Yuri is My Job! – Episode 5

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re diving back into the thorny drama of Yuri is My Job!, having at last borne witness to the full prior relationship of Hime and Mitsuki. Back in grade school, each of them were outsiders of their own kind; Mitsuki was rejected as a too-serious weirdo, and though Hime was popular, she had no one with whom she could share her actual, honest feelings. The two found a brief sanctuary in each other, where Mitsuki could embrace her passions without judgment, and Hime could admit to the ungenerous feelings that simmered beneath her persona. But tragically, while they cared about each other, they never truly understood each other – thus Hime abandoned music to protect Mitsuki from the bullying she already expected, and Mitsuki responded by robbing Hime of the facade she herself couldn’t respect.

Thus we arrive at our current state of affairs, with Hime still traumatized by the consequences of revealing her true self, and Mitsuki seeing Hime as everything she despises about social performances. The two have arrived at Cafe Liebe from opposing poles: Hime sees Liebe’s performances as simply a quirky variation on her own affectation, while Mitsuki takes comfort in the regularity of these interactions, the rules she can internalize such that her passion makes her a star, not an outsider. Each of them has learned to feel ashamed of the person behind the mask, but at Cafe Liebe, they have the chance to hone their performances such that they need never look at their true selves in the mirror. Let’s see how this deeply unhealthy “solution” proceeds!

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Ojamajo Doremi Sharp – Episode 13

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am impatient to return to the ever-charming, frequently preposterous adventures of our dubious witch Doremi, as she and her companions struggle to raise their witch baby. When we last left off, they’d managed to stumble their way through a frankly embarrassingly witch baby health inspection, wherein our girls’ thoughtful, well-intentioned focus on Hana’s health and comfort earned them a bye instead of an actual pass. Frankly, I’m beginning to question Majo Heart’s credentials as a witch baby health inspector, if this is the sort of performance we can expect from her proctoring.

To be entirely honest though, I’m actually quite happy to see the team fail, as that likely means we’ll be indulging in even more Witch World adventures soon. It’s always nice seeing this production team stretch their design muscles for the outright fantasy sequences – though of course, Doremi’s greatest triumphs tend to fall more on the personal, mundane side, illustrating the difficult emotional trials of life, and the “magic” that is our ability to find solace and understanding in the people we love. Let’s see what sort of adventure awaits as we return to Ojamajo Doremi!

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Fall 2024 – Week 12 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you from the midst of more end-of-year preparations, as I simultaneously chart out my favorite anime of the year, and also cram in as much Dead Dead Demons as I can before the dead dead deadline. I’ve been enjoying the show more now that I’m past the point I read in the manga, and am no longer directly comparing the two; taken as a work in its own right, it provides a fatigued, almost fatalistic snapshot of our lives on the cusp of apocalypse, perfectly echoing both our real-world inability to contest the decline of late-stage capitalism, as well as the ease with which that uncertainty lets us justify the unthinkable. I’ve also been puttering away at some big Dungeons & Dragons projects, and am currently nearing the end of designing a “quest” that’s in truth a brief campaign in its own right, featuring a fully populated boom town and a variety of Wild West-evoking side quests. I’ll probably let you know how that turns out either here or in my Vox Machina pieces, but in the meantime, let’s break down the week in films!

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Misadventures in Dungeons & Dragons: Part Three

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today my buffer of reader bounties is so well-stocked that it would be an act of supreme hubris to write any further ahead, so I figured I’d instead check back in on my early adventures in Dungeons & Dragons, and see if we can sift some lessons out of my early mistakes. It’s been over a year since I last published one of these pieces, meaning looking back is only getting more embarrassing as I get more practice – but of course, improvement comes in much greater leaps and bounds early on, when there’s so much more you don’t know, but could easily learn through experience. It’s true of most things, but especially true for the mix of preparation, performance, and improvisation that is DnD: until you’ve actually hosted a live table session, there’s really no way of knowing precisely what you will and won’t need prepped to support you.

That’s the primary divide we’ll today be reaching, as we charge past the end of The Festival of Saint Agatha, and on into The Dreadful Tale of Castle Blackmire. Saint Agatha was my first adventure ever, save precisely one session of guest DMing our prior campaign, and thus I was basically guessing regarding the level of detail I needed to write into every quest. My first takeaway was a clear “need more prep,” meaning Blackmire would include more fully realized expository copy to more easily set scenes, and also more clear mechanical definition for conflicts I had previously, foolishly assumed I could “just figure out on the fly.” I am not a master of swift improvisation; my DnD work demands preparation to come alive, and balancing that level of preparation is something I’m still working on today.

When last we left off with this endeavor, our party of Dante the tiefling sorcerer, Arachne the half-elf/half-spider ranger, Garu the human rogue, and Dylan the crustacean paladin had successfully derailed some kind of sacrificial ritual, preventing the emergence of a dark harvest god and saving their friend Lugdug in the process. With both my main side quests for the town of Nettlebarn resolved, I figured it was time to pull the trigger on the town’s concluding drama, and get the team marching towards the city of Yhaunn, which would ultimately become their home for the trials ahead.

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Skip and Loafer – Episode 12

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I come to you bearing melancholy tidings, for while I am thrilled to be returning to Skip and Loafer, I am sorry to admit that this is indeed the last episode of Skip and Loafer, at least until a sequel gets announced. Yes, today we must bid goodbye to Mitsumi and Shima, who’ve been such emphatically charming company as they navigate the gentle hurdles of adolescence.

