superborb

Mirror Visitor Quartet (A Winter's Promise, The Missing of Clairdelune, The Memory of Babel, The Storm of Echoes) by Christelle Dabos, translated by Hildegarde Serle: The world has been broken up into 21 arks, each presided over by a family spirit whose descendants have related powers; our protag is about to marry into a different ark with an unknown and dangerous culture. Recced by skygiants. I found all four to be fun, zippy reads, with the second book being the most compelling -- the characters felt more natural, and you had more time with the setting and characters from book 1, as books 1+2 are largely set in one ark with the same characters. I also found those characters the most interesting, though there were many places where I had to tell myself it's book logic, the characters are magic. Some of the text, especially the dialog is tonally inconsistent, which I guess might be the translation, but also generally there were some infelicities, like repeating oriental doll as the only feature of one side character. I really liked some of the reveals in the last book as the hints earlier came together, but I don't know that that needed so many words...  Also parts of the worldbuilding logic are a bit, dwelling on it too long is probably best avoided, lest it fall apart. After contemplating it more, I think I overall enjoyed the ending as satisfying on a worldbuilding level, but what it did to the family spirits was not a satisfying resolution.

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (DNF): A history of cancer. Very easy to read, but not much new -- snippets of the discoveries on the way without much depth, so I stopped midway through.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis: Letters from a demon tempter to his nephew on how to tempt humans. I feel like I've learned a lot about what C.S. Lewis valued in a person and in society... But relatively few universal truths -- the multiple ways in which man tricks himself with a sense of superiority notable among them. Less fun than the premise made it seem.

Ghost Music by An Yu: Former concert pianist with depression finds a connection to a mysterious disappeared pianist and mushrooms. I really enjoyed this and read it in one gulp. Atmospheric meditation on loss and searching for meaning, with compelling characters.

Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa: First book in a series set in a fantasy Africa based world, heavily about power and caste. Do not love the way the world building has to be spelled out, it felt a bit YA? Felt often that people were making decisions / things were happening that drove plot instead of made sense. Didn't continue to the next book.

Nü Er Hong (2023): One of those mini GL cdramas. Pretty cute, super fast paced. I guess the twist was technically foreshadowed from the beginning, but it was so surprising I didn't expect it hahaha. I do enjoy these kinds of tropes (even though 'suck the poison out' really shouldn't work that much time afterwards...), but I don't think the mini dramas are for me...

Home Is Not Here, by Wang Gungwu: a memoir about growing up in Ipoh around the time of WW2. From qian's rec! It was interesting to read about his experiences and the people he met. I found it especially interesting that the Chinese-in-China were more likely to have been learning English for cultural value, as opposed to the overseas Chinese learning it primarily for its usefulness. However, could have used editing to avoid repetition and inconsistencies and also generally needed copyediting. Enjoyable if you're curious about the time period, but I didn't find it insightful enough to be a blanket rec.

In Other Words, by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated by Ann Goldstein: Memoir of the author's reasons for, after a series of successful English works, making the decision to learn and then write exclusively in Italian. Quote "I believe that reading in a foreign language is the most intimate way of reading" perhaps sums up her approach to Italian. Some interesting thoughts on language -- the chapter on how people would not understand her Italian because they perceive her to be a foreigner really hit. Though, I found it interesting that she had the experience of people in the US perceiving her English as requiring justification (portrayed as emotionally to the same degree as in Italy), when I've heard often from the younger generation of immigrants in my circles that this is much less common in the US compared to Europe. Anyway, I found the experience of reading moderately excruciating: she's just so pretentious and I found it repetitive (I simply do not care about wallowing around in language to this extent). On a more serious note, her extreme, for lack of better word, foreignization of language felt strange. Perhaps related to her much more extreme experience growing up bilingual? Because she's a writer? A register of discussion that I do not usually engage in? I would be curious what people thought about this, but I also cannot recommend it generally.

Hui-Lan Koo, Madame Wellington Koo: An Autobiography, as Told to Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer: Madame Koo grew up fabulously wealthy in Java, the spoiled child of the "Rockefeller of Asia", and the book covers her childhood in the 1890s through China during the warlord period and finally as the wife of the Ambassador of the Republic of China during WWII. From qian's rec! Could use an editor. I found it really weird that she doesn't mention her first marriage/son to the point that she refers to her children with her remarriage as if they were her first/second. She's so wildly rich and out of touch that I found it easy to sympathize with the people who looked and chafed at this wealth disparity. Her preoccupations are just so consumerist? You can tell she really cared about what other fancy people thought of her and those are the feelings that lasted the decades until she told this story. I guess she is obligated to care about the glamorous diplomatic life, but it's so glittering... What a waste of money, food, and time. Fascinating to read about though, and the little tidbits about people are interesting; wish it was more of the tidbits and less of her preoccupations. Her beautiful pink palace in Beijing sure is memorably described!

