Kamiina Botan – Episode 3

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re checking in on Kamiina and her liquor-loving dormmates, as we lounge our way through a fresh episode of Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk. When last we left off, the gang had just returned from a trip to Nagatoro, an excursion that let this production luxuriate in what it does best: offering scene-snippets and montages of young adults enjoying their freedom, and luxuriating in the incidental beauty of the world that these artists so capably bring to life.

For all that, I’m still feeling fairly ambivalent about this production so far. While I quite enjoy the focused outings like that Nagatoro trip, the show’s focus on liquor has so far failed to really add anything to the proceedings in either an aesthetic or dramatic sense. Watching other people get drunk simply isn’t particularly interesting, and beyond that, the show hasn’t really textured its characters enough to make their relationships dramatically compelling. Admittedly, part of this disconnect is simply that I’m less a fan of pure slice-of-life anime than most, but the ones I’ve enjoyed tend to have a little more immediate appeal, be it the intriguing worlds of Flying Witch and Girls’ Last Tour, or the engaging focus activities of Laid-Back Camp and K-On! Nonetheless, the show is so lovingly realized that it remains an easy watch regardless, so let’s see if our third episode finally seizes my attention!

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Summer 2026 – Week 10 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. With the summer anime season nearly finished and my journey through Galaxy Express 999 at last complete, I’m eager to catch up on what appears to have been the strongest anime season in years. At a glance, I absolutely need to check out A Witch in Mongolia, Goodbye Lara, The Ghost in the Shell, and Sparks of Tomorrow, as well as find time for outstanding films like Cosmic Princess Kaguya, The Ribbon Hero, and The Last Blossom. Between all those, Witch Hat Atelier, and Journal With Witch, this is proving to be a pretty ludicrous year in prestige productions, and a generally heartening sign for the medium’s strength and diversity. I’ll be sure to check back in as I munch through the season’s highlights, but for now, let’s run down the week in films!

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HeartCatch Precure! – Episode 2

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am absolutely delighted to be returning to HeartCatch Precure!, as we storm through the fallout of Tsubomi’s transformation into Cure Blossom. Having more or less failed in her initial attempts to shrug off her shy, introverted personality, she nonetheless found herself forcibly befriended by the lamprey-like Erika, who clung to her all through her first day in Kibougahana. Yet in spite of her misgivings about this new relationship, she was swift to jump to Erika’s defense upon the appearance of the devious Sasorina, prompting her sudden debut as Cure Blossom.

All that description really can’t do much to convey the actual experience of watching this remarkable production. With direction by Toei’s reliable Tatsuya Nagamine and character designs by the legendary Yoshiko Umakoshi, HeartCatch’s debut was a visual feast, echoing both the cartoonish flexibility of Doremi and the operatic drama of Casshern Sins. Beyond Umakoshi’s character designs, the show’s overall visual philosophy embraces an evocative, angular looseness that makes sequences like its opening battle into dynamic visual theater, as beautiful as they are exciting. Combine that with the clear visual comedic and dramatic potential of our initial Precure pair, and you end up with a premiere that dazzles on every metric, offering much and promising even more. Let’s see how the battle unfolds as we return to HeartCatch Precure!

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The Apothecary Diaries – Episode 5

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m feeling a craving for some prickly palatial intrigue, a hunger that can clearly only be sated by Maomao and her rambling Apothecary Diaries. This production has so far proven a crunchy mixture of personal and mystery drama, grounding its various inexplicable illnesses in the pragmatic realities of political capital and gender within the rear palace. And all the while, Maomao’s own status has risen precipitously, to the point where two of the emperor’s top courtesans now consider her a trusted confidant.

Our last episode was a particular stunner, benefitting from the tremendous talents of young gun director/AD China and Moaang. In their hands, a production generally reliant on its layouts over its limited animation was able to pull off some gorgeous feats of character acting, realizing the subtlety of Maomao’s professional poise and the tenderness of a mother’s love with equal acuity. We’re probably not in for another standout like that, but I’m excited nonetheless to see how Maomao continues to navigate this treacherous theater. Let’s get to it!

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Rock is a Lady’s Modesty – Episode 12

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Hello folks, and welcome the fuck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to Lilisa and her as-yet-unnamed rock quartet (no, they’re not going with Shiraya’s stupid name), as they work to balance their high society obligations and passion for rock music, the latter providing an excellent outlet for all the frustrations of the former. When last we left off, Lilisa had just met with six-years-removed Noble Maiden Yayoi Takayanagi, who offered her some troubling words of wisdom regarding her own pursuit of the title.

Though Lilisa initially assumed Yayoi was a kindred spirit, given her flouting of obligation and love of music, she soon learned that the world of the elites was even more cruel and unfair than she’d expected. It was not merit that earned Yayoi her title; it was her generous endowment to the academy, the same method by which those of the upper class have acquired their scholastic credentials for centuries. For every commoner who “pulls themselves up by their bootstraps,” there are a thousand members of the landed gentry who simply bought their way into continued adulation; high society is an exclusive club, and you are not invited.

Beyond Yayoi’s blunt acknowledgment that wealth, power, and social standing are all the same thing, she further demonstrated the sort of person who thrives in this system, casting aside Lilisa’s truest passion with a conspiratorial “keep that nonsense to yourself.” To worship at the altar of capital demands an absolute denial of the empathy-driven self; one must become a creature without human sentiment, and that necessarily demands abandoning such pursuits as “expressing your feelings through rock music.” Yayoi has “won” in the way Lilisa thought she desired, but her victory has left a hollow shell where a person once was, one of the countless husks that comprise our global elite.

