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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Spring 2026 – Week 12 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I finished my run-through of Final Fantasy VIII this week, offering welcome closure to a lingering adolescent quest, in spite of the game’s third act being exceedingly underdeveloped. I suppose it’s a credit to the game’s character writing that I felt annoyed by how swiftly everything wraps up; this is definitely one of the best overall parties within the Final Fantasy lineage, and I’ll absolutely miss them. With that concluded, I’ve also been continuing a Blue Lions run of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which has led me to the amusing revelation that there’s no real justification for house leader Dimitri’s behavior, he’s just Like That. Sorta figured his route would offer similar revelations of intent to Black Eagles and Golden Deer, but nope, Dimitri’s just some kind of feral, vengeance-driven creature. I’ll hopefully be wrapping that adventure up shortly, but in the meantime, let’s run down the week in films!

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Eureka Seven – Episode 19

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am pleased as punch to announce we are at last returning to Eureka Seven, after far too long a leave of absence from Renton and the Gekkostate crew. There’s really nothing like that particular era of ambitious ‘00s originals, and believe me, I’ve looked. Not to say that the era I grew up with was the best era of anime production – that’s just nostalgia talking, obviously. But every shift in the medium’s output offers its own pleasures, and I am exceedingly fond of these sweeping, go-for-broke combinations of insular personal narratives and globe-trotting fantasy, particularly when Dai Sato or Igarashi and Enokido are involved.

When last we left off, Renton had received a melancholy reminder of home in the form of the old miner Brittany, who remained convinced that just two more meters of digging would strike the motherload that would revive his town. Seeing his own grandfather in this man’s struggles, Renton was happy to make himself useful, until Brittany’s obsession eventually put the whole Gekkostate crew in danger. Thus this brief flash of nostalgia only served to remind him how far from home he was, and how disconnected he remains from the strange, violent world he now occupies.

Renton’s conflict embodies the synergy of Eureka Seven’s surfer crew/revolutionary dichotomy, with Renton essentially experiencing the same disillusionment as a young reporter following a spiraling rock group, or a boy who abandons his home to join the circus. The Gekkostate crew are not here to provide him with a purpose; they are mired in their own troubles, barely getting by, and far from the ideal mentors for a boy seeking to find himself. But no one ever matures under ideal circumstances, and now that the glow of chasing his dream has dimmed, Renton might at last begin the unglamorous process of learning to live with both his triumphs and his regrets. Let’s return to the skies!

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Big Windup! – Episode 23

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to the field at the top of the ninth, after an eighth inning that saw both Nishiura and Tosei securing one more run. Unfortunately for Nishiura, this means they’re once again behind their first-seeded opponents, with only a single inning left to first tie and then surpass their opponents. What’s worse, Tosei’s pitcher Takase has clearly shrugged off his early-innings slump, making it all the harder for our boys to run those bases. It seems all hopes rest on Nishiura’s cleanup hitter Tajima – but with Takase at full capacity, will Nishiura survive long enough to let him swing?

Yep, it’s time for more friggin’ Big Windup!, as we return to Nishiura’s absolute nailbiter of a first summer tournament game. Having earned the misfortune of facing off against the first-seeded Tosei players, Abe and his teammates have employed every possible trick to gain an inch of advantage, and at this point might understand the quirks of Takase’s pitching better than he himself does. To win in baseball requires a combination of hard-trained athleticism, ingrained coordination, opponent-specific preparation, in-game analysis, and luck; throughout this match, all of those factors have risen and woven together, demonstrating the exhilarating heights of mechanically grounded drama. Fight on, Nishiura!

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Umamusume: Pretty Derby S2 – Episode 1

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’ve got a somewhat unorthodox piece for you all, as we touch down at the beginning of Umamusume: Pretty Derby’s second season. I actually reviewed the first two episodes of the original Umamusume back when they premiered, and apparently had a laundry list of critiques: the slice of life material felt by-the-numbers, the sports side failed to create tension, and the concept was so absurd that I could never achieve the buy-in necessary to engage with it emotionally. However, I have consistently heard that Umamusume’s second season is a vast improvement on the original, and am thus prepared to have another go at its fantastical horse girl world.

From what I hear, this second season apparently tunes down both the slice of life interludes and preposterous “also they’re idols” contrivance, honing in on the franchise’s sports drama fundamentals. That seems like a sturdier foundation than the first season’s mix, so while this is still pretty far outside my usual wheelhouse, I’m gonna do my best to keep an open mind about everyone’s favorite horse girl idol drama gambling app tie-in franchise. Let’s get down to the track!

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