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, by John le Carré: A classic (/the/ classic?) cold war spy novel! skygiants recced this here. I was a bit surprised at how... serviceable the prose read? Not that I expected it to be High Lit or anything, just the distance between 1963 and 2024 seemed very narrow! I felt a bit like le Carré couldn't imagine why someone would be attracted to the communist ideology and so Liz came off as-- not childish, but unexplainable in motivation. Still, a classic for a reason, a fast moving and exciting read.

She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat (Season 1): cute f/f jdrama (total runtime 2.5 h) basically summed up by the title -- a woman who would really love to cook larger meals discovers her neighbor has a big appetite. The social commentary is definitely a major part of the show, but never felt too heavy handed (e.g. severe period pain means you should go to the gyn) -- the realization of the protag that she's lesbian takes a few eps, but it always felt natural along the way. I like that the food is home cooking food and not super fancy! Though Japanese home cooking uses so much plastic wrap lol. (I knew this, but still!) The main leads both felt like normal people and so did all the side charas; no OTT obnoxious coworkers here, just normally obnoxious ones! If the summary sounds appealing, it is well executed and I would recommend!

What Did You Eat Yesterday? (2019 drama and the 2020 special): Cute adaptation from a manga following the life of a middle aged gay couple and centered around the food they cook for each other. (Though despite their age and living together, you later realize they aren't that serious yet -- part of the arc is their relationship developing!) Lots of fun moments -- loved the subtle humor of the supermarket lady and the bargain grocery shopping, and there were several scenes that were genuinely laugh out loud -- but sometimes the drama was just so prolonged. I know this is very jdrama style, esp when adapting from a manga, but I do feel like this is presented more as a slice of life (realistic) drama instead of leaning into that type of humor as a comedy drama, so it felt out of place when it got so extended. The emotional arc as the main chara's parents and the main chara himself come to terms with him being gay was so satisfying ("ARE YOU HALF-ASSING YOUR HOMOSEXUAL LIFESTYLE" iconic), though the main chara's stress over being closeted and his internalized homophobia was extremely extended and painful to watch. The real down factor in this show is the secondary pairing, who are SO ANNOYING; they do catalyze some interesting discussion over gay culture, but is it worth the ridiculously OTT childishness... (Another adaptation issue where because the slice of life vibe is trying to play it as normal when it needs to be played as OTT.) Anyway, cute and satisfying, and I enjoyed that there were lots of extended cooking scenes! Except when they did ketchup pasta.

Loads behind on my flist (dwlist? what DO we call it), but will catch up this weekend!

Translation State, by Ann Leckie: Set in the same universe of the Ancillary series, and told from the PoV of the three main characters, the mystery of a missing (escaped?) Presger translator leads to the consequential decision of if the Presger translators can become human. (The Presger are Mysterious Powerful aliens and the translators are mostly-humans reconfigured to serve as intermediaries between them and humans.) It was fine? I enjoyed the weirdness of the Presger translator childhood and it was an easy, fast read. The plot was very straightforward, but some of the worldbuilding was more subtle. The book was quite heavy handed on gender and consent, but it didn't cross the line to didactic. I think I wanted it to be more than it was though -- more insightful or complex.

Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (DNF): I'm just noting this for my future reference, that I gave up 12% of the way in because I just didn't care about anything happening. Maybe worth another shot when I'm in a spectacle heavy mood? Fight scenes that don't bring world, plot, or character development are just not very interesting to me.

Moonlight Chicken (2023): Chicken rice diner owner hooks up with one of his customers; cue complicated getting together storyline! Mostly a family and relationship centric show. There were some really interesting dynamics! The "exes but I still care about you" point was done well. I also thought they expressed the intergenerational differences in acceptance of being gay in a nuanced way! However, they seemed to be Going Somewhere with the commentary on rich people, but then it just disappeared after being a pretty important conflict? I am also wildly curious what the Watsonian explanation for why 'can only afford one beer a day' Jim feeds his cat expensive single serve cat gogurts, but it was cute product placement. Not very long at 8 episodes of 1 h 15 min, and pacing was mostly good (the teenage B couple often slowed down the pace, but they were cute). They also do a good job styling the characters differently / the actors look unique, so it was easy to keep track of them. Would recommend as a cozy relationship centric BL.

