Author Archives: Bobduh

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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Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – Episode 20

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to the frost-tipped forests of the northern lands, as Frieren and her new allies continue their first-class mage trials. In attempting to capture a supersonic Stille, a sparrow-like bird highly attuned to the presence of magic, Frieren used the creature’s own sensitivity against it. By directing her allies to “contaminate” all sources of water with magic, she ensured the birds would come to drink at the final remaining pool, thus making them easy to capture with even the shortest of ranged spells.

Unfortunately, though pretty characteristically for Frieren, it doesn’t seem she put much thought into the second-order effects of this gambit. Thus we find ourselves with the first-class prospects poised on the verge of conflict, hoping to steal one of the already-captured Stilles now that Frieren has poisoned the well. Though these challenges were initially framed as staid tests of formal aptitude, it seems that Frieren has grasped their true nature; such trials only ever lead to violence, particularly when a number of their entrants actively wish it so. As both the warriors and politicians of this contest well understand, one cannot rise ever upward without stepping upon the dreams of others. With their fangs now bared, let’s see how these mages fare!

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Shoushimin Series – Episode 12

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are returning to the enigmatic wanderings of Shoushimin Series, as Jogoro and Osanai continue in their renewed commitment to becoming ordinary. Having severed their connection in the wake of Osanai’s outrageous self-kidnapping gambit, they have each found new partners who seem to earnestly appreciate them, and who crucially do not enable their respective antisocial tendencies.

In fact, the two of them have seemingly become so ordinary that they’re no longer the protagonists of their own series. Season two has opened with a graceful flipping of perspective, centering on Osanai’s new boyfriend Urino and his efforts to uncover an alleged serial arson case around town. Through this reversal, Shoushimin Series is elegantly demonstrating the strength of Honobu Yonezawa’s character writing; though Jogoro and Osanai are certainly compelling characters, it’s just as interesting to explore this world from a new shoulder, with the appearances by our old leads lent all the more impact by their newfound rarity. And in director Mamoru Kanbe’s hands, it is already equally apparent what this new formulation is lacking – that spark of restless, relentless inquiry, the powerful unity of intellectual intent that was heretofore represented through the production’s consistent location-jumping visual flourishes. Richly articulated characters navigating a world whose physical and psychological contours have been realized through a distinct visual vocabulary – that’s essentially the core recipe for cinematic psychological drama, and it’s been extremely gratifying seeing season one’s visual language put to such novel and dramatic purposes. Let’s get back to the investigation!

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Apocalypse Hotel – Episode 5

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we’d head downtown and check out the Gingarou Hotel, which I hear has recently expanded its clientele base and diversified its catering options. With the addition of Ponko and her chaotic companions, Apocalypse Hotel has bloomed into a delightful found family drama, expanding beyond the gags and melancholy of its opening act through the strength of Ponko and Yachiyo’s relationship.

Our last episode was a clear standout, as the pair were forced to square off with a gargantuan space worm in order to protect the earth’s fragile ecosystem. With lots of dynamic storyboarding and flourishes of animation, the episode was likely the most visually ambitious so far, while also furthering Yachiyo and Ponko’s collective interrogation of what it means to be human. Yachiyo’s directives are essentially the end result of thousands of years of attempted coexistence, the guard rails placed atop a presumed understanding of what we owe to each other – now, with Ponko at her side, the two are steadily filling in that underlying sense of collective responsibility. Let’s see how their journey fares as we return to the Gingarou!

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Summer 2026 – Week 7 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week I’ve been keeping busy with all my various obsessions, munching through a pile of Galaxy Express episodes while also plugging away at that dang novel. I think I’m nearly out of the hole I dug myself some thirty-odd pages ago, but also feeling increasing trepidation at just how heavily I’ll have to rewrite this beast now that I know more about its final destination. “Just write whatever comes to mind, you can edit later” was undeniably good advice eighteen months ago, back when I was just trying to shake off the rust and write anything unrelated to art criticism, but at this point I can only gaze with envy and resentment back towards those first pages, which will now surely have to be tossed in order to ensure a dramatically and tonally cohesive whole. That inevitability of editing is also making me feel all the more impressed by mangaka who publish their work on a weekly basis, and thus must live forever with whatever choices they made however many years ago. Anyway, the movie screenings have continued as per usual, so let’s run down the Week in Review!

