dead.

Fujino, you draw because of Kyomoto, don’t you.
Kyomoto finds courage to step outside because of Fujino; Fujino keeps grinding because of Kyomoto—they complete each other.
No giant meteor slam for closure? (Stretch—I just wanted the structure tidier; tone might not allow it…)
I saw the movie too—love love love it; warm palette throughout, such a pure, gentle story.

Once in theaters, again when a rip dropped, plus endless edits online, hahaha.
[“I still want to talk with you about the universe and the sky”]

🔗 https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1FvmqYaE9h/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=ac6decec08a33fb19bbff86d280d6a7d

Goodbye, Eri — manga

Loved it. I’m sure it’ll get adapted.
Yūta blows the hospital at the moment of his mother’s on-screen death; heading to his own end he says, “This world is full of death.”
What is Yūta’s stance toward death?
Self-soothing, a way to dissolve his mother’s death?
Only today I got the cover: Eri’s real face is hidden; the phone screen’s face stands in for it.

We get to choose how we remember someone.

Arcane season 2

Wild—Piltover enforcers are all dead weight.
True tech vs. hextech mutation.

No middle finger—Jinx can’t flip one… taunt stat down.
Vander calling her Powder actually raised my hackles.
Sisters meet swinging—love language, I guess. Vi doesn’t buy Jinx saying Vander’s alive but still follows her—classic tsundere.
Fighting again—this passionate?
So fucking dramatic, but we call it destiny.
two side of the coin.
Arcane’s ending felt okay to me; the Ekko–Jinx dance in the branch timeline was warm.

lain

No matter where you go, people stay connected.
Lain delivering that line was magnetic.
Symbolism, will, power, gaze, presence.

Honestly I didn’t fully get Lain… went hunting for explainers.
[“Connected, no longer alone” — long breakdown of LAIN, sci-fi/philosophy peak]

🔗 https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1gC4y1i7TG/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=ac6decec08a33fb19bbff86d280d6a7d
Worth a look.
Since Lain it’s been duvet duvet duvet all day
🎶 and you don't seem to understand 🎶
🎶 I am falling, I am fading, I am drowning, help me to breathe 🎶
Still don’t get it hahaha.
[Psychology (and syzygy) in Lain — spoilers — C.J. Cala]

🔗 https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1SfUsYJE5R

Perfect Blue

After Perfect Blue I thought I mostly followed—then Rumi shows up at the end and I’m lost; the last line “I’m the real Mima” broke me. Need explainers.
That final Mima smile…

Millennium Actress

Millennium Actress’s story is so beautiful 😭

Tokyo Godfathers

The girl spits on passersby below; they look up and the banner film is Angel’s Tear—I lost it, Kon’s humor.

Cowboy Bebop

What is the Bebop OP—why is it so familiar!

I searched forever thinking it was in Whiplash—it isn’t hahaha, but others seem to have the same false memory.

Cool.

Dead—the second he said it I knew the three things.

Good jazz, woman?

Nonbinary?

Same.

Sweet Ed walking barefoot and on her hands.

Moving—seeing the old tape.
Freshman year we also wrote letters to ourselves four years out; I forgot if I phoned it in or meant it—the advisor lost the letters anyway.