I won’t sugar coat things: 2020 has been a dumpster fire of a year. Just replace the “This Is Fine” meme’s room on fire with the whole world on fire and that’s 2020. Since the beginning of January, nothing has gone right. It’s like some gods saw us humans getting used to things down here on Earth and decided “Let’s test them and see how well they’ll survive!” which resulted in, well, everything going very, very south. Things have gotten so bad that I’m starting to question why people are having kids during this chaos. Have a family, fine, but do you not see the hellfire in front of you? It’s bad enough the USA still doesn’t have universal health insurance… Anyway, I have never been so happy to end a year and begin a new one with a, hopefully, clean slate. I highly doubt things will go back to “normal” until Spring 2021 at the earliest because of a certain virus that’s still affecting the world, but I think we can take some solace that 2020 is nearly over and we can erase a majority of it from our minds. With all that being said, there were some highlights to come out this year. The world may be on fire (literally and figuratively…), but there are some things that have helped us make it through everything. So, to end this year off on a good note, I’ll share my favorite things to come out of 2020 that I am actually grateful for. This is not a Top 10 list, but a list of things that I enjoyed that I think you can pick up on too. So, let’s begin:
1. Animal Crossing New Horizons:
Get ready to hear a lot about video games because these are the main things that have kept me sane. Animal Crossing: New Horizons came at the perfect time. Completely coincidental, but the game came out right when the pandemic started and everyone went into lockdown. With no chance of going outside, the best thing to do was to hang out by our laptops, phones, TVs, and game systems to entertain ourselves. Horizons provided us the life that we lost; a life where we could go outside, hang out with friends, meet new people, and be a part of our own neighborhood. Playing this game was the closest thing we got to normalcy at the time. There was nothing epic about it per-say. You didn’t have to fight a dragon or go on a country-long journey to find treasure. Instead, you did mundane tasks like chat with friends, collect bugs and fish, create tools, go shopping, things like that. As boring as that sounds, it’s actually a lot of fun. Anyone who is a collector would have a blast collecting new objects and creating their own island. Though, you would need the patience of a saint to get every little thing this game provides. I’ll admit that I stopped playing around September due to boredom of repetitiveness, but I love the game while it lasted. I’ll be happy to pick it up again if I ever have the urge to in the future. Though, I’ll probably have to time travel a bit since I missed a couple of months. Oh, well.
2. Community:
I’ve watched Community before. Not in its entirety, but enough to enjoy what I saw and get a lot of laughs out of it. Whenever I need something to watch to relieve my boredom, I tend to go to comedy shows. Mainly because they’re easy to watch, follow, and just genuinely enjoy. It’s one of the reasons why I’m trying to watch New Girl now instead of Breaking Bad (even though it’s my favorite show, there’s no way I’d watch it again for a “good time”). Since I was stuck at home, I thought I’d finally watch Community in its entirety and, boy, am I glad I did. This is one of the most unique shows I’ve ever seen. And I do mean unique. One episode you’re watching a clip show of things that were never shown and the next you’re watching an episode almost entirely made as an 8-bit video game (this actually does happen). Because the show takes place in a community college and follows a group of 7 diverse misfits, creator Dan Harmon and his team can go as balls to the walls as they want. There’s one episode that explores different timelines, one that is a Christmas Claymation special, and a few that have insane paintball wars till the bitter end. If anything, the creativity of the show is the best part of it and I encourage anyone curious to check out an insane episode or two.
3. The Good Place:
Like I mentioned earlier, I like watching comedies in my downtime. They’re straightforward (most of the time) and easy to watch. Sometimes I put them on just for background noise. The Good Place was up my ally. I love me good comedies, shows that make me think, and Michael Schur, the showrunner for The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Brooklyn 99. So, one weekend, I decided to sit down and finally take a chance on The Good Place hoping it would be as good as I’ve heard. It ended up being great. The show follows Elanor Shellstrop who dies and is sent to The Good Place, a heavenly utopia. The problem is that Elanor doesn’t deserve to be in The Good Place due to the horrible person she was on Earth. Now it’s up to her to figure out how she can become a good person to stay in The Good Place. Filled with laughs, quirky characters and gags, an amazing cast, and profound lessons on philosophy, The Good Place is one of the most meaningful shows I’ve seen and I would happily watch it again.
