Weekend Reads (May 24): “Macross Plus,” Post-Punk, Romantasy, Leeroy Jenkins, Semicolons
Recommended weekend reading material for May 24, 2025.
Every week, I compile a list of articles in order to give subscribers like you something interesting and thought-provoking to read over the weekend.
Originally released in the mid ’90s, Macross Plus received widespread acclaim for its animation, thrilling aerial sequences, melodrama, and perhaps most of all, Yoko Kanno’s incredible soundtrack for the anime’s virtual pop star, Sharon Apple. Ian (F) Martin explores Kanno’s soundtrack, its historical context, and even how it relates to AI and our modern pop era.
As a music writer who grew up in Britain in the 1990s, I can almost smell the drugs in Sharon Apple’s music. The bleed over of acid house, techno and progressive house, the ambient sounds of the chill out room — the atmosphere of the UK rave scene runs through the whole album. The slow, stoned grooves of trip-hop run through the beats of “Pulse,” while “The Borderline” blends together seedy, eerie jazz with trippy electronica (in an interesting coincidence, Portishead’s celebrated debut album Dummy and the first episode of Macross Plus were released within three days of each other in 1994). There are echoes of drugged-out British indie music too, particularly the Cocteau Twins, in the ethereal dreampop and folk-tinted melody of “Wanna Be An Angel” and in the made-up languages of “Pulse,” “Santi-U” and “A Sai En.”
That’s not to say there aren’t Japanese pop fundamentals to a lot of the music as well, of course. The combination of techno/house beats and pop melodies catches onto the important thread of the then-contemporary J-Pop boom being driven by Tetsuya Komuro and his cheesy dance factory. In a classier vein, the song “Idol Talk” recalls elements of Yellow Magic Orchestra, and particularly some of the 1980s spinoff projects such as Sakamoto and Takahashi’s avant-pop solo works and Hosono’s production work with Miharu Koshi.
The Macross Plus soundtrack is one of my favorites, and arguably the best thing that Kanno has ever done. (And yes, that includes her work on Cowboy Bebop.) I’m hard-pressed to pick my favorite song, but right now, I’m going with the ethereal and otherworldly “Pulse.”
Related: Zimmerit is an absolute must-read if you consider yourself to be any sort of diehard anime fan/nerd.
Also related: Back in 2020, I rewatched both the original Macross Plus OVA and the Macross Plus movie for the latter’s 25th anniversary. “Macross Plus is an interesting time capsule for American anime fans as well as a capstone of sorts for the entire Macross franchise. Which is something of a mixed bag.”
Also also related: Speaking of anime music that sounds like it’s from the future, my favorite example is “At the End of the Melting Dream” by Yoichiro Yoshikawa, from 1994’s Iria: Zeiram the Animation.
Discogs has published a list of essential post-punk albums from the ’70s and ’80s, featuring Magazine, Wire, Joy Division, and of course, The Cure.
Punk may have kicked down the door. But post-punk stepped through it, and channeled the raw energy of its predecessor into something far more expansive. Emerging in the late 1970s, post-punk wasn’t defined by a single sound but by a shared desire to experiment, question, and rebuild. In its ranks lived the confrontational noise of no wave, the bleak romanticism of goth, the mechanical grind of industrial, and the pop-art sheen of new wave. It was a fertile ground where anything felt possible, as long as it pushed boundaries.
Related: Back in 2021, I posted a 40th anniversary rumination on Faith, one of my favorite Cure albums. “Faith nevertheless feels deeply sincere and honest because of the very real — and deeply human — grief, sorrow, and anguish found at its core.”
The A.V. Club’s Alex Lei offers up a primer to the films of Jia Zhangke, one of China’s most acclaimed filmmakers.
Jia Zhangke has become the pre-eminent director of what’s known as the “Sixth Generation” of Chinese filmmakers. The Sixth Generation immediately separated themselves from their aging counterparts in the ’90s. As the Fifth Generation was reaching its peak, it was often looking back: Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Blue Kite, and Zhang Yimou’s To Live all examined China’s 20th century on the scale of decades of change, with the principal interest being the Cultural Revolution. These films, too, presented themselves aesthetically beautifully, taking the language of “classical” epic filmmaking, priming them for Oscar nominations and distribution by Miramax. The Sixth Generation, however, was looking to the future — both in their narratives, following emerging youth cultures, and their eventual embrace of digital, as rough as it was at the time.
Related: My review of Jia’s The World, which I saw at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I found this sprawling, ungainly, meandering film absolutely riveting for nearly its entire length.”
My friend Gina Dalfonzo reviews a recent Netflix documentary about a billionaire’s quasi-religious efforts to live forever.
Bryan Johnson, the tech billionaire who’s the focus of Don’t Die, takes his own anti-death attitude to undreamed-of heights. Johnson has gained fame in recent years for the Blueprint Protocol, a strenuous program of diet, exercise, and medical care designed to take years off his life — literally. As the documentary shows in exhaustive detail, Johnson spends hours each day measuring out vegetable portions, swallowing pills, and pumping iron, with the result that, reportedly, he’s lowered his biological age by about five years.
