Salty's Monthly Recap | May 2026

Ok, first off, Happy pride month and happy mens mental health awareness month since this is dropping on june. Anyways, there goes May, the passageway between Spring and Summer. I can already feel the heat exhaustion, probably the whole bombing unarmed civilians bullshit the US has been up to lately, or the AI datacenters destroying the ecosystem, probably both. Funny how Google plans to go even more pro AI despite even the Pope dunking on generative AI. Anyway you should switch to DuckDuckGo or something. Let’s get into the actual good news though.

Let’s start with the videogame news! An indie game called Mixtape took over critics scores only to be met with a massive disagreement from the general gaming community which called it an industry plant. On that topic seems like Mina the Hollower, the new game by the developers of indie legend Shovel Knight has released and it looks like might be one of the year’s main indie hits, fellow indie game Dead as disco seems like the other big indie of the month, other big games this month include Forza Horizon 6 and Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, latest releases on those series. We’ve also seen the return of Bubsy, famous for having terrible games, who released a new game that seems to have broken the curse, its titled Bubsy 4D. We also got a brand new announcement of a new Starfox game, titled simply Starfox, yet another remake of the N64 game.

On anime news two classic anime giants Detective Connan and Precure announced a brand new crossover episode. On top of that we get some early looks at the upcoming new anime adaptation of Ghost in the shell, animated by Science Saru and this time faithful to the original manga’s actual artstyle. We also got to see the first Images of a new anime spin-off of Scooby Doo, titled Yokoso! Sccoy Doo. Finally, on the anime side the new Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2026 came out and My Hero Academia and Dandadan absolutely swiped.

Not so many news on the cinematographic side; We got the first looks at the Sonic 4 movie, but also the release of the newest Star Wars movie, seems to have gotten some mild reception, also Animal Farm (2026) happened and everyone hated that. Comic related news are similar in quantity. Marvel announced the new Midnight Universe, a new horror themed publishing line. Read Comic Online got taken down, it’s ok though, there’s a couple of other sites still up. Ben10 returned in the form of official canon comics from Dynamite that act as a new reboot.

When it comes to my personal life, I’m starting to get ready to go back to studying, I just enrolled in a two year course that will later allow me to go directly into college soon enough. Lumentale: Memories of trey, a game I’ve been waiting to come out for a while has finally come out. Also Bakugan, one of my fave childhood franchises seems to be readying for a 20th anniversary as seen on a couple of pictures of its booth from the Las Vegas Licensing Expo. I’ve also started Haikyu, late, I know, and by god I’ve been missing out.

Now that the monthly news roundup is done, today I’m rather excited as I get to talk about some stragglers from last month that I didn’t finish on time for the April recap blog and have been some of my fave things I’ve gone through this year.

Given

Ok, so… I fucking loved given. Given is a beautiful musical drama about love, grief, and learning to move on. A believable love story about two friends growing ever closer. It follows Uenoyama, the young lead guitarist of his own band, and Mafuyu, his high school classmate who really wants to learn guitar from him as eventually joins the band. Not a lot happens but what little you get to see is incredibly powerful. The romance is realistic and honest without being too overdramatic nor having annoying tropes like forced misunderstandings or anything like that, nor is it unnecessarily sexual which is something I feel a lot of boys love anime and manga with adult characters do, and while that’s not necessarily bad I’ll always appreciate something on the wholesome side. Characters all get goals and backstories in just small and spaced enough doses to not feel forced. As a music anime it’s ironic that Given isn’t full of bangers, but the ost is mostly nothing out of the ordinary, in fact most scenes are silent, which only makes it even more powerful when the actual bangers come in. And on the topic of music, the sound design is impressive you actually believe those sounds are coming from those instruments, it’s honestly crazy how real everything sounds.

Fate/Strange Fake

Absolutely character packed ensemble cast of characters in a story full of moving pieces and collaborating factions. With great animation, astounding OST and sound design, as you'd expect from a studio like A1 Pictures. Definitely a turn your brain off type of show where the sheer chaos of the situation at hand and the spectacle takes priority over plot and characters, the plot in particular suffers from being very confusing and having way too many characters. I would say it is however worth it just because of how fun of a show this is. Absolutely worth it. I will say however, definitely watch one of the many existing Fate shows before, or else I doubt you’ll understand much of what’s going on.