Mitsumi arrived in Tokyo bearing enormous dreams of scholastic achievement and civil service, and so far I’d say she’s more than proven herself as a cosmopolitan big-city gal. Well, perhaps not exactly, but she’s certainly proven she doesn’t need to reinvent herself in order to find a comfortable home in the city. In fact, over the past six months, it’s largely been her own earnest, optimistic personality that has drawn others towards her, disarming the natural defenses of Makoto, Yuzuki, and even Mika through her courageous commitment to being herself. Her example has even led a boy as scarred by past sincerity as Shima to believe he could earnestly pursue his passions – and with both his family and old flame gathered at the festival, it is clearly time to put that faith to the test. Let’s get to it!

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Uzumaki – Episode 3

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are returning to the ill-fortuned terrors of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki, as we sift through the wreckage of this once-promising adaptation. After a first episode that saw Hiroshi Nagahama wielding his singular yet undeniably laborious Aku no Hana-adjacent aesthetic to marvelous dramatic effect, producer meddling and presumed merger-prompted impatience on the American side has left the production floundering, wielding every cost-saving measure in the book to ensure its profoundly limited animation crosses the finish line. We’ve seen single-frame imitations of movements, cutaways to avoid animating faces, and walk cycles with perhaps two frames to their name, a grim parody of the meticulous animation style employed in this production’s first episode.

And yet, the inherently compelling nature of the material remains, alongside the production’s excellent background art, soundtrack, and foley work. The thing about Junji Ito’s stories is that they straddle the thin line separating horror from farce even in their original form; hell, stories like Kirie’s brief hostile hair fiasco don’t really have any interpretation other than comedy, so divorced are they from anything approaching a relatable human anxiety. An aesthetically compromised adaptation makes for an oddly compelling rendition of Ito’s tonally discordant vignettes, and Uzumaki’s tales are certainly never boring. With expectations appropriately tempered, let us return to the spiral!

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Fall 2024 – Week 11 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you from the midst of another cold, gloomy December day, as I wonder to myself why exactly we choose to end the year at the conclusion of such a miserable month. How are we supposed to feel optimistic about the new year at the end of fuckin’ December, when the cold’s already seeped deep into our bones, and the promise of spring is still several brutal months away? I’d frankly prefer it if we were continuously running through an April-to-September circuit, with no threat of frigid weather looming over us, and the promise of a fresh summer never more than a couple months away. Of course, I’d miss Halloween, but perhaps we could just push that back a month and have it serve as September’s end – I mean, it’s not like September’s got anything else to do with its time.

Anyway, where were we? Ah yes, the Week in Review. Let’s break down some films!

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Ishitani Ascendant: One Piece Fan Letter

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Among the many talents that have benefited from Toei’s renewed dedication to One Piece’s anime adaptation, there are none more spectacular or consistent than director Megumi Ishitani. Having first directed the final episode of Dragon Ball Super, she has since made an indelible mark on One Piece, affirming her talent through directing what is likely the series’ all-time greatest episode during its Wano arc. That episode revealed the absurd range of her aesthetic genius, the eye for storyboarding and cinematic embellishments that make every work she creates feel not just like an episode, but an event. That episode also embodied her unique talent for drawing diverse dramatic threads into one cohesive, thematically resonant whole – to basically synthesize One Piece’s appeal down to its purest essence, the yearning for connection and quest for liberation that are the story’s most poignant and central themes.

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Big Windup! – Episode 14

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Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to Big Windup! just in time for the first match of the summer tournament, as our boys face off against the actual winners of the previous year’s tournament. The unfortunate results of the tournament lottery have left them with an absurd challenge ahead of them, and given this tournament’s single elimination format, it’s more than likely their brilliant, ephemeral summer dreams will end just as soon as they’ve begun.

Fortunately, our team is well-equipped with both underappreciated talent and expert conditioning. Our core battery of Mihashi and Abe both flew under the radar in middle school; Mihashi because he had no proper training or support, and Abe because he was paired with a pitcher who had no interest in collaboration. The two of them had learned to see their teammates as either obstacles or objects of fear, but here at Nishiura, they have found both accommodating allies and trustworthy instructors, furnishing their initial talents with the confidence and mutual trust necessary to succeed. Still, there is simply no way to overcome the experience gap between them and their competitors, and it’s clear their opponents are prepared to take them seriously. Let’s see if our boys can triumph over the odds as we return to the field!

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Spy x Family – Episode 35

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive back into Spy x Family, and join the Forgers for some actual goddamn vacation time. So far, their cruise ship journey has been defined largely by high-stakes action spectacle, with Yor defeating countless assassins while Loid disables a scattering of explosives. It’s always fun seeing the Forgers flex their formidable faculties, but the heart of this production is the interplay of these found family weirdos, and I’m thus hoping we at least get a sampling of their activities on the final day of the cruise.

After a long stretch of lacking a comparable motivation to her so-called husband, this arc successfully aligned Yor alongside him as a steward of the future, a warrior who fights so that other families can enjoy the comfort she has found. Yor’s dubious motivation and general lack of interiority has always been one of Spy x Family’s greatest weaknesses, so I’m quite happy we’ve dedicated a full arc to her emotional growth, and look forward to seeing how her new perspective impacts her approach to family life. Let’s get to it!

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