Dear Brother – Episode 16

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I hear the bells tolling coldly from a distant tower, and feel a rush of wings as pale birds blot the sun, meaning it can only be time for a return to Dear Brother. Our last episode struck at the heart of Seiren Academy’s psychological sickness, as the return of exam results and resulting Sorority pleasure cruise brought Nanako closer than ever to the imperious Miya-sama. Having banished poor Junko for failing due to her ill health, Miya-sama then attempted to corral Nanako’s rebellious spirit, offering both an apology and a warning to cut off her contact with Dear Brother himself.

It all served as a blatant display of manipulation and cruelty, and fortunately, Nanako has now gained the confidence and independence of spirit to recognize Miya-sama’s games. As such, when Junko came to thank Nanako for being the sole student to stand up for her, Nanako was quick to agree with her perspective, and acknowledge the terrible cruelty of the Society’s dictates. After the briefest interval of feeling at peace with Seiren’s eccentricities, Nanako stands ready to challenge Miya-sama’s authority, or at the very least undercut it through her own compassionate stance. Let’s see how this delicate duel commences as we return to Dear Brother!

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Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – Episode 19

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to the snow-topped peaks and lush vales of Frieren, as our indifferent mage is roped into competing for her first class mage driver’s license. The arc at large is proving a natural test of her priorities; as someone who lives many hundreds of years, she’s seen little benefit in flattering the human organizations that claim to define and validate magical proficiency. And frankly, I get it; between freelance work and simply existing in the modern world, there are few phrases I dread more than “we’re adopting a new portal/platform/processing service.”

Nonetheless, such indulgences are the cost of existing in a world defined by common societal rules, and Frieren’s willingness to subject herself to this nonsense is an obvious demonstration of her growing integration into the lives of others. Having been separated from Fern and teamed up with two girls whose mutual concern is as obvious as it is oblivious, she’s found an opportunity to test her increasingly personable nature with neutral players, and proven a far warmer, more inquisitive person than the mage Himmel first called to adventure, or even the one he parted from beneath the fireworks. With only two days left to acquire a supersonic sparrow, let’s see how our trio is faring!

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Summer 2026 – Week 1 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. The summer anime season appears to be an absolute deluge of quality cartoons, but in characteristic fashion, I have so far not sampled any of them. Look, I spent most of a decade writing for ANN’s preview guide, I feel like I can be forgiven for my temporal obstinance when it comes to new shows. Nonetheless, even I feel tempted to check out such enticing propositions as a new Naoko Yamada show or fresh Kyoto Animation adaptation, so I’ll likely be diving in myself in short order, presumably when enough episodes have been released to make a proper meal of any of them. In the meantime, my house has been knocking off film viewings and supplementary series with uninhibited abandon, so let’s see what treasures await in the Week in Review!

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Shoushimin Series – Episode 11

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to Shoushimin Series, as our two leads attempt to truly, finally kick their antisocial habits. Having accepted that they will likely always enable each other’s allegedly abnormal tendencies, Osanai chose to break off their relationship altogether, ending the ambiguity of their ill-defined bond with the finality of “we are no longer anything to each other.” And thus the two continue their wandering high school lives, each finding new opportunities in the wake of their separation.

Normally, this is where I might talk about how denying your passions only hobbles your potential, or how the anxieties they’re currently experiencing are largely reflective of the identity-forming panopticon that is high school, and what they truly need is to embrace their own truths and seek out the people who genuinely relate to them. All of that is generally true, but here’s the thing – Osanai just committed a litany of crimes in order to falsely frame an old enemy of kidnapping her for ransom, all while making Jogoro and Kengo unwitting accomplices in her conspiracy. That’s not really on the “harmless eccentricity” end of personal quirks; Osanai is quite frankly a danger to herself and everyone around her, and it seems unclear at this point if she could sculpt her lust for revenge into something compatible with civil society. Of course, I don’t engage with fiction to watch morally pristine characters engage in socially laudable behavior; I love the messy shit, and Osanai’s passion being so difficult to pacify or integrate only makes it all the more compelling. Let’s see how normal our leads are becoming today!

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Apocalypse Hotel – Episode 4

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d take a walk through the ruins of Tokyo, and stop by the prestigious Gingarou Hotel. In spite of humanity’s apparent decline, Yachiyo and her fellow robotic staff members have been doing a fine job of keeping the beds made, cupboards dusted, and shampoo hats in proper working order. And lately, their diligent efforts have actually been paying some dividends, as they’ve entertained both plant-based lifeforms and alien tanukis in a mere fifty-year operating span.

Though it’s been a fine show from the start, it felt like Apocalypse Hotel really hit its rhythm with the introduction of Ponko and her tanuki family. With Ponko on the staff, Yachiyo now has a sounding board for her philosophy, one of those classic guileless characters who through their sincere ignorance can often arrive at unexpected wisdom. And with the cast now fully furnished, I’m hoping the show will return to some of the vivid melancholy of its premise, that poignant search for meaning in a world with no apparent future. Are they just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, or is there something vital and worthwhile in this staff’s struggles, even if just for their own sake? Let’s see what guidance their hotel directives can offer as we check back on Apocalypse Hotel!

