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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