Marry My Dead Body (關於我和鬼變成家人的那件事) (2022): Homophobic main character picks up a red envelope and is told that gay marriage is legal in the living world now so it must be legal in the ghost world too! It's a cop show again smh, though at least because it's Taiwanese the cops don't have to be Good Guys. More of a comedy / light in tone movie, but then the MC has some rage problems (plus the homophobic and weight insults) so it felt a bit jarring sometimes? But I laughed several times and it never hit my second hand embarrassment squick so overall a success on the comedy front for me. I also liked the Jolin Tsai music choices. While the ghost husband is gay, gay relationships are on screen, and there are definite arranged marriage vibes, I doooooo think you needed pretty thick slash goggles to read the couple as a romantic one on screen. Overall, I enjoyed the watch!
CW: Aaron Yan is... in this. And now I've looked up why this needed warning and: yikes.

Yong-Jiu Grocery Store (用九柑仔店) (DNF): This was supposed to be a small town convenience store slice of life. It started that way and then totally went off the rails midway through (and @halfcactus skimmed ahead and said it didn't get back on the rails). I enjoyed some of the early episodes a lot! I liked the soy sauce maker who makes everything by hand! Aaaaand then the romances took over and they were SO weird in vibes. Like, they just seemed awkward! Then we got to the female lead's and female lead's mother's backstory and like, it was terribly melodramatic and boring at the same time! So much a stereotypical ~complicated mother~ that it was superficial instead of complex, SO MUCH YELLING by the female characters. Really sad because the first couple episodes had a lot of promise.

Post apocalypse, a mushroom mutates and takes on human form in order to go to the human base and search for his stolen spore.

The translation does have quite a few basic mistakes that change meanings (e.g. missing 'not', 'without' instead of 'while'), but is largely readable. I read this (mostly) in Chinese for book club, and it really was not good enough to stand up to the three chapters a week discussion level of scrutiny hahaha. I don't think I liked this, but I also think that's at least partially because of the close analysis process.

Though, IDK, I do usually need my soft scifi to be a little more-- engaged with the metaphor? It makes gestures in that direction, but e.g. I never was convinced the mushroom had a different perspective than a human would. Also, felt weird to have a story about mutation that wasn't a metaphor for marginalized people at any level, though that may be because it's an English-only literature trope. 

To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers: Astronauts exploring four habitable worlds, as the time dilation and time required to travel to distant planets stretches their connection to Earth. Each planet showed a true aspect of scientific research, in a way rarely done well in scifi. Overall, I thought the book was pleasant, but ultimately forgettable.

Far from the Light of Heaven, by Tade Thompson: Locked room murder in space: a long haul transport ends when the captain wakes to find some of the passengers have died. It was... fine? I did not enjoy the prose style, though it did fit with the short, punchy pacing, and often felt that people were just saying things to convey info. It isn't really a mystery novel as you don't have enough info to solve it before the characters, so it's more an action / survival in space story.

Mamamoo MY CON concert: The first big standalone concert I've ever attended! We had decent seats, right in the center. However, we were pretty far away so the camera work being not great was a definite detractor from the experience. Maybe I should have brought opera glasses ahaha, though I think that would be unusual at a pop concert. I enjoyed it! I do like most of their music, and the outfits were eyecatching (sparkles really are hard to catch on camera, aren't they). If I were to go back in time though, I miscalculated just how annoying it would be to get to the venue and it miiiiiight not have quite been worth the sitting in traffic for 3+ hours to get there (and then another hour back).

Not Me (2021): Naive and privileged White must disguise himself as his twin brother, who he's been separated from for 15 years, and go undercover to discover who beat his brother into a coma. Complication: his brother has started a college protest group that is about to commit arson and now he's in the middle of it. Not a subtle show with respect to gay rights, rule of law, etc, but I can see how that would be really refreshing in many ways? The arguments about how to best take action to protest were well done, and the tensions and relationships between the characters mostly reasonable and not too over the top. The main relationship is very cute and stays at the right level of screentime too -- and I think if the fandom does not yet have a "Hot n Cold" vid, this is a missed opportunity. (It's not actually hot and cold, but from the perspective of the love interest, the twin situation definitely feels like it...) You must suspend a lot of disbelief on the twin swap, the realities of tattoo and piercing care FOR the twin swap, and best choices in the face of raging fires. Overall, it's pretty short (14 eps of 45 min) and a solid watch.

