I grew up in a time when the “boy’s don’t cry” attitude was still a prevailing and unchallenged social attitude, and with everything that happened to me in my adolescence, my response was to grow callous and rid myself of the high emotional sensitivity I had in early childhood. It certainly didn’t help that those were also times in which presenting as straight-passing was a prudent survival mechanism. In turn, this has created a high bar for art in any medium to clear, and why I highly value media that is able to elicit an emotional reaction from me. The stronger the better.
For everything going wrong in the world—the U.S. specifically—2025 has been a rich year for me in this regard. In music, television, and gaming, I’ve experienced very strong works that didn’t just entertain, they’ve moved me to tears and inspired a sense of resolve that feels critical in enduring the future ahead.
🎞️ Sinners
Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster horror film certainly lived up to the hype. Without getting too deep in the subtext reeds and attempting to unpack a lot of the underlying meaning that the Black contingent on social media platforms have already discussed at length earlier this year, all I feel necessary to say is that the musical sequence midway through the film was worth the price of admission alone.
That amalgam of Black culture across time that is deeply synonymous with American culture was poignant enough, but the inclusion of Asian dancers associated to represent the two Chinese secondary characters resonated with my Chinese ethnicity, in total a stunning representation of the power of music and the oneness of humanity. It was an excellent warm-up to the visual feast that was…
🏟️ The Cowboy Carter Tour
Beyoncé tours are more than just music concerts, they’re major cultural and economic events at this point. Ever since her 2016 Lemonade album, she’s been on an insane ascent as an artist, no mean feat given that she’s always been an undeniable front runner in the entertainment industry. The level of detail, intentionality, and overall quality of all of her recent works is unparalleled, and has pushed me from “she’s good, I like some of her songs” squarely into fan territory. 2023’s RENAISSANCE tour will forever be the experiential apex of live music, but this year’s Cowboy Carter tour was still impressively magnificent—especially for a country themed album that I was not musically as enthusiastic about as I was its predecessor.
At face value, it was a live performance. In context, it was a celebration of Black history and excellence in the presence of the peak artistry. More than that, it was a soothing of the American soul, a time and a place where the Star-Spangled Banner could once be symbolic of “old glory” and not modern racism.
🎵｢海珠」(“Kaiju”)
In terms of actual 2025 music releases, the standout piece was Japanese band Sakanaction and their latest single, ｢海珠」(Kaiju, meaning “strange beast”, usually given as “monster”). The song was the first new release in years, it came on the tails of a publicized struggle with depression by frontman Ichiro Yamaguchi in both news and a couple of documentaries. Both musically and lyrically, the song is astoundingly dense in poetic beauty. From the perspective of someone intimately familiar with depression and living in these modern post-truth chaotic times, the message really hit hard when the music video (with an official captioned translation) came out a few weeks after the music release.
「今何光年も遠く 遠く 遠く叫んで また怪獣になるんだ」
“Now, I’ll roar so loudly that I can be heard from many light-years away, and turn into a kaiju again.”
Despite being around for a good while and being very popular in their native Japan, the song ended up being the first time the band’s music was used as an anime theme song. Although I don’t usually watch anime, repeatedly reading comments praising the show and the song’s thematic relevance eventually led me to…
📺 Orb: On the Movements of the Earth
This anime adaptation of a manga by the same name technically debuted at the end of 2024, but I didn’t come upon it until earlier this year; luckily by then, it was available to stream in its entirety. I started out highly dubious that a fictional period piece anime about heliocentric cosmological model would be able to retain my attention. Yet in a world where flat-earth conspiracists exist in this day and age, there was something fitting about a contemporary artwork revisiting the dogmatic oppression of knowledge and a universal truth that did historically happen.
With the plot’s driving conflict rooted in our reality, the ultimate resolution is also implied; the story arcs and the characters in between make the journey worth it. In them lies the notion that the experience and fruits of enlightenment lie a beauty worth dying for. It was a layered take on mortality, meaning in life, and nature of reality. Yet, for as great as Orb was, it pales in comparison to the masterpiece that is…
🎮 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
I could, and probably eventually will, write extensively on this unexpected marvel. To try to capture it adequately in a summary paragraph or two is a lost cause. The first game by a French indie game studio, and in one fell swoop eclipsed every entry in my lifelong relationship with the Final Fantasy series. It is musically unimpeachable, visually stunning, and fantastically well written. I haven’t been compelled by a game to learn the head writer’s name since Amy Hennig gave us both the Legacy of Kain and Uncharted series, but I’m already a big fan of Jennifer Svedberg-Yen.
“For Those Who Come After” and “Tomorrow Comes” are brilliant in their simplicity as catchphrases.
