Culture Consumption: April 2025

Books

Junji Ito’s Uncanny: The Origins of Fear is part autobiography and part an exploration of writing craft. Ito shares his life growing up with a love for scifi pop culture (like Astroboy, Ultraman, and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) and falling in love with the works of horror manga (from authors such as Kazuo Umezz and Shinichi Koga). Throughout his school years, he drew manga as a pass time, but started out as a dental technician before eventually returning to art and publishing his first horror manga story.

Following the autobiography section, Ito shares some of his insights into what makes for good horror manga. He also looks at some of his most famous stories, discussing how he developed the ideas for the tale, crafted lovable characters, and creates the beautifully rendered and traumatizing art for his manga.

The book is beautifully printed, with original notes and sketches from the development of his most famous stories, as well as a lovely little flip book in the bottom right corner of the pages for some extra fun. If you love Junji Ito’s work — as I do — or just enjoy reading or writing horror stories of your own, Uncanny is a great read.

Books Finished This Month:

1. Uncanny: The Origins of Fear by Junji Ito

Total Books for the Year: 14

Still in Progress at the End of the Month:

The Night Eaters #3: Their Kingdom Come by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, and Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games, edited by J. Robert Lennon and Carmen Maria Machado

Short Stories & Poetry

A selection of works I recently read in journals and online publications, with a few lines from the text shared here.

“The God of Arepo” is a collaborative short story, written by three tumblr users, sadoeuphemist, ciiriianan, and stu-pot, about a farmer who builds a tiny temple claimed by a god with no particularly wonderful powers — which has been further adapted into a comic book version by Reimena Yee. Both versions are a beautiful exploration of faith and loyalty.

“Rebirth of the Rain” by Vivian Chou (Penumbric):

"Nuliajuk and the Birds" by Shantell Powell (Strange Horizons):

Movies

Death of a Unicorn, the debut film from director Alex Scharfman, is a darkly humorous monster movie about terrible people being annihilated by vengeful unicorns. The story centers around Elliot (Paul Rudd), a widowed attorney, who brings his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega), an art history major at university, along on a business retreat at a nature reserve in the mountains. As they're driving up the mountain road to the manor house, Elliot hits a unicorn with his car, killing it. It doesn’t take long for the Leopold family to begin exploiting the creature, using its horn and body parts for pharmaceuticals that could grant near-immortality to the wealthy.

I love the creature design and the references to art history and classic unicorn lore, which I wrote about in my full review. The movie also has some great humorous moments and plenty of gore.

Gangubai Kathiawadi is drama based on a figure from the book Mafia Queens of Mumbai, non-fiction crime novel by S. Hussain Zaidi (though the film states that it is entirely a fictional portrayal). Eager to become a Bollywood actress, a young woman follows her boyfriend to Bombay, where he sells her into prostitution. Over time, she becomes a leading figure in the red light district and begins fighting for safety and rights of her fellow sex workers. It’s a moving film with stunning musical sequences and a powerful story.

In the documentary Dick Johnson Is Dead, Kirsten Johnson sets out to make a loving homage to her father, Dick Johnson, after learning that her father is developing dementia. She sets up elaborate scenes in which her father acts out a series of accidental deaths, along with portrayals of him in the afterlife, as a means of facing and processing the inevitability of loss. The movie reflects on the many ways we fade away from each other, whether through death or dementia — but what makes it so lovely is the way it embraces life. Kristen clearly loves her father and the film puts its focus on the joy of the present moment, with the director using filmmaking to connect and spend time with her father.

New-to-Me Movies Watched Last Month:

1. Death of a Unicorn (2025)

2. Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022)

3. Dick Johnson is Dead (2020)

4. The Hunt (2020)

Television

Arcane, season 2, is gorgeous. Following Jynx’s devestating attack, everything is wreckage. The council is shattered, the citizens of Piltover and Zaun are shaken, and are heroes are struggling to make sense of this new reality, turning to either violence, compassion, or apathy. I love the way the season expands on the existing characters, revealing even more depth as hidden dangers (threatening all sides) are slowly revealed. There’s so much depth to this show, layers and layers — and I think I need to do a rewatch, because I’m sure there’s aspects I missed.

So, I’ve been going down a Flash rabbit hole, watching the first four seasons. In the opening season, Barry Allen is struck by lightening during a particle accelerator explosion, turning him into speedster. With his new found super-speed, he immediately sets out to help the people of Central City, stopping both regular criminals and meta-humans with incredible powers. Grant Gustin does a fantastic job playing the Flash, bringing a sense of idealism and joy hiding the pain of his past traumas following his mother’s murder and father’s false incarceration.

On his journey, he’s helped by Team Flash — Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes), who develops tech; Dr. Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker), a medical professional; and Dr. Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh), a genius who is more than he seems. Most of my favorite moments are between these four and how they support and care for each other with a sense of lightness and humor.