New Life Begins (2022): Set in a pseudo-historical China where there are nine province-slash-kingdoms with one ruling over the other, each with its own distinctive culture; the plot occurs between annual selections where each province sends representative women to the ruling province to be selected as wives or concubines for the ruling family's sons. This is very superficial eye-candy overall, with some nice emphasis on food. I also appreciate that they do have a serious postpartum depression storyline, even if it's a bit hamfisted. I do love that we get lots of girls on screen and they have agency. Aaaaand I have a list of complaints that I will hide here:

Problems often arise just for plot, or situations occur that contradict previously established facts about the society.
There's also (tbf, standard at this point in Chinese censorship) weird tension where they can't have the emperor be anything but insightful and good, but also they need a comically evil crown prince to defeat. As a result, the emperor is, once again, the plot device.
It's HUGELY biased towards agriculture and against a nomad lifestyle; our protagonist gets the nomad descendants to welcome farming after resisting forever with just a few words. (Also very into free trade?)
In general, they seem to want to subvert tropes, but simply don't put the thought in or the effort needed to actually succeed. For example, the momo having a Tragic Past that caused her to be strict about the women learning proper etiquette doesn't satisfy: the problem with the rules for women isn't that the world is changing, it's that they never protected the women anyway. And one province is supposed to be the 'matriarchal' society, which seems to just mean a flipped standard patriarchal society with military women. Don't get me wrong, I love watching the women from that province get to be badass, but it's not exactly thoughtful about how a matriarchal society would have evolved OR how it would have influenced neighboring provinces when they are de facto acting as the same country.
I get that this is supposed to be a superficial type show, but really, much of the relationships and characterization does rely too heavily on an outline instead of depth.

PlanD: I realized when I was reorganizing my DW tags that I had recced a youtube channel before, so it seemed that I should rec the one I've been watching consistently for the last year! She's a vlogger who has a small sewing business and mostly vlogs food and cute shops. It's very soothing to watch! I also learned some nice little tips for recipes.

Whale Weekly (the Moby Dick version of Dracula Daily) (DNF) was simply not as amenable to this format for me; each day was too much day to fit in an email sized reading experience.

All the Horses of Iceland, by Sarah Tolmie: in the 9th century, an Icelandic man travels to Mongolia, bringing back horses and experiencing the mixing of cultures on the trade route. From sophia_sol's rec! This was a short, fast read, and I enjoyed the varying customs, religions, and languages encountered along the way. IMO the method of storytelling held the world at a distance, making it feel less embedded in its world than I would have preferred. The is-it-or-isn't-it magic ends up feeling more meaty, though Watsonianly, the main character is here to trade and bring his goods safely home. Overall, the theme of the trader, negotiating different cultures and how their own experiences shape their abilities, is very compelling.
CW: slavery, sexual slavery, discussion of killing disabled infants and elderly people

There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job, by Kikuko Tsumura, translated by Polly Barton (DNF): A thirty-something Japanese woman takes a chain of temp jobs. I picked this up because it was meitachi 's favorite of 2022, but although I enjoyed the first half, it was a little too 'nothing happens' for my current mood. The jobs and the characters are all pretty interesting though, so I might pick it back up in the future.

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo: after I watched the drama adaptation, people recommended the book! The book does definitely avoid the issues I had with the drama, giving the female protagonist much more to do (and it helps that it's from her PoV), and avoided egregious contrivance and mistakes by the protagonists. I definitely enjoyed the second half of the book, when the action gets going -- they cut one of the antagonists in the drama, and I enjoyed her storyline. However, there were two huge issues with the book: first, it falls into that heavily overexplaining style that I absolutely detest, and it wasn't even done with a deft hand, just clunky explanation shoved in, sometimes of a too modern perspective. Second, it needs editorial polish; it kept repeating already established points, sometimes mildly contradicting itself. Both these issues would be resolvable with a good editor, so it's a shame they detract from the otherwise interesting book.