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The Mighty Nein – Episode 4

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Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to check back in on The Mighty Nein, our loose assemblage of rebels, rogues, and ne’er-do-wells transposed from the tabletop ramblings of Critical Role to the more focused format of animated adventuring. After several episodes spent introducing the various members of our crew, the conclusion of our last installment saw them at last assembled, as they are collectively accused of engineering a massacre that only some of them were even partially responsible for.

It’s frankly a great way to bring a group together, in my estimation. “You all meet at a tavern” offers neither a collective goal to accomplish nor a reason to act as a unit – “you’re all prisoners who must collectively prove your innocence” provides both, giving your players a strong mechanical incentive to both follow the plot and try to get along while doing it. And though you might think such an approach narrows your players’ range of agency, it’s closer to the opposite; because such a conceit removes your players’ need to follow a specific path purely because the plot demands it, they’re actually more free to react honestly within those limitations, and do exactly what they think their characters would do. Greater degrees of narrative freedom can at times just force the players to do the DM’s work for them, and subordinate their characters’ personalities to the needs of the plot; unless you’re going for an absolutely narrative-free sandbox, it’s generally a smart choice to provide a firm narrative lead rather than force the players to invent one.

Anyway, as you might have guessed from the suddenly craft-oriented nature of my coverage, we have indeed reached the point where The Mighty Nein’s tabletop adventures actually began. Let’s see how they handle this impromptu call to action as the saga continues!

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Journal with Witch – Episode 4

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I think I’m feeling emotionally secure enough to weather another stab directly in the heart, meaning it’s obviously time to revisit the sumptuous melancholy of Journal With Witch. Asa’s journey through grief has so far been articulated with precision and compassion, as her reflections on surviving the intolerable are balanced against Makio’s struggles with merely surviving. You never really “figure it out” as a human being, never get handed a rulebook that makes sense of our unfulfilled longings and daily tragedies. You just keep living, one day after another, while making sure to offer whatever kindness you can spare to the companions who make that march tolerable.

Our last episode offered a fine contrast of two such companions, as Asa’s feelings of betrayal towards her friend Emiri were assuaged through Makio’s reflections on her long-time friend Daigo. Makio’s assertion that “fighting is reserved for outgoing people” could be taken in two equally appropriate ways – either emphasizing how Makio lacks the social batteries to engage in such exhausting theater, or how the solitude of the introvert means that every single relationship is that much more precious, and worth more than the fleeting vindication of indulging your anger. The future seems endless from a teenager’s eyes, but in truth, we don’t actually get that many second chances in this life – and for particularly precious treasures like “friends who knew you before you were you,” one chance is often all you have. It’s a tough world out there; we must do all we can to make sure we face it together.

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Big Windup! – Episode 24

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am pleased as punch to announce we are returning to the mound for a fresh episode of Big Windup!, as our Nishiura boys attempt to pull one over on the top-seeded Tosei players. This game has ended up consuming Big Windup!’s entire second cour, and I for one couldn’t be happier; by honing in on the individual plays and counterplays of these two variably talented lineups, the production has brought the exceedingly complex strategic drama of baseball to life, going far beyond the battery-versus-batter standard to explore how every player, every gambit, and every twist of fate might influence the game’s eventual outcome.

Rather than focus on either player psychology, mechanical ability, or tactical ingenuity, Big Windup! has taken the sensible choice of emphasizing all three, resulting in a thrilling yet consistently parsable, mechanically grounded road to the bottom of the ninth. And now, with a one-run lead courtesy of our boy Tajima, it all comes down to Mihashi to at last shut Tosei down. Let’s take it home, Nishiura!

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Summer 2026 – Week 6 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve been keeping myself busy this week, screening plenty of movies while also marching through legacy anime (Galaxy Express 999), OVA artifacts (Cyber City Oedo 808), and videogames (Mina the Hollower plus Elden Ring). All that has been balanced alongside some determined hacking at my increasingly sizable novel, which I’m beginning to realize cannot possibly resolve itself in a tidy three hundred pages. For all my efforts to impose a strict outline on the narrative, the unfortunate fact is that sometimes shit just happens while you’re writing, and suddenly what you imagined as a “brief digression” is now an entire leg of the journey. Thus I find myself feverishly writing my characters out of self-inflicted narrative pitfalls, with the finish line seemingly retreating further into the distance every time I glance towards it. I couldn’t be happier, really, and I’m looking forward to sharing some more concrete reflections once I have something more concrete to reflect upon. In the meantime, let’s run down the week in films!

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