Some of the plots of individual episodes are a bit silly, and the Flash’s power and abilities seem to wax and wane based on narrative convenience. But the major villains in these first four seasons — Thawne, Zoom, Savitar, and Devoe — are properly threatening and do some serious damage along the way. None of the episodes, thus far, have been anything less than fun.

The Flash quite charming — and it’s become a comfort watch for me. Not sure if I’m going to continue on with the full nine seasons, though, since I’ve seen mixed reviews of the later seasons.

One another note, some of the best episodes have been the Arrowverse crossover episodes, bringing together superheroes from several different shows. Barry and Oliver Queen, aka the Arrow (Stephen Amell) develop a wonderful brotherly relationship, with all the little squabbles and mutual support one would expect, despite their different approaches to being heroes. Barry and Kara Danvers, aka Supergil (Melissa Benoist) have a similar sibling-style relationship, but with the two of them being eternally adorable and nerdy together. There are a dozen other superheroes who join up in the later crossovers, but these original three are just delightful together.

The one frustrating thing about the crossovers is that the some of the stories are told across four separate series: The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow. Every time a major crossover happens, I have to look up what episode appears in what series and in what order. I can’t imagine how impossible and frustrating it would be to keep up on cable TV, especially with some of these shows being on separate networks. It was somewhat frustrating for me, and I, at least, had the benefit of all four series being on Netflix, making them easier to swap between.

I caught the first two episodes of second season of The Last of Us. As with the first season, the show features a fantastic cast, great writing, and amazing stage and costuming design. It’s interesting watching it right after playing the game, since I’m hyper aware of the changes — and some of those changes are interesting. I’m not sure what I think of how things are being shifted around just yet, so I’ll have to see how the rest of the show unfolds.

One of the things I did love so far was seeing the stalkers — a version of the mold affected capable of being silent and sneaking up on the player — in the show for the first time. These enemies are terrifying in the game and so stressful to take down. The show captures this tension perfectly, and watching Ellie walk through an abandoned store while a stalker hunts in the background filled me with immense anxiety. Well done, in that regard.

Games

The Last of Us is one of my all-time favorite games. I’ve played it through several times and have loved it all over again each time. So…, when the The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog) was released in 2020, I was incredibly excited. But when I actually started up the game, I struggled to get into the flow of it. I loved the characters and the dialog and the gameplay was smooth and fun, but something didn’t click for me.

Over the next couple of years, I returned to the game several times, trying to get through it, then eventually fell off entirely — always with the intention of coming back to finish. Since the TV series is current coming out with its second season, it seemed the right time to return the game.

Now that I'm back into the game, I honestly have no idea why I had so much trouble connecting with it the first time around. Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe I was thrown off by the tonal shift in switching to the sequel immediately after re-playing The Last of Us Part I. Or maybe I just wasn’t in the right headspace for something so dark.

Whatever the reason was, I'm really loving my experience now. Without going into spoilers, the story deepens Ellie’s relationship with Joel, showing the pair contending with Joe’s lies at the end of the previous game. It’s also great to see Ellie build relationships within her community, including some romance. But the calm is quickly shattered, spiraling Ellie into a rage fueled quest for revenge.

I’m fascinated by the way the game jumps between different times and switches the player character perspective (between Ellie and her antagonist Abbey) in order to provide nuance to the story and characters. In Wandering Games, Melissa Kagen writes about traversal in The Last of Us Part II, with Ellie and Abbey exploring the same areas at different times, providing new ways of seeing and exploring the space — and this is one of the elements that brought me back to the game. Playing it these levels in the way Kagen describes and delving into that dual perspective makes the experience so much deeper.

Abbey gets a lot of hate from gamers — understandable considering the emotional impact of her actions. But over the course of the game, I have come to lover her. She does a terrible thing, it’s true, but her reasons for doing so are valid (as much as anyone can justify any kind of revenge). And she has her own moral compass, with a strong sense of loyalty to her friends and a willingness to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. In another game (one in which we never knew Joel or Ellie’s stories), Abbey would have been championed as the hero. But here, the player’s experience of her story is so much more complicated.

As I’m reaching the end of the game, I’m finding it much harder to progress — not hard in terms of difficulty (I have everything set to the easiest mode), but hard because I’m so emotionally conflicted. I love Ellie and I love Abbey, and I really want both of them to have happy (or at least peaceful) endings, but the game doesn’t seem geared to allow that — and I really, really, really don’t want to play through the pathways the game is forcing me to take. (I’ve actually been taking a break the last week or so, because I’m having difficulty facing the heartbreak that’s coming.)

That's it for me! What are you reading? Watching? Loving right now?