Creature Commandos

Very messed up, but very well written. Can strike a balance between violent, funny, and emotional. James Gunn has a knack for writing groups of outcasts and this is a clear example. This is a story about the humanity in monsters, about nurture versus nature, and about how doing bad things doesn’t mean you can’t do better, but also about how good deeds don’t erase your past wrongdoings. It is quite a short show but it makes every episode feel like a gut punch to varying degrees. Extra points for using d-list characters, which is a thing I’m always up for. Cheers for the tin man!

Robots

I love how creative the character designs are. Genuinely the real stars of the movie other than the characters and the actors playing them were the artists. They manage to get such creative and varied character designs despite every single character being a robot which often are depicted as sleek and modern and nothing more than that. The aesthetics also really help make this movie all the more unique and memorable, being very retro-futuristic and art deco, the visuals are still great in 2026. Plus, everything being made of metal and incorporating gears and moving parts of some sort, right down to the buildings, as well as public transport being just a bunch of intricate mechanisms that flow into each other… The world alone of this movie is just so creative and whimsical, I love everything about it. The jokes are actually great too, I’ve laughed out loud several times watching this movie, they made a fart joke without it being unbelievably annoying. And it’s also got a great story commenting on the beauty industry, privatized healthcare, classism and corporate greed, which balances quieter emotional moments with fast paced action and comedy perfectly. Genuinely such a fun movie that hasn’t aged even a little bit as of today. Crazy how in current times the bad guy wouldn’t be called cartoonishly evil in current times.

Fate/Strange Fake: Whispers of Dawn

Pretty fun one hour special. A prologue for Strange Fake’s story that helps set up some stuff, introduces a couple of characters, and explains a couple of things you would have just had to guess if you started on episode 1 like I did. It’s got great animation, some pretty neat cinematography, and it does a great job at hyping you up for the story to come. It’s nothing crazy, but it does its job and is a lot more enjoyable than most special episodes I’ve seen. I really enjoyed it, you should definitely watch this if you’re planning to watch Strange Fake, you should still watch a different Fate show before that though.

Kohva Vol 1

So, funny story, this is a manga I got gifted for my birthday after many months of anticipation, only to have it delivered in italian instead of any of the languages I speak. So me and my friend had to trough a couple of hoops to return it and then get the right one. It doesn’t have anything to do with my opinion of the manga, just wanted to tell you about this little anecdote.

I gotta say Kohva left an insane first impression on me. A tragic fantasy with a bit of mystery with one of the secondary characters, and even a bit of horror I would say in the way the first big enemy is depicted It’s got an interesting setting, that being of a random snow covered mountain in a version of the modern world where inuit mythology is real, I haven’t seen inuit mythology being used in anything and as the mythology nerd that I am I couldn’t miss this. It’s also got some amazing art, and a pretty dark plot that starts looking like your classic shonen plot at first, only to hit you with a pretty interesting completely different story to what I was expecting, the tone is pretty fucked too, which honestly gives it a very specific tone when compared to a lot of shonen mangas I’ve read. Seriously guys, it is that good. I don’t even wanna explain the plot. This was my first time looking into non-japanese manga and what a fucking introduction. This is my new fave manga. I am obsessed with it. I cried. You JUST need to read it if you can get it on your language.

Autodale

Trigger Warning: Very sensitive subject matter and very graphic content.

Autodale is a dystopian fantasy animated web series and anthology of short youtube videos set in the titular city, where perfection is mandatory and individuality is forbidden. With a 1950’s americana aesthetic and a mostly black and white color palette, Autodale is dark, uncomfortable, and it doesn’t pull its punches. I love the way it uses the red of spilled blood to draw attention to the atrocities being committed, and I love how we get glimpses of the cruel dark fantasy world outside it. Autodale is a poignant critique and perfect representation of what fascism is, it genuinely feels like they took a black mirror episode and choose to expand on it. Genuinely great little series that you can blitz through in like an hour.

Dragonite and the Special Delivery

A beautiful animated short that released last year on Pokemon Day 2025 and only now got an english dub. This is a short but powerful little tale of a young postgirl named Hana helping a boy deliver a birthday letter to his dad working abroad. With absolutely stellar animation, score and voice acting, the emotional buildup hits you like a truck in a simple but incredibly well done story about the power of letters and how they can convey emotions. The little bit of worldbuilding also didn’t hurt, and the plot gave us a nice excuse to revisit every single region of the main series, which I think only makes this short being an anniversary thing all the better. Dragonite and the Special Delivery, is a testament to the core of pokemon as a franchise and the wide range of stories it can tell while still keeping true to its core. Pokemon is about whimsy, pokemon is about wonder, pokemon is about adventure, and these 14 mins of animation get it.

