The Year in Review

MOOD: tired
WATCHING: Joshiraku
PLAYING: Uncharted Waters 2
DRINKING: coffee I've been hyping up doing a retrospective entry about how the year went for me, so here it is! Unlike most people (at least going off of what I've seen on social media), I had an excellent 2025 and wanted to write about it so that I won't forget about the neat stuff that happened this year, so there you go.

2025 was a year in which I got to do many things for the first time that I've been wanting to do for a very long time, and it started with me finally getting to attend MAGFest after seeing people posting about it for social media for basically the entire time I've spent on the internet. It's kinda funny writing about it right now since the 2026 MAGFest just ended so this is very old news, but it is what it is. I was pleasantly surprised at how all-encompassing this convention takes the concept of both music and vidya; having attended other vidya cons before, I was fully expecting mainly recent vidya to be the focus of attention, but instead the con (through panels and shows and the other things that went on) managed to cover video games going as far back as the pre-Pong era. There was a very nice video game museum that even had boomer computers there that gave me VCF vibes.

The shows at MAGFest (so the M part of the MAG name) were great too. I didn't realize this before I showed up because I didn't read the guest list very good, but it turned out that Master Boot Record was showing up, which was a pleasant surprise since I haven't really thought about them since back when I found their music on YouTube during college. Their show was fun, both aesthetically but also because the crowd there was actually behaving like a metal show crowd. Having previously gone to shows like Rammstein's most recent stadium tour and being disappointed with how much of the crowd was just standing there recording the thing for social media, it was very refreshing to be in a crowd actually there to vibe to the tunes. Red Vox was pretty neat too, or at least it was neat to finally see the band Vinny Vinesauce is in. Allegedly that was their biggest show ever up to that point, per an article on the Vinesauce Wiki ([link] For me, the biggest thing was the SilvaGunner show that was done in a hallway instead of a ballroom for whatever reason. As someone who used to be really into the SoundClown community back in the mid-2010's (I never got big with any of my posts, but it was still a good time), I was really sad when I couldn't attend MAGFest the first year that SilvaGunner did a rave there, so to finally attend a SilvaGunner rave at the 2025 MAGFest was a big deal for me. It might have actually been the best rave I've ever been to for the simple fact that the "DJ's" (every set was pre-mixed so there wasn't much DJing to actually do) were very active in hyping up the crowd, which I almost never see at EDM shows I've been to (at some other shows I've been to, if the DJ's weren't actively mixing their music then they were just be on their phones!).

[link]

We got to wander around in DC for a bit during our MAGFest trip, which was another thing I've been wanting to do for a very long time. We only really explored the touristy area around the Gaylord that MAGFest was at, and also the National Mall for a bit right before our flight back to Texas, so we were basically only exposed to the good parts of DC. The National Mall was neat, you could really feel the Roman influence on the architecture of the monuments there when you're there in person. We also tried Wawa's pizza, which one of my buddies is now convinced is the best gas station pizza. The plane accident that happened at around the time when we went was definitely not one of the good parts of this trip, and if I end up ever going again (which I hope will happen!) I'll likely be flying into Baltimore and then just driving to our hotel from there on a rental.

After MAGFest, the next major thing I went to was Justice's show in Irving. It was another thing that I've wanted to attend for a long time, especially after seeing all the people saying it's the best live show since Daft Punk's Alive 2007, and I was really disappointed when no dates for Texas were announced in 2024, almost planning to fly to Philadelphia to see them live. But they ended up coming by to Irving, so I ended up not having to fly out to see them live. The show was very good, my only regret is that before the show I listened to Woman World Wide basically on repeat for the entirety of 2024, so the live set they played didn't blow me away as hard as it would have had I not done that. If I went in without knowing how awesome their live sets have become as of WWW, I probably would have thought it was the best thing of all time. It was the first EDM show I've been to where the visuals were done entirely with lights, there was very little use of screens so it felt like you were watching a show at Team Labs or something lol. The live set was excellent, I felt like all the parts of Hyperdrama that were used were incorporated very good. But the crowd... was kinda doing a bunch of that standing around with their phones out thing I mentioned earlier. You can find many recordings of the show in Irving and the shows at the other locations of the Hyperdrama tour very easily on YouTube because so many people were just recording, and in a lot of them the crowd is just standing and watching. I was closer to the stage where people were actually moving instead of just recording so it was better, but you wouldn't get that impression from watching people's phone recordings on YouTube.

