best of 2017: miscellaneous

Now it's time for my favorite miscellaneous things from 2017!  A few notes before I begin:

• Not all of these things first came out in 2017, but that's when I first played/read/watched them.
• In years past, both video games and manga/graphic novels got their own posts at the end of the year, but I didn't have enough contenders in either category this year to warrant separate posts.  (My OCD won't let me make one of these lists unless there are at least 5 entrants.)
• These aren't in any particular order.
• As ever, your mileage may vary.

1. Dead Rising 4:  The latest installment of the survival horror franchise is set during Christmas, and although it's certainly not one of the best DR games, it's still worth playing for the sheer thrill of plowing through thousands and thousands of zombies.  Bonus points for a combo weapon called the Gandelf, a magical staff that shoots exploding lawn gnomes.  (Xbox One)

2.  Telltale's The Walking Dead: Michonne:  The backstory of TWD's beloved katana wielding badass.  (PS4)

3. The Santa Clarita Diet:  Drew Barrymore plays a real estate agent who's got a big secret: she died and was mysteriously revived, but now she has to eat humans to survive.  Her husband (Timothy Olyphant) reluctantly helps her track down deserving victims.  Extremely funny, and the leads have great chemistry together.  (Netflix streaming)

4. Erased by Kei Sanbe:  Satoru is an aspiring manga artist who has a special ability he calls Revival, which allows him to go back in time and prevent tragedies from occurring.  After his mother is murdered, his powers kick in and he goes 18 years in the past, when he was 10 and three of his friends were murdered.  With his previous knowledge of the situation still in place, he's determined to stop the killer and save his friends and his mother.  The art isn't the greatest, but the story is fantastic.

5. Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda:  This series is difficult to sum up, so I'm going to copy Wikipedia's synopsis here:  "The series is set in a matriarchal 'alternate Asia' riven by war between the Arcanics, magical creatures that can sometimes pass as human, and the Cumaea, an order of sorceresses who consume Arcanics to fuel their power."  The art is absolutely stunning, the world building is terrific, and it not only features talking cats called Nekomancers (in case you don't get the pun, neko means cat in Japanese), but a fox girl named Kippa who's one of my favorite comics characters ever.

6. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris:  A stunningly illustrated graphic novel in which a 10-year-old girl named Karen tries to solve the murder of her upstairs neighbor.

7. Telltale's The Walking Dead: A New Frontier:  Another beautifully written and highly emotional installment from Telltale.

8. Persona 5:  I reviewed this in my November media update, so I won't repeat myself here; I'll just say that it's not only my favorite video game of the year, but one of my top ten of all time.  (PS4)

9. Mindhunter:  In this series, FBI special agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench interview serial killers in hopes of learning information that will help solve other cases in the future.  The first two episodes are by far the best, thanks to David Fincher's direction and an award-worthy performance by Cameron Britton as notorious killer Edmund Kemper.  (Netflix streaming)

10. Westworld:  A Western theme park for the rich and (occasionally) depraved, filled with sentient androids, starts to fall apart when the "hosts" begin to turn on the guests.  I apologize for mentioning that there's a twist, because I consider that a bit of a spoiler, but I have to mention it because it literally left my jaw hanging open.  (HBO)