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Looking back- 2016
🕑 Added 2016-12-30 10:31:45 +0000 UTC Well, this was an ...interesting year at least. Let´s have a look on my personal favourites from a media-consuming perspective. Not everything in this list is actually released in 2016, it just happened I watched it this year.Best Series I watched: "The Wire"
(Yeah, I started to watch it a while ago but gave up to understand the slang without subttitles. After my birthday I got the Bluray-Box and started from scratch. And this time, with some help from subtitles, I really got into the world of Baltimore. Season 3 and 4 were the best and the series overall is on my absolute favourites of all time now.)
Best movie I saw in cinema: "Arrival"
(I liked the fresh taking on the aline-genre. It´s a very calm sci-fi-movie with a pretty intelligent idea/twist. But that almost counts for all the movies of the same director-
honorable mentions: "Toni Erdmann"- very good, tragic comedy from germany. It´s the european "Lost in Translation" in some ways. If there was no arrival, it´d be my favourite cinema-experience.
"Thangerine L.A." as the best indepent movie. It looks always vibrant and it tells a very down to earth story, changing from being overly upbeat to being really sad in the end
most heart-breaking movie: "Captain Fantastic" (if I haven´t seen Youth and watched this earlier intead this would have been my movie of the year probably).
And the best horror-movie: "The Witch". If you want to see what Kubrick´s Reincarnation does, watch this movie)
Most ignored movie in cinemas 2016: Something with Ghostbusters.
Most fun game I played: "Splatoon"
(It was very late that I entered this game, but I had much fun for a few weeks playing online and at least being part of the last festival. I will defintely check out the new game for Nintendo Switch- I´m happy there´s a new original franchise for Nintendo-lovers.)
Biggest disappointment of games: "Starfox Zero"
(Who thougt they´d give the franchise a new chance after ruining it so much by letting it be raped by all kinds of third-party-developers. And then they made it a multi-task-game. Look on two seperate screens and manage the movement-contolls... It feels like work, but not fun. A pity, as somewhere I feel there´s a good game buried under all that controll-junk. )
Best game-character of 2016: Trico
(I liked playing "The last Guadian". For everything good there was a problem in comparison, so I never quiet left my analysis-view and was completely sucked in by the emotional appeal. I hope my favourite game-review-master "matthewmatosis" will someday make an in-depth analyis of the title to display it´s many merits and flaws. Still the team did a great job giving Trico his own life.)
Best looking game of 2016: "Odin´s Spehere"
(I own the collectors-edition of the HD-Remake, as I´m a big Vanillaware-Fan. It´s very personal, but I prefer the handdrawn graphics about everything purely CG. I´m happy I got a chance to play this big title of them after all. It doesn´t hold up to Muramasa or Dragon´s Crown, but it had a lot of nice moments and interesting characters.)
Most solid game in 2016: "Dark Souls 3"
(The fire fades eventually and only darkness remains. Still fire fights back and tries to rekindle itself, with an inavoidable outcome. If that´s Dark Souls 3´s theme they fulfilled their goal perfectly. It´s more of the same for all Dark Souls-lovers, but it is no revolution. I heard somewhere they planned to implement something new in this last part of the series. After I played through it two times I can´t say what this new thing should be. I dind´t mislike it but I felt like eating last day´s dish in a lukewarm state. I still prefer Bloodborne of last year.)
My favourite movie I saw in 2016: "Youth"
(I like "Cheyenne" of the same director as well, and "La grande belezza" the least, but "Youth" topped it all. It´s pretty near to being a perfect film for me.)
Best animation movie I saw in cinema : "Kubo"
(It beats "zootopia" for emotions and characters for me)
Best anime and manga: "My hero academia"
(After finishing the first season I read on the manga, which is even better. it´s just a perfectly entertaining shonen-story, very action-driven, but still with a lot of heart and interesting characters. I look forward to anime-season 2 in 2017, hopefully!)
Favorite cartoon-show: "Gravity Falls" (Such a great finale)
Most anticipated disappointment in cinema 2017: "Ghost in the Shell"
(Nothing wrong with Scarlett Johanson in a body-tight suit, alright. I also opposed to the general resistance against her in the lead role- 1. let´s see how good japanese did with rela life adaptions of anime so far... hmm. ok, cutie honey really is fun, but apart from that? 2. She´s a cyborg, and thus her "race" is irrelevant. Come on. .. Aside from that, afte rthe trailer I really think the movie will lack of soul and heart. Mark my words. Just watch the anime again instead.)
Most looked forward games in 2017: Persona 5. Yakuza 0. Breath of the Wild.
Most anticipated movie in 2017: The dark tower. ( I don´t really think there´s a good way to adapt the books of King, as they are a mess in a good way. But I´m open to surprises, as I also didn´t expect to be "Mad Max Fury Road" being good- or even being my favourite action-movie of the past then years)
That´s it. Enjoy life, everyone. Next years gonna be even better than this one.
