Good Morning Folks! This morning I am continuing my series of talking about things that I liked in 2025 and this time moving on to series based content. Some of this is traditional television series, and others are anime… but it felt right to sort of split a line between this kind of content and one off experiences like a movie. I consume an awful lot of my content on Plex, and as a result it was very easy for me to go back and look at what I had actually watched during the Calendar year of 2025. This morning I am going to talk about some of the high points, and some of the low points, much like I did the other day with books. In truth I really did not consume anywhere near as much content as I normally would… 2025 was a rough year for so many reasons.
Pantheon
This lives in that realm of Anime but not-Anime that so many properties like Avatar do these days. I was tipped off to this series by my friend Sita who begged both me and Ammo to watch this, and I have to say I am very glad that I did. This is a very William Gibson-esc transhuman masterpiece that has some really awkward bits in the third act. Effectively this series SHOULD have gone on for longer, but only got two seasons… and there is a clear point in the middle of Season Two where they realized that they were not going to get a Third Season. So they very quickly had to rush to the ultimate conclusion of everything that they were working towards… so that in itself feels a bit jarring. However this is so well worth the watch if you have never seen it… or like me did not even know it existed.
Dan Da Dan
This quite literally might be the highlight of my year when it comes to media viewing experiences. I fell in love with this series in a massive way, and I will probably always have the opening for season one by Creepy Nuts living rent free in my head. Season One was fucking amazing, and Season Two just kept things up as the friendship and the will they or won’t they nature of Momo and Okarun continues to deliver. The show is fucking wild honestly, and I admit it probably takes about three episodes to hook you. The plotlines are among the more outrageous when they come to anime, and I would relate it to something akin the lines of FLCL. If you stick with it though, I think you will end up a convert. It is just plain fun on so many levels and I am anxiously looking forward to season three whenever it drops.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew
Growing up in the era of The Goonies and Flight of the Navigator… both movies that I love deeply still even as an adult… I really wanted this to be amazing. I am not sure why it was not. On paper everything about this seemed like it was going to be a homerun. I think maybe the problem that I had with this was the fact that the weakest bit… were the adults. Specifically I feel like there was some exec somewhere who would not greenlight this project without an established adult actor playing a character in it. As a result it sort of felt like Jude Law stole way too much screen time, and was not actually worthy of it. Anytime it was just the kids doing shenaningans and adventures it was cute and fun… but when you looped him into the mix it got weird quickly. I think there could have been something really good here, and it did have moments of magic but collectively it just didn’t really work.
Murderbot
One of the series that I talked about in my book post was Murderbot and chaining through the entire series of books prior to the start of the television series. I was so glad that I did this, and I was even happier that for the most part… every single character in this series felt spot on for their book counterpart. That is… except the titular character of Murderbot. I had trouble adjusting to this for a bit, because Alexander Skarsgard will on some level be Eric Northman from True Blood for me. That said… as the series continued on by about episode three he had won me over completely and now I am not sure I could picture another actor playing Murderbot. I am so amped for this to continue because that first book is far from the best of the Murderbot adventures. We haven’t even encountered my favorite characters yet. We will be eating well with this one I hope, pending it continues getting good reception and more seasons.
The Witcher: Season 4
Something that I absolutely did not expect to be posting… is that The Witcher seires might have won me back. Season 3 was fucking awful. They did my boy Eskel so damned dirty, and them playing fast and loose with some of the lore… in the worst possible ways… made it all just feel awful. I was not planning on watching this season, but only did so because a friend of mine was talking about it. I can’t believe I am saying this… but I think Liam Hemsworth might be a better Geralt than Henry Cavil was. Things are starting to veer closer to the normal lore of the books/games as well which is a massive improvement. More importantly than that I got to hang out with some of my favorite characters a lot this season… Dandelion, Yarpin, and Zoltan. Massive improvement over the shitshow that was season three and I am hoping it keeps this upward trajectory.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
I will be honest… this is one of those series that I only watched because my friend Ammo was talking about it. I am not normally into elves even in the least, so the fact that this series is not only about an Elf… but also a damned dirty finger wiggler (Mage)… would have originally pushed it out of my normal scope of interests. This is legitimately one of the best Anime and or Series in general that I have ever watched. The way the story is told is so interesting and unique, and the whole perspective of someone who lives for thousands of years…. and how they might view short lived races is fascinating. Not to mention the story has an awful lot of heart to it. Season two will be dropping pretty soon and I am hoping I can find it in dual language version because I greatly prefer watching television as to reading it.
