Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re continuing The Girl in Twilight, an intriguing 2018 production concepted by renowned visual novelist Kotaro Uchikoshi. So far we’ve received a healthy helping of science fiction mysteries, with The Girl in Twilight’s worldbuilding feeling both alluring and confident. The show’s radio frequency conceit is a clever way of imagining parallel worlds, and the first episode wisely avoided any real exposition, letting the characters’ earnest reactions to their strange circumstances speak for themselves.

Of course, it’s not actually all that common for first episodes to drop the exposition hammer – that more frequently comes in the followup, after the wild, inexplicable theatrics of the first episode have already drawn you in. That said, the pacing and dialogue of Girl in Twilight’s first episode were compelling enough that I’m not too concerned about a followup slump, and more importantly, the first episode’s actual greatest strength was how well it depicted the believable friendships of its main cast – an asset built out of deep-root character and dialogue-writing fundamentals, which are not the sort of strengths that tend to dissipate after a premiere. That’s probably enough soon-to-be-outdated prognosticating, so let’s dive into The Girl in Twilight’s second episode!

Episode 2

We open the episode on what appears to be Nana’s second friend group, because of course Nana doesn’t just have one group of friends. These appear to be Nana’s cooler friends, in fact

Nana kinda reminds me of Shiki’s Megumi – the stylish but naive girl trapped in the sticks and dreaming of the big city. Also twintails

Nana gets a text about a birthday dinner from her mother, which quickly establishes her mother remarried, and that she’s not happy with the new husband (or perhaps simply anxious about him replacing her own father). “I told her not to call him ‘Dad’” is an extremely efficient line, establishing a full home situation without any exposition or actual scenes at home

The idol she was gushing about, Tomoya, is now advertising some marriage service, underlining how her upbeat demeanor belies her underlying preoccupation with her home situation

Pretty standard OP – your usual mix of group shots into slow, pensive pans over single characters, leading into vaguer, fantastical imagery as the song rises to a chorus. What most strikes me here is that all five members of the main group are given key billing, implying they’ll all play a role in this crisis. Which, given The Girl in Twilight was based on a phone game, makes sense – presumably these five girls are five of the most central characters you were able to collect, among others. The “collect ‘em all” nature of most gacha games naturally pushes their anime adaptations towards ensemble storytelling, as celebrating all the different character personalities is a key part of their commercial purpose

Asuka tells her friends about her suspicions regarding Asuka 2.0, which are of course met with mockery and derision. These continue to be very believable friends

Yu, as seemingly the most no-nonsense member of the group, has a biting, deadpan sense of humor, and speaks to Asuka as if she’s reporting on a wacky local news story. It’s a small detail, but an important one – distinct characters are built on both broad strokes of feeling and belief, as well as small details of how they express themselves and engage with the world. Every character in your story shouldn’t have the same sense of humor, or preferred mode of speaking, or favorite song – and by genuinely sitting within the characters we’ve built and trying to consider what it’s like to look outwards from those eyes, we construct characters who feel like they have their own opinions on everything, and aren’t just narrative props

Chloe, the blue-haired girl, supports Asuka. This, too, feels reflective of what we already know about her – while Asuka’s interest in the supernatural seems largely driven by boredom, Chloe has been diligently pursuing this project even on her own time

Yu, the skeptic, is trying to frame everything they’ve seen in the context of what they already know, and reacting to the in-the-abstract absurdity of Asuka’s statement. Chloe, the true believer, wants to pursue Asuka’s theory, and frames it as corroboration of the evidence she’s already internalized. A clean, compelling example of two reasonable characters each speaking their contrasting truths

Chloe also mentions the strange noise they heard is gone, revealing she likely spent much of the night flipping through frequencies

“I’m chikuwaitin’ for you!” Oh my god Asuka

Nana is lured by a mysterious fortune teller, who gives her a new frequency to try. “This number will lead you to a new version of yourself.” So do we just have a whole pile of dimension-hoppers dropping into our universe now, and offering cryptic portals to the multiverse?

Asuka appreciates Nana’s can-do attitude. Some awkwardly off-model frames here

I am not exactly sure we needed this shot of the fortune teller laughing menacingly behind the shed

They perform the ritual, but only Nana disappears this time – and it seems she ends up directly in another parallel world, rather than that golden in-between place. This will be interesting!