One Battle After Another

There’s not a lot I can say that other people haven’t already. Absolutely gripping movie, I’ll love any movie that will show white supremacists as the braindead morons that they are. Great cinematography, great action, great acting, genuinely stressful film as I’m sure was the point, some really funny jokes too. Loved DiCaprio as the boyfailure dad, the girl and the military guy were pretty fun too. I will say though I didn’t give a shit about any of the characters, and it does drag a lot at some points, by the last act I was waiting for it to end, it did not need to be this long. Still a great movie though.

Dead Word Puzzle

Trigger warning: Gore.

I’m gonna be real, I don't think I’ve ever read a manga this bad, mostly because I haven’t read that much manga to begin with, but still. This was so boring. Nothing makes sense, shit just happens. New characters just show up out of nowhere and the only ones that I remember just spout cryptic “I’m 14 and this is deep” type nonsense. The author tried to do something, and it went terribly, whatever they had in mind ended up just becoming edgy bullshit, not even in a fun way. I’m convinced they just wanted an excuse to draw gore. This feels like off brand Danganronpa. The only thing I felt at all reading this is confusion and revulsion. Other than that I genuinely couldn’t bring myself to care about a single thing. I guess at least it wasn’t AI. Never let this man cook again. Can't believe I wasted half an hour in the like 4 chapters this thing's got.

Face

Face is one of Shonen Jump’s latest one-shots released literally the day before writing this, and I gotta say this was great. Very straight forward but also very effective. Face is a horror plot under the lens of a comedy. It follows Taro Suzuki, an incredibly curious and impulsive kid who can’t help poke around his friend’s house when he finds out said friend’s family won’t show their faces to new people. What follows is him getting into shenanigans that birthed some of the funniest panels I’ve seen in a while, only to deliver a pretty fucked up twist at the very end, made only better by the absolutely hilarious final panel. Perfect ending.

Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies

Trigger warning: Sexual assault jokes

This is a fine movie I guess. I don’t really have a lot to say about it, but this seems like a fine enough retelling of Dragon Ball’s first art, or so they told me, I haven’t watched or read any Dragon Ball content from before DBZ. It’s a pretty fast paced movie, I feel the plotlines didn’t get much time to breath, but honestly I prefer this than it dragging on like DBZ does. It was entertaining enough, I enjoyed the whimsy of it all and the physical comedy got a few laughs out of me. I just wish the couple of pervert jokes weren’t there.

Dragon Ball: Sleeping Princess in Devil’s Castle

I watched this immediately after Curse of the Blood Rubies, it feels like a better version of the previous one. It’s not that much of an improvement over the first movie but I did enjoy it quite a bit more. This one follows an actual storyline and doesn’t feel as fast even though I’m pretty sure it’s shorter, the plot does get its own time to breathe, the dynamic between Goku and Krillin is pretty fun, and the comedy has improved in general. I laughed out loud at one of the jokes, it was such a small thing but I did not see it coming. There are still some pervy jokes but at least it wasn’t about boob touching. The halloween elements in this were fun too. Other than that there’s not much to say about it.

Alien Headbutt

This was my first time having a manga I like getting axed. This was a weirdly quick cancellation from what I’ve been hearing, I'm genuinely glad I was along for the ride though, goes to show that even good or at the very least promising manga can get axed before they can have their chance to shine. If anything Alien Headbutt was a damn fun ride to go along. It had an absurd premise with a fun main character, setting itself apart from the trend exorcist theme mangas going on currently. I will always appreciate an original concept like this one. Ouga Shirokiba is a renowned pro wrestler who after winning the championship title comes back to his home, only to find out that the entire island village has been taken over by aliens. This plot works perfectly with the batshit insane and over the top fights that are one of the most fun parts of this manga. On top of that we’ve got a relatively endearing secondary cast, some stellar art and incredibly fun character designs that could’ve been an absolute joy to see if the story had kept going. I think in particular my fave secondary character was Needleboy, just the silliness of him being the main enemy endeared me to him so much, I wish we got to see more of him. Unfortunately, it took a bit to get going, too many eps throwing hands with speechless punching bags, which made the pace not the best when it suddenly started rushing towards the conclusion and ignoring a bunch of ideas that could’ve been very fun to develop. But such is the way of a Shonen Jump axe victim. For what it’s worth, this is a really fun read, all things considered, and I will gladly follow author Akira Inui into whatever he makes next.

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