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The Mighty Nein – Episode 3

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to check back in on the adventures of The Mighty Nein, who as of yet mostly don’t actually know of each other’s existence. Critical Role have taken an exceedingly bold approach to adapting their second long-form campaign, revising and restructuring in order to better fit their stories to this animated format. As such, we haven’t actually reached The Mighty Nein’s original first episode yet, and have instead been documenting the group’s individual adventures across Wildemount, as they circle and converge in the leadup to their fateful union.

And personally, I’ve been absolutely loving the changes. It’s certainly harder to critique this season in terms of direct reflections on its DnD-rooted dynamics, but that is itself a great sign, an indicator that the production team are less interested in animating precise tabletop sequences than in taking the raw material of the Mighty Nein and reconstructing it into its most satisfying, visual drama-native form. Tabletop campaigns have many virtues, but polished narrative coherence is generally not one of them; the format inherently resists the sort of dramatic inevitability that defines traditional fiction, encompassing a lot of circling and getting sidetracked and general reveling in the off-kilter indulgences of collaborative storytelling. Nonetheless, there is the seed of a powerful traditional narrative in the arcs, bonds, and conflicts of the Mighty Nein, and it is clear this production team is determined to make it flourish. Let’s see how our heroes fair as we return to the table!

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Spring 2026 – Week 13 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. With the summer anime season already commencing, we’ve got an absurd bounty of promising new productions to look into, from Naoko Yamada’s A Witch in Mongolia to the new Ghost in the Shell, dazzling aesthetic throwback Goodbye Lara, and even a brand new adaptation from Kyoto Animation. Sometimes I have to scramble to fill out my year in review posts, but between this season’s contenders, Witch Hat Atelier, and Journal With Witch (it’s clearly a particularly witchy year), 2026 is looking to be one of the strongest years in anime for quite some time. Meanwhile, my own house just finished up the original Bubblegum Crisis, leaving me wavering between Magic Knight Rayearth and Galaxy Express 999 as our next legacy viewing. I’ll let you all know how that shakes out soon enough, but in the meantime, let’s run down the week in films!

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In the Realm of Spirits: Kwaidan

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An impoverished samurai abandons his loving wife, only to discover a horrible truth upon his return home. A young woodcutter marries a beautiful stranger, and breaks a promise that spells his doom. A blind musician plays for a spectral audience, learning the cost of beauty in the bargain. A martial retainer makes an unlikely enemy, setting him on a path towards an uncertain fate. So proceed the strange tales of Kwaidan, a masterpiece of folk horror cinema directed by Masaki Kobayashi, and adapted from the collections of Japanese folklore transcribed by writer and translator Lafcadio Hearn.

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BanG Dream! Ave Mujica – Episode 13

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today the curtain rises on the final performance of Ave Mujica, a band defined by mental illnesses so powerful they may well topple the titanic Togawa Group. After twelve episodes of wailing and collapsing and scratching at each other with passionate, loving fury, our girls have more or less coalesced, reuniting via an admittedly abridged resolution of Uika and Sakiko’s drama. Now the group stands united, ready to entrance all of Japan with the nightmare visions of their extremely chuuni rock band.

It has admittedly been a rougher ride to get here than for MyGO. Alright, I won’t sugarcoat it: Ave Mujica has been kind of a mess, more interested in audacious spectacle than human inquiry, and its characters have resultantly failed to rise beyond melodramatic caricatures. But given the contrast between MyGO’s confessional slam poetry and Ave Mujica’s ornate theater, I can’t say it’s terribly surprising the show has embraced such tonal excess off-stage as well.

I certainly wish characters like Uika and Umiri were handled better, but I can also more fundamentally admit that Ave Mujica is simply less my sort of thing that MyGO; I like stories about people, and Ave Mujica is more about a grandiose, indulgently self-destructive vibe than offering convincing character studies. Nonetheless, it’s been an entertaining and often shocking ride here, and I do love Nyamu dearly, largely sharing her “so this is how rich girls entertain themselves” view of her bandmates. With the chandeliers lit and blood generously pooling, let’s enjoy one last moonlit sacrament!

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Journal With Witch – Episode 3

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m happy to announce I’m feeling pretty darn emotionally stable, which puts me in fine shape to survive an episode of Journal With Witch. The show has so far done a commendable job of psychologically demolishing me with both of its first two episodes, digging into the intersection of grief, self-realization, and creative expression with nuance and acuity. Makio is one of the most sharply drawn characters I’ve seen in years, and through her awkward navigation of adulthood, parenting, and professional writing, Journal With Witch is constructing a human portrait as raw and incisive as its titular journal.

Our last episode saw Makio consulting with allies regarding the Asa question, conferring with first her close friend Nana Daigo, and then her ex-boyfriend Shingo. Unfortunately, as is often the case in such matters, they mostly just served to affirm things she already knew: that she couldn’t put off managing her sister’s personal effects, that her life would be changing rapidly now, and that in spite of it all, she would still remain her standoffish, singular self. Personal growth is both a practice and an inevitability; sometimes pledges turn to practices and then to habits through conscious effort, and sometimes we look up and have to blink at the figure in the mirror, uncertain how we assumed some strange new shape. Regardless, the fundamentals of the isolated creative life remain constant – we dig deep within and excavate our embarrassments, throwing them onto the page in hope of connection, simultaneously praying and fearing to be truly known. Perhaps next time, that hot stovetop might offer the validation we need, the certainty that we haven’t wasted our life in letters. Perhaps not, but what else is there?

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