Delicious in Dungeon / Dungeon Meshi
Have you ever said to yourself that you really wanted a cooking show with the central conceit of it being played out through the lens of a D&D style adventuring party? No? Well I had not either until Tumblr sold me on this show by constantly pushing cute images into my feed. This is a show that I started with subs, and then rewatched the entire damned thing dubbed because I just like the characterization of the individual characters a bit better. Japanese voice actors can sometimes be a bit over the top for me, especially since I am not culturized to that being normal. Marcille especially just FEELS better in the Dubbed version to me and is way less annoying than the Japanese counterpart was. Super charming and cute show, but please note… it is ABSOLUTELY a cooking show. The fact it is happening in a Dungeon and has occasional combat is just a side effect of the settting.
Honorable Mentions
To Be Hero X gets a bit of an honorable mention for me. Really good show, but I did not finish it during 2025 so I don’t quite feel right giving it its own spot on the list. Additionally I really enjoyed the Ironheart series and Daredevil: Born again and hope we see more of those in the future. Marvel really is in this awkward spot right now and I am hoping they can pull their shit together and start producing amazing stuff in the way it was during the first decade of the Avengers Saga. I still fucking love Shoresy and Season 4 was pretty great, and I know that I have Season 5 queued up to watch in the coming weeks. I would prefer for it to finish so that I can watch it all in one setting, and it is just starting to release episodes.
Tomorrow I will be talking about the movies that I watched and either enjoyed or disliked enough to talk about in 2025. What were some of the highlights for you last year when it came to serialized content? Drop me a line below and let me know.
The post 2025 In Review: The Series appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! Last night I had quite a lot of fun running around in Destiny Rising with Ace and Ammo. Since we had last grouped Ammo had managed to finish up the main storyline which opened access to a whole slew of new activities. She had not experienced Gauntlet Onslaught, aka the raid at all and after taking down the Stronghold we had uncovered for the pack, we queued one by one through all of the parts of it. We also did all of the new Gauntlet Blitz modes that are being previewed right now, and have guaranteed weapon drops associated with them. It was a heck of a lot of fun, and while we struggled a bit with Issakkis, in finding a group that could do the mechanic… we cleared everything without much issue. We did fail once at breakin, but shifted our strategy to make sure that I was on the first bridge crew, and Ace was on the last bridge crew… because we had someone take a key on that last round and just mill around killing random stuff.
The big highlight of the night is that I finally pulled the Renegade ghost shell on my main account, which drops from the raid. I also pulled a second copy of Izanagi’s Burden, which will allow me to progress that weapon at some point for Tan-2 and Umeko. Though to be honest, if I am going to play a precision character I am almost always going to be bringing Helhest. I really love Maru the new champion and am working on leveling her up so that she can become one of my mains for progressing content. I needed someone that I really liked that could handle spread shinkas and she does so masterfully. I think Ace and I are going to hang out tonight and do some of the weekly reset content, and maybe tomorrow during the day a bit since I am off due to the holiday. I have business to take care of in the morning but should be home by noon and ready to roll.
Over in Path of Exile, it was a weekend of finishing things up. I ended the weekend with 115 of 115 maps completed, my four voidstones, and all of the map favorites unlocked except Sirius and the Feared. At some point I will run Sirius, but I have not done enough maps to gain the fragments yet. I just bought fragments for the other ones, and I guess I could do the same for Sirius but it did not feel that pressing. I’ve also completed a t17 which unlocked my six socket map device, and have started running proper maps loaded with scarabs and everything. Right now I am alternating between Shipyard and Toxic Sewer, because both are fairly decent maps for the type of gameplay I play… and not too bad honestly for the breach mechanic. They both offer at least some modicum of bottlenecking for the times when you have to defend Ailith.
When I dinged 96, I devoted some time to running through a bunch of boss encounters and I completed the pinnacle fight for Breach, where you fight both Not-Tul and Not-Esh together. I am not sure if it is always Tul and Esh or if you sometimes get the other combinations of the Breachlords that are not Chayula. The story of this Breach league is really interesting and I love how it is essentially setting up the events that ultimately lead to the coming of Xesht in Path of Exile II. I would love it if we got more of these betweener leagues that move the story forward for each league’s content. For example I would love an updated version of Abyss that brings us closer to what it is like in Path of Exile II, because it is SO MUCH better than defacto Abyss that we currently have. The only league I am scared about them changing is Delve, but that is mostly because I love it so much that I do not want them to fuck it up and make it no longer fun for me.