This is always a fun part of a multiverse narrative – picking at the weird details that separate closely aligned but distinct universes. They’re all wearing new uniforms in this universe, and Chloe has a somewhat different personality. Also it seems like they’re all about to get married?

Yeah, it seems they’re all assigned marriage partners as teenagers. This conversation is great; we’re getting to see how the characters we’ve already come to know might have been influenced by growing up in a world like this, with both Yu and Chloe’s natural personalities seemingly hammered into different shapes by the cultural assumptions of this world

There’s also just an inherent sense of horror in hearing Yu happily rattle off the social philosophy of this culture – “it’s like we’re solving a puzzle together” sounds like a metaphor she’s repeating from a religious authority

Yeah, this world is incredibly conservative. Nana using “rude language” earns shocked stares from her friends. I can see why Chloe and Yu are the most different – their true selves are completely incompatible with this world, and so they’ve been conditioned into more “traditional wives”

Apparently everyone here gets married at seventeen

It turns out the other girls actually are here too, they just didn’t replace their other-world selves. Interesting

It’s unsurprisingly explicitly patriarchal – only the girls have to get married at seventeen

“Hey, it’s me!”

“Nooo, I’m taking Nana somewhere.” Asuka commenting on her own various selves is extremely good. Fantastic vocal performance too, which is no surprise – she’s played by Tomoyo Kurosawa, who also handled Euphonium’s endlessly expressive Kumiko

“For now, we have some things we want to ask you.” Yep, here it is. Having once again caught up to the mysterious savior from the first episode, our hero demands an explanation, leading into the actual exposition dump

I can’t believe they actually break into a school so Asuka 2.0 can explain things to the class

Alright, so this is a “decisions make branching paths of parallel worlds” style of universe, meaning there are a lot of parallel worlds out there

And yeah, the larger and further back the split, the more dramatic the differences in worlds. This world they’re in only split off ten years ago, so even their social group still exists

Nana was “assimilated into her parallel self,” becoming a link for the others

Once again, characterization neatly baked into reactions. Chloe’s response is “so we’ll always need a link,” as she’s thinking about the pragmatic functionality of this scifi setup, as well as already plotting future jumps. In contrast, Mia responds with “so the people of this world will think Hana’s a fake,” reflecting her own focus on her friends’ safety and social harmony

Nana is not doing well at home with the parents. An obvious parallel for her feelings of dislocation within her own original home, as well

Nana’s situation is a classic one; she feels like her mother resents her, and so acts out to get a response, but only ends up feeling more isolated as a result. We’re getting this story in a bit too abridged of a format for it to have much emotional impact yet, though

Aw shit, her fiance is the pop idol. Reverse course, Nana!

“You guys are adjusting quickly.” “The logic behind it doesn’t matter. We’ve still got to accept the fact that we’re in another world.” Once again, Yu’s perspective reflects her skeptical personality, while Chloe has always been hoping for this

Apparently the Kyohei in both Asukas’ worlds disappeared when he was six years old

Asuka recommends “Seriousuka” as Asuka 2.0’s formal name, which is pretty good

“Our wedding will be broadcast live on television and streamed online.” So that’s fun

Fortunately, Nana is so starstruck by Tomoya that she’s actually putting on a convincing performance of whatever this world’s Nana was like

And there it is. Now she actually wants to stay here. Goddamnit

And Done

God damnit, Nana. Well, her perspective makes some sense – she was already feeling a sense of dislocation within her original home, so if living here means she gets to marry the man of her dreams, why not stay? We’re already diving into some interesting material in terms of the very specific nature of this universe they’ve entered; rather than just presenting them with a totally foreign world, they’re stuck in one with a few key changes, which through its differences reveals how all our personalities and senses of self are in some ways reflections of the societies we inhabit.

I was already impressed by The Girl in Twilight’s character writing, and this episode really put that writing to work, combining its strong cast with a striking “what-if” scenario to arrive at some cleverly executed social commentary. Frankly, I wasn’t all that confident I’d find Twilight’s world-hopping stuff engaging, but if it’s going to stay couched in clear character stories or larger thematic arguments like this, I’m actually very excited to see where we go next. The Girl in Twilight has survived its second episode intact, and is actually looking to be a much stronger show than I anticipated. On to the next one!

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