瑯琊榜 by 海宴 (the Nirvana in Fire book): I'm proud of book club for finishing the book! It took just under a year in the end. The book and the drama largely follow the same plot beats, with some secondary character changes / emphasis changed, and I think overall the drama works better; the chance to do revisions polished the storytelling and (mostly) let the secondary characters develop more. The iconic Helena comment from the book club was probably: "He was riding a gray horse" -> THANKS TO SHIJING TRAINING I KNOW THIS IS ACTUALLY A GRAYISH BAY HORSE WITH BLACK HAIR. thank you, i will now exit with the 5839 horse color words i know, and the most heartbreaking point: i wonder if mcs, growing up on tales from his mom about her favorite sister, was primed to expect more from liyang than prince jing did. Reading the Chinese text along with the fan translation, though they sometimes differed because of untracked revisions, was a mostly useful experience; it was kind of required in our joint Eng-Chn reading club anyway. Overall, while I had a good time, I'd recommend the drama over the book.

Cherry Magic the Movie: a sequel to the Cherry Magic drama, picking up where it leaves off. They're soooooo awkward, but again the second-hand embarrassment doesn't hit for me because they're so earnest. The conflicts seems human and understandable. Great costuming, the suits really fit the characters! The only exception was the wedding suits -- matching tan suits against a tan building??? Anyway, if you liked the drama, you'll like the movie, but it's definitely a particular low-intensity slice-of-life BL taste.

Hidden Blade (无名) (2023): WWII era spy movie. The leads are, of course, handsome and 30s/40s era Shanghai leads to excellent costumes. The Shanghainese is decent enough, much better than the usual level. However, the story is too predictable, the main fight scene doesn't bring the plot forward (a cardinal sin), and though one may complain that none of the women are well developed, tbh none of the men are either. The propaganda level is lower than it could have been, but that's not saying much; and from that, all characterization and reveals are as expected. (Much confusion is generated by time jump / cut choices, and this attempts to complicate the otherwise straightforward plot.) But it's the sort of movie that you'd know you'd be interested in from just the premise (or the actors involved).

This 700 page tome is an attempt to change the narrative of how humans organize themselves and therefore implicitly critique the rigidity of our society now. Overall, I learned a LOT from the book; the details of many of the societies, historical and indigenous, were new to me and it was organized in a novel way. From lirazel's rec, which actually details the arguments the book makes. 

The main flaw is that while it's fun to read takedowns, the book often tilts into defensive territory and too much ink is spilled on this. It reads like a series of university lectures, which is far too repetitive for a book. And yet despite this, sometimes their own hypotheses were very much citation needed, when they overreached.

A collection of interesting tidbits:
- Many cultures made seasonal changes of social structure; the variations in the seasonal changes are also huge. For example, European carnival, when social structures are turned upside down.
- "Scholars and professional researchers, on the other hand, have to actually make a considerable effort to remain so ignorant" lol
- A great deal of space is devoted to hammering the point home that it was Native American ideas of democracy and free thinking that started the Enlightenment, and it was not brought over from Europe with the guns and germs etc. (This was a very important point! It was repeated a LOT.) (Also, our ideas of more indulgent child rearing originate there too.)
- Ancient Greeks considered elections not democratic and an aristocratic mode (sortition was the democratic choice)-- and this carried through for Medieval Europe as well.
- There was a long period of time when people explored farming (on the flood plains ofc), while still hunting/foraging. Farming was originally a method of last resort, to get food out of less productive land.
- The process of schismogenesis, when neighboring groups start defining themselves in opposition to each other.
- The authors posit the basic freedoms are to move, to disobey, to rearrange social ties. "To move" is the most basic one, from which the others derive; obviously has implications for our current society.
- The space in between the famous dynasties and empires is when people were probably least oppressed etc, and more work should be devoted to that.
- Humans always CHOOSE how their communities are shaped deliberately.

Anyway, I learned a lot from the book, but I feel like it could have used some tightening. I also am not necessarily completely convinced of all the presented evidence, BUT I think the points it makes are valuable nonetheless. On the scale of popsci books, it's on the pop side, very much a brief survey, but is not annoyingly so.

Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao: Mechas meets Medieval China. This book was so polarizing that I gave in to find out where I landed. I'll say that it started rough, especially in prose. For example,

“Hey!” A laugh ruptures out of my gloom.
“What? Where’s the lie?” He stamps his hands on his hips, sleeves flopping.
“Okay, fine! There’s no lie.” I strain back a grin.

