Fall 2024 – Week 6 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. By the time you’re reading this, America will have decided whether we’ve decided to fast-track or slow-roll our cultural and economic collapse, and major portions of the country may well be on fire. No one really wants to live through times of great upheaval, and our historical moment feels particularly tragic, suspended as we are between an unsustainable past and an ascendant right driven by cruelty, selfishness, and proud anti-intellectualism. While I can’t fix whatever’s gone so terribly wrong with this world, I can at least offer a momentary reprieve from its horrors, as we join together in kicking the tires and testing the brakes of a fresh collection of film features. From ruinously terrible Netflix releases to bubble-era anime spectacles, let’s take a brief break from our shared struggle, and talk about some interesting films.

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Light Through Glass: Rebels of the Neon God

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Rain splatters against the phone booth glass, drops falling like the embers of fireworks spiraling in the distance. Their trails are lit by an indistinct whirl of city lights, perhaps cars or fluorescent signs, made obscure and thus somehow entrancing, their uncertainty of form promising riches and wonders. The beads of water are like liquid jewels, a beautiful contrast against the soot-streaked interior. Two boys huddle inside, hungrily passing cigarettes between them, then inserting a screwdriver into the terminal. A waiting bag is filled with the phone’s bounty, loose coins a pale imitation of those glittering lights – but here in the city, all truly bright things are indistinct and out of reach.

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Skip and Loafer – Episode 11

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’d like to take a stroll back to the delightful drama of Skip and Loafer, as our two charmingly mismatched leads muddle their way through the school festival. Through the combined pressures of Mitsumi’s self-assigned responsibilities and Shima’s participation in the class play, the two are each essentially revisiting their childhood dreams, seeing how their old ambitions fit them, and where their new feelings might lead.

This process has prompted some good, productive friction for both of them, as Mitsumi reaches the limits of what she can do alone, and Shima grapples with his complex feelings regarding stage performance. But regardless of their personal journeys, what has been made abundantly clear is just how much they care for each other, and desire to keep each other from harm. Shima expresses this concern through his attempts to shield Mitsumi from disappointment, while Mitsumi pushes Shima to embrace uncertainty, knowing he is strong enough to pick himself back up. Let’s see how their dance continues as we return to Skip and Loafer!

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Uzumaki – Episode 2

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I announce with some degree of trepidation that we are returning to Uzumaki, the recent adaptation of Junji Ito’s famed horror manga. Though the first episode of this adaptation was actually phenomenal, there were apparently some catastrophic production breakdowns in the course of this series’ oft-delayed genesis. As a result, this second episode no longer boasts direction by Hiroshi Nagahama, the horror maestro whose uncanny application of rotoscoped animation and fastidious attention to sound design detail made the first episode such a wonder.

The reasons for this breakdown are both obscure and predictable; I don’t have exact knowledge of who pulled the plug, but it seems obvious that someone on the American side of this production got cold feet regarding the time and labor required for Nagahama’s approach, and instead tossed the production to a director who is renowned for putting in slipshod, subpar work at presumably cheaper rates. This is of a piece with American producers’ general lack of respect for the work that goes into anime production, and with Adult Swim in particular’s conflation of nostalgia with artistic value. Shows like the FLCL sequels embody Henry Ford’s maxim of “if I asked the people what they wanted, they’d have said faster horses” – it is up to great artists to show people what they could never have imagined wanting, and a philosophy born of “I want to recreate the exact conditions of when I first saw Cowboy Bebop at 1 AM on Adult Swim” will never produce such new ideas.

Thus we journey onward, into the consequences of high-level producers demanding swift, affordable results from a process whose fruits they could never measure or understand. With the spiral closing in around Uzumaki itself, we return to the field!

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Fall 2024 – Week 5 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week represents a new milestone in DnD’s ongoing invasion of my every waking moment, as we ran through our first twelve-hour session, running from three in the afternoon to way too fucking late in the goddamn morning. Assured by our guest DM (party leader of our first two campaigns, now playing second to my character in campaign three) that this would just be “a quick investigation followed by a Metal Gear Solid boat,” we found ourselves ten hours later in the midst of a fight with an unkillable barbarian, recreating the Vamp water battle in an actively sinking ship. I have lost control of my life.

That aside, this week also featured some excellent film screenings, alongside my conclusion of the beloved original Trigun. Let’s talk about all that!