4. Netflix in General
If anything, Netflix has helped kee’s best year yet. The anime has done wonders giving its fans its best season yet along with the incredible movie e to watch otherwise. Community and The Good Place are two examples. I’ve watched things like The Queen’s Gambit, Klaus, New Girl, and Hilda. I’ve completed all of them except for New Girl which is good, but it’s not clicking with me like the other shows have. Nick and Jess are my favorites, Winston’s fine, but I don’t like Schmit and Cece as much as I should though Max Greenfield does a great job as Schmit so I’m not denying that. Maybe I’ll pick it up again when I have the energy, but for now, I’m good with watching those “No Context” videos of the show to satisfy my hunger for comedy. The rest are great. The Queen’s Gambit does a great job at showing the rise and descent of chess prodigy, Beth Harmon, in compelling and somber ways. Klaus is an amazing Christmas film that not only has a great story, but also amazing hand-drawn animation that I wish would come back in more force like it did during its Golden Age. And Hilda is just a magical animated delight following a young girl going on mystical adventures in a similar vein to Adventure Time though not as chaotic. I’m already thinking of things to watch next on Netflix and other streaming services since we’re still going to be here for a while. I wish I could watch more things, but streaming services cost money and I only have so much in my wallet.
5. My Hero Academia:
This may have been My Hero Academia’s best year yet. The anime has done wonders giving its fans its best season yet along with the incredible movie Heroes Rising being released back in March. And we have another one coming out in Summer 2021 along with the next season being scheduled for late March 2021. We’ve been fed well. Without spoiling too much in the manga, My Hero Academia has been in the middle of a massive battle arc since the beginning of the year and the arc just ended right as the year is ending as well. Very fitting if you ask me. The arc itself has been insane. There’s been battles and suspense everywhere you read in each chapter. There hasn’t really been a time to breathe all year. Every chapter has been a question of “Who’s going to bite the dust next?” There’s blood, there are broken bones, there’s dust settling on the ground. Things are being revealed to the audience non-stop, typing up literal years of loose storylines and fan-theories. And it’s all paying off very well. I do wonder what the aftermath will look like because we’re going to have a lot of traumatized people who will need years of therapy to recover from everything. Author Kohei Horikoshi’s artwork has gotten better and better as each chapter has gone on. Some panels in this arc are some of my favorite in the series. It’s all structured and planned out to a T that it not only makes sense visually but story-wise as well. It’s gotten to the point where I’d be okay if he took a month off to recuperate himself even though I’d be sad about it. The man deserves it. We definitely don’t deserve him.
6. Hades:
I’ve played a lot of video games this year. Persona 5 Royal took over my life for a good 1-2 months and I loved every minute of one of my favorite JRPGs in a long time. Pokémon Sword and Shield’s DLC happily kept me busy and got me back into the beloved franchise for a while proving that GameFreak is still as creative with their Pokémon as ever. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, like I mentioned prevented me from complete boredom during the beginning of quarantine and helped me keep busy for a long while. Nier: Automata introduced me to a surprisingly human game about Androids figuring out their purpose and place in the world while trying to stop a war from aliens (yes, it’s as insane as it sounds). And finally, there’s Hades. I already wrote an essay on this game, but to sum it up: I love Greek mythology and I love this game. It is my Game of The Year (GOTY). I haven’t played it as much as I have before, but every time I play it it’s like a new and fresh experience. I want to say I’m 100+ hours in and I’m still finding new pieces of dialogue and strategies to go throughout the game. The combat is clean, the art is beautiful, and the voice acting is incredible across the board. Oh, and the music is amazing too. Unseen Ones in particular is just epic. This is a game that doesn’t end and it only gets better from there. I don’t know if Hades’ developers, SuperGiant, will make a sequel (they don’t have a record of sequels so far), but I really hope they make some kind of DLC because there are so many other kinds of Greek mythos I can see being added into this game.
And that’s my 2020. A year full of things to entertain myself with while being stuck at home. This year has been insane, to say the least. There were a lot of downs this year that I can’t even recap because they felt like years ago when really, they were back in January of THIS YEAR. Aside from that, I’m really glad that I started this blog/website if anything. I’m really glad I got back into creative writing like I’ve wanted to for years. My audience is small, but I’m thankful for the people who are actually reading my stuff. It means a lot. Without revealing too much about my personal life, I hope that I can start 2021 with a clean slate. At least cleaner than it was before. I want to move onto the next chapter of my life and I am more than ready. All I need to find that opportunity that can kickstart all that off. So long 2020; hello 2021!. Let’s start anew.
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