I also got to go to Vegas this year! It wasn't really on my bucket list as much as DC was, but it was still neat to "end up" in Vegas (both trips were due to people going there for something specific, it wasn't just me going by myself to gamble or whatever). Out of the casinos that I got to see (I didn't get to go through the entire strip both trips), I thought the themed ones like Caesar's Palace were neat, but a bunch of the other ones just seemed like they put a casino down without much thought and I guess people just choose which one they stay at based on which one has the better deals at the time of booking. I enjoyed how walkable the strip was, it's certainly a better time than trying to wander around in Dallas on foot. The food I had was pretty good too, though I'm told that it used to not be as overpriced. The GCW shows I came to see were very good; we came to see the ones that were being ran as counterprogramming to Wrestlemania, and I didn't get to see the first show because I got sick and needed to rest, but saw the others. Everyone gave their all at both the clusterfuck and Effy's thing, I walked away with the impression that that was the best wrestling I've ever seen. Overall both trips were a good time. I definitely want to come back just to see all the residencies since I didn't get to see them when I went.

My annual trip to San Japan deserves a mention in this journal entry as well, I guess. I think for me the highlight this year was seeing Mariachi Entertainment System's show since it's been a very long time since I got to see mariachis perform, and also exploring a bit more of the Riverwalk than I usually do on my annual San Antonio con-related trips. The con was good in general, but with how much I've attended San Japan they're all starting to blend together. I can't remember if this was the year when one of the escalators was broken or not. Getting to talk about Saya at the visual novels panel right after finishing it this past summer for the first time was really fun though, definitely one of those moments that make coming to a convention worth it. San Japan is still a fun con just to hang out at, so I'll likely be returning in 2026 unless something comes up.

I think that's it for the major "adventures" this year as far as trips outside of my apartment are concerned. I got to travel a bunch and go to events I've wanted to attend for a very long time, which made 2025 a breddy gud year.

You can't really talk about 2025 without mentioning the unemployment crisis that was going on that year, and I was part of that crisis after being laid off for seven months before finding my next gig. On the one hand, being unemployed sucked because of all the uncertainty, but on the other hand I enjoyed finally getting some time to think about what I want to do with my career after basically just jobmaxxing for eight years straight with a focus on opportunities instead of picking things that I really want to do. I unfortunately didn't get to work on my personal projects as much as a result of this unemployment period since I had to use most of my free time for interview prep, so hopefully in 2026 I'll get to reverse the pattern of neglecting personal projects now that my job situation has been sorted out. This Neocities site was basically the only major personal project I got off the ground in 2025, but I think it's better than not putting anything out at all which has been the case for the prior several years before 2025.

One of the highlights of this unemployment arc was finally getting to read Saya no Uta. It wasn't so much that I didn't have time to read it before when I was employed, but more that when you're unemployed you have infinite free time, so during the times when I wasn't doing interview prep or grinding on LinkedIn and Indeed I'd read Saya. It actually kinda took me a long time to read the whole thing since I'm notoriously slow when it comes to reading VN's, but I managed to get through it. I thought it was good (it was in Urobutcher's hands so this was inevitable), and I also appreciate that there weren't any jumpscares in this VN, which takes restraint when writing a horror VN. Getting to go to San Japan almost right after finishing it was fun too, I got to discuss something I just got done with at the VN panel which is a rare treat for me since everything I watch/read/play tends to never be the current "in" thing.

The end of the year was dominated by the release of the Chainsaw Man Reze Arc movie in the US. Before the release of this movie, the Reze arc was my favorite arc of the entire series thus far, mainly because of the Beam fight, so I was very excited when I found out that instead of being in the second season of the anime it's getting the movie treatment. And I had the cynical expectation that the pool scene would have had its fanservice turned all the way up. What we got instead was even better than what I expected. First of all, Mappa made this movie's colors way more saturated than the muddy colors of season 1, so it was just more fun to watch in general. The Beam fight exceeded my expectations, some people were upset at how flashy it was but I thought the amount of flashiness was appropriate given how goofy the fight is. But with the pool scene, they went with this more restrained approach that emphasized the intimacy of that scene, and judging by what people have been saying on Twitter it seemed to have a very profound effect on its zoomer audience, to whom this seemed to be a very fresh thing compared to the raunchy way in which love is portrayed in many contemporary films. As in, very profound, I saw several instances of people saying they went to see the movie over five times just to feel something. As someone for whom the Reze arc is their favorite arc, I'm very glad that this movie turned out to be this memorable thing that might even be remembered as one among the greats.

Anyways, that's how the fun year of 2025 went for me. Apologies for how late this journal entry was posted, I've been doing other things and neglecting my Neocities site as usual. I'm not really sure when I'll update this website again given how I recently found out that some of my goals for it won't be possible given how Neocities functions (per my previous journal entry), but I'm sure I'll come back to it to implement the things I can do on here (like making image galleries), and my next journal entry will likely be posted at that time, if not sooner. Hopefully it will be less book-like than this one, but I think this one just happens to be an exception because of the unusually large amount of things that I wanted to mention. I don't have a reward for you if you read this whole thing, I guess the reward is the feeling of achievement having read so much text in a world where microblogging is the norm lol

As always, thanks for reading, and until next time!

Go back