Evan Balster

Here is a list of creations I’ve gotten meaningful experiences from, organized by medium.  Consider them recommended reading/watching/playing/listening.

It’s under construction in the sense that I don’t want to spend an obscenely long time compiling it all at once, and so will add things as I think of them.

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Television
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Mushishi (Japanese animation, fiction)
I rarely watch television.  I wouldn’t have a category for it were it not for this unexpectedly beautiful and little-known work.  But I do, and I place it first.  Mushishi, in stark contrast to most imported animation, is a peaceful, contemplative, melancholy series of stories.  The otherwise-unrelated episodes center around a doctor-like protagonist who mediates between the common people and a wide variety of spiritual creatures dubbed ‘Mushi’.  Unlike most other people in his world (including other ‘Mushishi’) he strives for peaceful solutions rather than a means to ‘defeat’ the spirits in question.  The stories’ endings are sometimes sad, sometimes hopeful, and articulate the little lessons they hold effectively.
The visual art and musical scoring of the show are both quite good, with each episode ending in a different (original) song.   As I understand, the English voice acting is widely regarded as relatively good.  (I only had the Japanese, with subtitles.)

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Electronic Games
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Aquaria (commercial indie game)
A longish explorative game that takes place in a system of caves.  The game’s story is simple and its mechanics novel but not groundbreaking.  The environment in which it takes place, its music, and the experience it creates, however, are among the best work I’ve ever seen.  The lonely odyssey of the main character and the beautiful, abandoned world she explores have made a lasting impression on me as a game developer.