The emotional portrayals were highly inconsistent-- at some point, there's a single line where she suddenly wants acceptance from the other pilots, while both before and after she mostly disdains them. And the incongruous rants and oppressions feel like they're meant to address the real world instead of the world in the book. I also see why some people said the threesome read more as a V and others that it was a proper threesome-- it depended on if they found the lines addressing the m/m relationship believable or not. However, once the book gets going, the prose does smooth out and the pacing starts hitting its stride. I /did/ really like the reveal in the last five pages; it felt well foreshadowed and more importantly, consistent in a way other pieces did not. At its best, it reads like a power fantasy fanfic... And there's a reason that's popular.

The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich: In Minneapolis of Nov 2019 - 2020, the protagonist, an Ojibwe woman who works for a local Indigenous bookstore after years of incarceration, is first haunted by her most annoying customer and then experiences the real world events of that time period. From chestnut_pod's rec. The book tries to do so much, in addressing a myriad of political and personal stresses, and occasionally overreaches, but mostly successfully conveys the trauma of that year and of America's past. I enjoyed the plot around the most annoying customer more than I expected! I didn't see the ~twist~ coming, and once I read it, it made total sense, which I do prize as a reading experience. It was also an interesting experience to visit Birchbark Books as I was reading it! I don't know that this was a style that would appeal to everyone, given how scattered it could be, but I really see why Erdrich is so revered.

Afterparties, by Anthony Veasna So: Short story collection centered around a Californian Cambodian American community. From meitachi's rec. A very strong and distinct sense of the author's views on life and his community and himself permeates the whole book. My favorite story was "We Would've Been Princes!" because I found the characters (archetypes?) the most interesting. The stories felt oddly held at a distance for how intimate the voice was, perhaps most exemplified by the unsexy sex scenes. I think ultimately the collection wasn't to my taste, but if I had encountered the individual stories as one-offs, I might have liked them more? Just as a whole collection, the insights to story ratio was too low.

Lena, by qntm: A short story written in the style of wikipedia on the first executable image of a human brain. Mentioned here, but that post is, imo, somewhat avoiding the purpose of the short itself, which is definitely about capitalism (specifically per the author, the gig economy). I found the thoughts-to-length ratio high.

The Ghost Bride (2020): In 1890s Colonial Malacca, the matriarch of a wealthy family proposes that Li-lan become a ghost bride to solve her family's financial struggles. (Despite the setting, it's primarily in Taiwanese Mandarin.) Recced by dolorosa_12. Although the plot was engaging enough, and I especially enjoyed how much fun the actor for the deceased son was clearly having at being the dramatic dead bad guy, it overall relied too heavily on sudden contrivances and obvious mistakes by characters for my taste. Despite it being set up as a mystery, the female protag does not get to do nearly enough problem solving. Also, far too much loyal servant trope. Still, a fun enough romp, and it was exactly the length and subject desired for a varied group so I was satisfied.

Wild Babies ep 1: A documentary about baby animals in the wild, which I wouldn't normally include in my media diet except I needed to complain that I hate when nature documentaries cut together different times and locations to try and make something more dramatic. All you need are cute babies! There's enough drama from the natural world, it's annoying and misleading to do this.

Everything Everywhere All at Once: Interdimensional, mostly zany adventure, with a dash of family feelings. I found most of the humor spot on and hilarious! My mom's friends thought it was more for our generation than hers, and I think the humor is the reason. I... am not sure the family feelings or times when it tried to be ~meaningful~ worked for me. Enjoyed it, but (IMO) not very deep / thought provoking (either on the scifi or nihilism), more of a humor movie.

Night Bus: Short 20 min horror film set on the last bus of the night. From Neocha's review. I thought the animation style, a cut-out technique, was very interesting, though the story was whatever.

Legend of Yunze s1+special: A webdrama, with very short (~2 min) episodes, only showing the highlights / outline of the story; s1 is a xianxia setting and the special is modern. S1 was a little too standard plot-wise for my taste, but the special was fun. The manipulation was a lot when concentrated on just the highlights though.

Land of the Lustrous (2017 anime): The Lustrous, a crystalline species, are under constant threat of being harvested by the Lunarians, who attack frequently; the protagonist is too fragile to fight, but yearns to do so. From rushthatspeaks' rec. Beautiful color work and nice animation. The story is very compressed, which made it hard for me to really care about the characters, but the pacing also meant it kept interest high through the entire runtime. Some interesting thoughts prompted by the ability of the Lustrous to incorporate other materials into their bodies, but at the cost of losing the memories stored in those lost parts; on the other hand, if a Lustrous shatters, they can be restored as long as the pieces are rejoined. I liked it, but it's definitely not a complete story, and the manga seems very complicated...