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Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – Episode 6

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we’d step back into the world of Frieren, as our heroes prepare for a confrontation with an imposing dragon. Having been instantly rebuffed by the monster’s mighty scales, Frieren has decided it is time for the party to acquire a front-line fighter, that she might be afforded more time to conjure a properly armor-piercing sorcery. Thus our pair headed off to recruit Stark, the ax-wielding apprentice of Frieren’s old companion Eisen, only to find he’d been studiously avoiding confrontation with the dragon for three years.

It’s no surprise that our party of two mages are now in the market for some kind of warrior, but Frieren has so far avoided straightforward fantasy action, with each of its conflicts ultimately resolving in some quiet revelation regarding the nature of memory, personal relations, or finding purpose in your life’s journey. I’ll be intrigued to see how Stark facilitates these dramas, as he actually seems like the most “normal” member of the group, at least compared to Frieren’s elven sensibilities and Fern’s trauma-born perspective. With a dragon battle awaiting us, let’s meet back up with our brave heroes!

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Big Windup! – Episode 13

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to return to the field for a fresh episode of Big Windup!, as our boys continue preparations for the first round of the summer tournament. Having secured a matchup against last year’s eventual winners, their practice regimen has been appropriately grueling, involving pre-dawn wakeups, drills into the night, and a thoughtful combination of physical and mental conditioning.

Most sports shows offer some manner of engagement with the psychological underpinnings of their leads’ behavior, whether it’s something as simple as “I have to fulfill my father’s dying wish” or a nuanced array of emotional factors. But Big Windup! is somewhat unique in that it treats our base impulses as simply more muscles to be trained, with instincts like “tensing up during key plays” countered through persistent meditation and Pavlovian implanted associations. And all of this training is uniquely appropriate for a game like baseball, with its almost “turn-based” combination of passive stretches and frantic action.

Great sports writers have long understood that the science and strategy of baseball makes it a natural facilitator of Hunter x Hunter-reminiscent chess matches, wherein the efficacy of certain training regimens or strategic gambits can be made brutally apparent through close attention to the ebb and flow of conflict. I’m eager to see how our boys’ training pays off, so let’s get right to the action!

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The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You – Episode 8

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Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are checking in on the hundred girlfriends at a moment of crisis, as Kusuri’s well-intentioned yet morally dubious love potions have sent her fellow girlfriends into a kiss-hungry frenzy. With a pack of feral lovers nipping at their heels, Rentaro and Kusuri must now engage in a race against time to return these girls to normal, lest they be trapped forever as amorous animals in human form.

So basically, it’s just another day in the life for Rentaro and company. Well, mostly – Kusuri’s introduction has undeniably raised the overall chaos level of the production, and from all the “yes… soon…”s that I’ve been receiving from friends on Twitter, I imagine things will never be the same. She is a delightful amoral goblin with far too much power at her disposal, and I look forward to seeing what nonsense she inflicts on our innocent polycule next. Let’s get to it!

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Fall 2024 – Week 4 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to finish this dang article and get the heck outside, as we’re apparently experiencing some sort of late-October summer reprise, with temperatures in the 70s even as the leaves fall from the trees. You gotta take what victories you can during our ongoing environmental collapse, but fortunately for you all, this unexpected bounty of perfect weather has not stopped me from huddling inside and watching movies all week. This week I’ve got epic adventures, sordid slashers, and also a gorgeous anime feature by a man who is rocketing up my list of favorite directors. Let’s break ‘em all down!

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Anne of Green Gables – Episode 18

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we’d take a stroll over to Green Gables, where Anne is currently embroiled in the midst of a great crisis. With Diana’s utterly unreasonable mother still holding the Currant Wine Catastrophe over Anne’s head, our heroine was forced to break a sacred vow, and at last return to school. Though Mr. Phillips and Gilbert remain detested foes, Anne is determined to be strong for her bosom friend’s sake, and has even learned that the imagination-bereft Millie Andrews is actually a pretty nice girl.

So yes, it has all been a maelstrom of torment for our beleaguered young Anne, as she has been sure to tell anyone who will listen. However, the tempests of adolescent emotion are as fickle as they are fierce, and I imagine this particular storm will blow over in time for Christmas. In the meantime, I’ll be happy enjoying Anne’s preposterous editorializing of her profoundly normal problems, as well as the sumptuous realization of Green Gables offered by Takahata and his formidable team. Let’s get to it!

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