Jenny Hamilton addresses the increasing popularity of “romantasy” (i.e., the literary crossover between the romance and sci-fi/fantasy genres) thanks to writers like Sarah J. Maas.
We lose nothing by accepting that SFF is expansive enough to include writers and readers who came to the genre by different paths than we did, who arrived via Rebecca Yarros and Ali Hazelwood rather than CS Lewis and Orson Scott Card. Romantasy takes nothing from longtime SFF readers, but it does offer us a bright and golden chance to ensnare new readers in our genre nets.
Billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos list sci-fi author Iain M. Banks’ “Culture” series among their favorite books — which is a bit weird given Banks’ anti-billionaire politics.
Nearly every aspect of the Culture seems to be diametrically opposed to the worldview of the tech right.
Banks takes as his starting principle for the Culture the idea that a space-faring civilization will have to be socialist to be effective. In the hostile environment of the vacuum of space, he argues, you will need to be able to count on the collective. Banks further reasons that each spaceship or planet in the Culture will have to be reasonably self-sufficient to survive.
At the same time, the Culture is stringently non-hierarchical and non-individualistic. There is no money and no want; therefore, there can’t be any billionaires or any economic inequality. There are no laws and almost no crime. This is not a world in which supremely wealthy people who use their power to influence the social fabric make sense.
Related: One thing that’s sorely lacking in our society is a good grasp of cultural hermeneutics.
This month marks the 20th anniversary of Leeroy Jenkins. If you know, you know.
It’s gone down in history as a defining moment for viral clips while bringing some gaming culture into the mainstream. The list of pop culture references to Leeroy Jenkins includes a Family Guy bit, trivia on Jeopardy!, a How I Met Your Mother impersonation, a Howard Stern segment, and even U.S. House Rep. Jared Huffman using the rallying call during a Speaker of the House vote. Blizzard kept Leeroy Jenkins alive by turning him into a staple Hearthstone card, rewarding the “Jenkins” title for a World of Warcraft achievement, and making a Leeroy Jenkins NPC voiced by Ben Schulz (the real Leeroy Jenkins) in the Warlords of Draenor expansion.
My own gaming group often makes Leeroy Jenkins references at the table whenever we’re charging into battle and bracing ourselves for a TPK.
Following HBO’s decision to not renew their contract to air Sesame Street, the iconic children’s television program is coming to Netflix.
The new agreement brings a reimagined 56th “Sesame Street” season — featuring a refreshed format and new segments like “Tales from 123,” “Abby’s Fairy Garden,” and “Cookie Monster’s Cookie Cart” — to Netflix, alongside 90 hours of classic episodes. Fan favorites “Elmo’s World” and “Cookie Monster’s Foodie Truck” will also return.
Fortunately, the series will continue to air for free on PBS.
File this under “Proof AI is making people lazy,” exhibit #5438. The Chicago Sun-Times’ “Best of Summer” section included a guide to the summer’s best books. Unfortunately, most (if not all) of the list’s books don’t actually exist.
The article, called “Summer Reading list for 2025,” suggests reading Tidewater by Isabel Allende, a “multigenerational saga set in a coastal town where magical realism meets environmental activism. Allende’s first climate fiction novel explores how one family confronts rising sea levels while uncovering long-buried secrets.” It also suggests reading The Last Algorithm by Andy Weir, “another science-driven thriller” by the author of The Martian. “This time, the story follows a programmer who discovers that an AI system has developed consciousness — and has been secretly influencing global events for years.” Neither of these books exist, and many of the books on the list either do not exist or were written by other authors than the ones they are attributed to.
The section was mostly written by an independent author and, according to The Chicago Sun-Times, “was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom.” Admittedly, this was just filler content and not actual news. Even so, it requires no stretch of the imagination to envision something similar happening with real news and editorial content. It’s just a question of “when,” not “if.”
After purchasing The Onion last year, Ben Collins reduced advertising, hired more staff, and relaunched the long-defunct print publication — all things that seem like suicide in today’s publishing world. And yet, The Onion is thriving under his leadership.
Collins has focused on getting The Onion the resources it so desperately needed, as well as pruning back the bullshit so the paper’s content can shine. “We took this thing that was dying a slow internet heat death and turned it into a real newspaper and much bigger business,” he exclusively tells Vanity Fair. “There was a boner-pill ad shawl that covered all of our content, and you just couldn’t read it. We got rid of all of it. We reset revenue to zero for a month or two while we figured out how to make and ship a paper to tens of thousands of people.”
Among other things, the interview covers Collins’ editorial oversight (he doesn’t have any, which is how it should be), The Onion’s efforts to purchase Alex Jones’ Infowars, and the state of modern comedy.
Finally, the lowly semicolon appears to be in decline.
A study suggests UK authors are taking Vonnegut’s advice to heart; the semicolon seems to be in terminal decline, with its usage in English books plummeting by almost half in two decades — from one appearing in every 205 words in 2000 to one use in every 390 words today.
Further research by Lisa McLendon, author of The Perfect English Grammar Workbook, found 67% of British students never or rarely use the semicolon. Just 11% of respondents described themselves as frequent users.
Via Kottke.
I care more about the em dash than the semicolon. Still, you can have my semicolon when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
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