This was all obviously a terrible shock for Lilisa, but it certainly improved my impression of the show’s ambitions. Too often it’s felt like this story has been constructing a simplistic, binary contrast of “stultifying collectivism versus selfish individualism,” a philosophy that felt more reactionary than humanist, more childish than liberatory. This last episode went a long way towards realigning rock with genuine social rebellion, and I can only hope that continues as Lilisa reconsiders her ambitions. Now let’s quit with all this stuffy thematic analysis, and get to the fuckin’ show!

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Summer 2026 – Week 9 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We have sadly reached the end of the summer months, which in New England terms means I’m now in for two months of damp leaves followed by six months of merciless winter chill. Still, I’m determined to keep my heroic, eminently praise-worthy jogging routine going, so I’m currently in the process of mustering up the energy to A: find a local gym, B: acquire membership to said gym, and C: actually make use of aforementioned membership. I generally stall out somewhere between steps A and B, but I’m feeling good about this year, and will at the very least keep jogging outside so long as the frosts permit.

In other news, I’m now three quarters of the way through Galaxy Express 999, and have also munched through the majority of the recent Critical Role-associated superhero game Dispatch. Aside from sometimes falling into that unfortunate “Mom’s not home, we can say swears” tone common to too-online narratives, the game’s proven a charming found family story, stapled to a mechanical system that calls to mind Yakuza’s cabaret minigames. I frankly would have picked up the game much earlier if it was pitched with the cabaret stuff; hearing some familiar voices is nice, but man, that minigame is a top-notch time waster. And of course, there were also film screenings aplenty, so let’s get on with the Week in Review!

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Yuri is My Job! – Volume 8

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After seven volumes of inexpertly dancing around each other’s true feelings, Yuri is My Job!’s seventh volume concluded on a simple, devastating truth: that Hime could not reciprocate Mitsuki’s desires, and the mismatch of their ambitions made it impossible for her to continue working at Cafe Liebe. Having rekindled their childhood friendship in spite of their profoundly differing impressions of that history, it seemed like they were on a course towards genuinely understanding each other, and perhaps forging an even stronger bond. But as this insightful manga is always willing to admit, mutual understanding does not necessarily imply reconciliation; in fact, it is sometimes our most fundamental truths that drive a wedge between us.

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Monogatari Off/Monster Season – Episode 14

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are concluding our journey through Monogatari’s Monster Season, as Araragi and company close the book on their town’s latest vampiric intrusion. Having at last learned of Deathtopia’s arrival in her own words, they’ve discovered that while Suicide-Master did commence this chain of mummifications, it was actually her first victim Sowa Kiseki who committed the rest, working out her frustrations regarding the girls’ basketball team via a series of violent reprisals.

In an arc littered with echoes of Kizumonogatari, Kiseki represents an alternative path Araragi could have taken, if his resentment towards others had outweighed his hatred of himself. Or perhaps Araragi simply got lucky, in that unlike Deathtopia’s “food poisoning,” Acerola’s survival of Araragi’s vampirization set him on the road towards Meme Oshino and a positive application of his new powers.

We cannot isolate every turning point in our life, nor guarantee we will undergo that precise, “correct” degree of transformation through our experience – as Deathtopia put it, neither so familiar we seem static, nor so different we’re unrecognizable. But we can acknowledge that everyone is bound by those same anxieties, whether allegedly ageless vampires or uncertain college freshmen. Thus after an arc spent reassessing Araragi and Shinobu’s bond, we find ourselves happily where we began: still licking each other’s wounds, still unified in mutual trust, and still ready to face whatever the future may bring as a fast-talking, quick-slicing pair of vampiric badasses. Now let’s hunt down our killer!

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Dear Brother – Episode 17

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m in the mood for some meticulously sculpted melodrama, and thus feel there’s nothing for it but to take the train on down to Seiren Academy, bathing ourselves in the crimson light off the bay as we contemplate whatever future terrors await. That’s right, it’s time for some goddamn Dear Brother, where any clock stroke might foretell the desolation or doom of our haunted high school classmates.

Our last episode offered a harrowing countdown to disaster, with the leadup to Kaoru’s return to the court offering a mix of poignantly articulated personal hopes and ominous visual framing. All those shadows and birds and wailing train signals made for a paralyzing first half, so much so that Kaoru’s eventual accident on the court came almost as a relief. And ultimately, the fallout of that moment actually served as a comforting affirmation of how far our heroes have come, with both Shinobu and Saint-Juste proving the strength of their bonds with Kaoru. Even as the violence escalates, it feels like Miya-sama’s grip on Seiren is slipping, while the rebels she’s attempted to undercut only prove their enduring resilience. It seems Nanako is far from alone in her rejection of the Sorority, and I’m eager to see how she marshals her allies as we return to the battlefield of adolescence!

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Summer 2026 – Week 8 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. With the site still boasting drafts of every single currently outstanding reader project, I’ve been hacking away at the novel for much of this past week, burning through a major back-half sequence and successfully extracting myself from the narrative hole I’d created. I’ve also been munching through Galaxy Express 999 episodes at a feverish pace, and thoroughly enjoying Matsumoto’s diverse, fantastical planetary concepts. There’s obviously some repetition of themes and structures (Tetsuro’s had his pass stolen at least twenty times by now), but it’s nonetheless hard to imagine coming up with such distinct worlds and stories on a weekly basis. I also conquered Baby Steps’ imposing Manbreaker, a preposterous mountain-climbing challenge that absolutely solidified the game as a personal favorite, possessing one of the most mechanically rewarding control schemes I’ve ever interacted with. I’ll have to figure out what to do with myself now that The Mountain is behind me, but for now, let’s break down the week in films!

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