We're just about to end 2023 and head into 2024--I will be starting a grand watch of all Transformers things I have on media stuffs (VHS and DVD) for the 40th anniversary of the franchise. I plan to go see "Transformers ONE" in theaters, though we'll see how I feel about it because of the "star talent" as opposed to actual "voice actors" in the roles. :p I hope everyone plans to have a good weekend! :D Again, I will be generically offline until Tuesday the 2nd, but I can still fave and comment via my phone.

To wrap up the year, I'd like to make a list to share with you, some of my "favorites" from all ends of things! :)

1) Favorite television show: "Star Trek: Lower Decks" season 3--I am a Star Trek fan (far more than I am Star Wars, though I like both franchises). A parody show has to be really good in order not to offend fans and this show goes above and beyond. At the same time it makes fun of Star Trek, it also shows it has more love for Star Trek than even the fandom does. Keep in mind, I don't have t.v. or streaming services--so I have to base my stuff on things I watched on DVD/Blu-Ray in 2023...........so, yeah, I know season 4 is out there, but it's not available for me to watch yet. shrug

2) Favorite movie: "Transformers; Rise of the Beasts"--I'll be honest, I have not seen a lot of movies at all this year, in theater or on DVD/Blu-Ray. While I've enjoyed what little I've watched, this is the only one I've watched more than once and it stands above and beyond the Bay films for sure. I think the fact that the director is an actual Transformers fan and not someone looking at the cash grab has a lot to do with that. Thank you for giving all my robots COLORS, the "Bay Gray" of all the original trilogy 'bots was just BLAH. :p

3) Favorite Book: "Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana"--I didn't get a lot of reading OF BOOKS done this year and this particular book came out a while ago, but I ONLY got it this year. It's an expensive coffee table artbook, yeah I didn't have money to splurge on those things the past couple years with other higher demand coffee table books out there ("Transformers: A Visual History" and "Sonic the Hedgehog Encylo-speed-ia" to name a couple). This is a great book with the history of the franchise and stunning art that's been a part of the gaming community for decades.

4) Favorite Art Supply: Koi watercolors (from Sakura)--I tried a lot of new art mediums this year, this was by far my favorite one. The watercolors are just amazingly smooth and sharp for pan-based watercolors--it made me want to try more and try harder with watercolors.

5) Favorite Manga: "Undead Unluck"--this was really hard to pick, as I had 2 new series I started this past year (I'd say "Kaiju No. 8" as my #1, but I started that LAST year...........). This was a series I hadn't heard of, but when the Library got the first 10 volumes this year (then 11-13 later), I took them all home and read them--now I have to wait for each new one. laughs Ironically, the 3 "newer" titles I'm reading are all made or are being made into anime right now--so it'll be interesting to see where that goes! (The third is "Go, Go Loser Ranger!", BTW.)

6) Favorite Graphic Novel: "Radiant Black"--this is another series where we got the first few volumes at the Library and I decided to give it a shot. It's a different kind of superhero story and it comes from a writer I was familiar with from "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" (he created the fan-favorite character, Lord Drakkon) and "Ultraman" (over at Marvel), Kyle Higgins. I loved what he did with those franchises, so I decided to give this a try--you can see all his influences from other works and the superhero genre.

7) Favorite Video Game: "Digimon Survive"--this game came out of nowhere to be my favorite game this year. A few years before it came out (in all the preliminary articles about it), I was aware of it as an upcoming "Digimon" game with a tactical-RPG flavor. I LOVE TACTICAL-RPGs!!! It shocked me to learn it was mostly a visual novel when I finally got it this year--I have a love-hate feeling towards visual novels, since 99.9999999% of them out there are otome and it gets to be a tiring genre, for sure. The storyline is way darker than I expected from anything Digimon, too. I have been invested in it for months--and I intend to do a NG+ playthrough, so I can save everyone and see the true ending..........because you can't get through a single playthrough without at least 2 particular deaths, it's the way the game is designed. :p

So, next year--it will be interesting to see what tops my faves. One of my favorite authors has the final book in my favorite series by him coming out next year, so...........I can't imagine what that'll be like, since I've been reading this series since the 1980's. Hopefully you guys had some fun and favorite things this year you can reminisce about before going into the new year!