I’ve been slowly working on my build while leveling my character towards 100, and I picked up a Foulborn Red Dream jewel, which is helpful this league for stacking life. As a result I have almost 8000 life, and there are some other things that I could do to push it higher. Pohx showcased a version of his build running 10k life, and I effectively need to swap from Immortal Flesh to a well crafted Stygian Vise to get there. This was a rather costly swap because the jewel itself was 2 divines, and then each of the five tattoos needed was around 70 chaos. That said… I’ve never run Righteous Fire with this much health so it is at least worth doing for the time being. I feel a bit squishier than I have in previous incarnations of RF, and I am not entirely certain what is going on there. It might be that I currently only have 30% reduced crit damage. I am contemplating swapping in a Taste of Hate to also get more phys to elemental conversion.
I am also still working on getting some better gear upgrades. On the Tree Tree I am working on crafting a new pair of gloves, because while my current ones are pretty solid and I have yet been unable to replace them… I could also have way more life on them. I am still fairly proud of the Archedemon Crown and Shaper Shield that I crafted. I bought a new sceptre which I picked up fairly cheaply, and recently swapped over to a Cloak of Flame with more ignite duration, more fire resistance, and 5% reduced fire damage taken which is super useful. At some point I would love to get a good corruption for Annihilation’s Approach boots, but the best one is super expensive thanks to Pohx’s video about them. My amulet and rings are all sort of trash and could be improved greatly, but it really depends upon how much currency I want to pour into them. Now that I am delving around 200 depth reliably and running t16s easily, I can start generating way more currency.
The other thing that I added was a Light of Meaning, buffing fire damage. I lost some damage in the swap to the Red Dream jewel because I had to give up a jewel with fire multi on it. This single jewel swap pushed me well past where I was originally with the damage and took the entire build up into the 1.5 million-ish range, making the boss fights way more comfortable and the general mapping and delving way faster. Right now I have a jewel with Fire Multi and Max Fire Res on it, and swapping that for one with max life would be helpful… but those are running around 10 div at the moment and I do not have that. I tried the Sir Gog method of crafting Jewels with the Tree Tree for a bit, and didn’t have much luck. I have way more luck printing gloves, so I am back on that path for now. Essentially I am looking for gloves with 21% regen, 100+ flat life, 45+ fire res, 58+ dex… and then anything else that is useful life. I’ve gotten close a few times and have sold the failures. If I get a 21% regen fractured roll I might try either fossil crafting or harvest crafting to get the rest of the way there.
I am basically at the point in the league where I need to start chipping away at achievements so I can get my totem pole. The build is stable and reliable, and I can pretty much do any content on it. I am fishing for an Aul in Delve, but have not had much luck. One thing that I have noticed is that I think they have killed the curse on hit rings from Delve, either that or made them extremely uncommon. I’ve cleared a bunch of the elemental nodes down there and not seen a single one yet. I always beeline for these because they also reward elemental fossils, which I find way more useful than any of the loot other than the curse rings. According to the trade site, they still exist… but have either had their rarity cranked or my luck has just been shit. The death of Hexblast Mines though, pretty much decimated the market for these so it is not like they were selling well anyways. I used to throw 20c on each of them in the hopes that maybe one of them would move, but given the deflation of this league it seems like they are all around 1c each.
In other unrelated news… I have been watching Frieren for the last few weeks and finished up season one on Saturday. This show is extremely delightful and I highly suggest giving it a watch if you like that D&D party vibe. I would say it has thematic notes aligned with Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi except it is effectively the tale in reverse. Frieren was the Mage for a party that defeated the Demon King, and a huge part of the show is going on another adventure to somewhat retrace the steps that the first party made. Elves are effectively immortal in this universe, so the march of time just works differently for her… and the decade spent partying together… felt like a brief interaction for her. Through retracing the steps she is effectively realizing what she missed. You would think this would make the show deeply melancholy but it isn’t really, and through retracing the steps… she realizes how special the first journey was. Super charming honestly, and well worth a watch of the first 28 episodes. I will be anxiously awaiting the drop for season 2.
The post Onslaught with Friends appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
We start off the show with some discussion about Geek Girl Con and how it is a great experience for the entire family. From there, Ash has played a bit more Daggerheart and discusses how not having initiative in that game actually works out really well. Kodra is trying a new mine build in Path of Exile 3.2,7 and we talk a bit about how Rolling Magma Mine has been working. Bel has finished most of the endgame prep and discusses the state of his build and how Breach has been working as a league mechanic. Touhou gets a little less difficult to engage with as Fantasy Maiden Wars attempts to present twenty years worth of assorted games into something more approachable. Tam revisited VTM Bloodlines 2 and thinks that maybe we are misremembering the first game, and how the thing that exists is actually pretty good if you give it enough time. Lastly, Bel finished Frieren this weekend and talks a bit about it being really good and well worth watching.
