Author Archives: Bobduh

Spy x Family – Episode 31

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive back into Spy x Family, wherein we’ve most recently commenced the Grand Forger Cruise Ship Operation, involving Yor protecting the wife and child of a recently deceased crime lord while Loid learns to relax for once in his fuckin’ life. And so far, it unfortunately seems like neither of their missions are proceeding smoothly; Yor has just accidentally clued the entire ship’s worth of assassins into the assumed identity of their target, while Loid is, well, still Loiding it up in his usual, painfully self-reflective fashion.

Personally, I’m just delighted to see a specifically Yor-focused extended arc, particularly since this mission is clearly prompting her to reflect on the motivation and continued relevance of her Thorn Princess persona. Having taken on this role in order to provide for her brother, she is now beginning to question whether it’s still a necessary part of her life, or if it’s simply a crutch preventing her from discovering her own purpose. That’s some satisfyingly weighty personal drama, and though I very much doubt her ultimate conclusions will shift the show’s status quo, I’m happy to see Yor at last getting the sort of layered, conflicting interiority that lends some dramatic heft to Loid, Anya, and even Damien’s stories. Our choices are only meaningful if we’re the ones making them; by shifting Yor from a passive to an active actor, Spy x Family will ultimately make her bond with Loid and Anya that much more impactful, a reflection of the priorities she herself has chosen. Let’s get to it!

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Spring 2024 – Week 8 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am proud to announce that I’ve actually fucking done it – my last episodic Evangelion writeup is already sitting in my drafts, and I’m feeling confident it’s one of my best so far. Charging through this last act of the show in a matter of weeks turned out to be the perfect way to approach it; I could feel the same sense of desperation and longing as our poor pilots, calling back to the many times I marathoned Evangelion back in high school and college. The show is still just as poignant and insightful as it struck me back when it was permanently reshaping my brain chemistry, and I feel fortunate to have this chance at articulating just how much it means to me. Anyway, those will be popping up over the next few weeks, but for now I’ve got a fresh selection of film features for your perusal. Let’s get to it!

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Yuki Yuna is a Hero – Episode 10

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to an adventure that I’m frankly not sure I even want to continue, as we check back in on the beleaguered magical girls of Yuki Yuna is a Hero. Not because the show has gotten less interesting or anything; with the Taisha’s true nature revealed, the show’s reflections on genre convention and fundamental character drama have never been stronger. But all of that strength is now being put to work torturing our young hero club, and I simply will not have it! Leave our heroes alone, you stupid evil tree!

Anyway, personal feelings aside, we are now well and fully past the point of ignorance regarding this system’s true intent. The vertexes are essentially bait for hopeful young heroes; expending their energy to protect their homes, they are converted into food for their ever-ravenous homeland. Rather than saving this world for the next generation, magical girls are consumed to maintain a static order, venerated as martyrs for a cause they would never willingly have supported. It’s a sturdy metaphor for an increasingly aging Japan, wherein blind patriotism and a renewed fervor for militarization are apparently supposed to make up for a lack of genuine opportunities. What can our young handful of heroes do in the face of such structural malevolence? Let’s find out!

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Skip and Loafer – Episode 7

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Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to stop back in with Mitsumi and the gang from Skip and Loafer, and see what those crazy kids are getting up to now. After half a season of largely warm and fuzzy adventures, last episode saw Mitsumi and Shima experiencing their first genuine fight, which was ultimately a healthy exercise for both of them. I don’t expect massive changes in the wake of this personal reorientation, but I am looking forward to seeing them navigate this new level of comfort in expressing their feelings.

If you never fight with someone, it generally means not that you agree on everything, but that you simply don’t care enough about changing their opinion or behavior to challenge them on it. It is easy to be indifferent to the opinions of a stranger or acquaintance (well, unless you’re Larry David), but if you genuinely care about someone, there will undoubtedly be times when you question their wisdom. It is only because Shima has grown to value Mitsumi’s feelings that he was hurt by her challenging him – a key shift for the boy who responded to premature fame by retreating from investment in the world altogether. And with Shima’s confession of concern stoking some of those dangerously fuzzy feelings in Mitsumi, I’m looking forward to the shoe being on the other foot, and Shima poking Mitsumi in some particularly ticklish emotions. Let’s get to it!

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Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – Episode 2

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to continue traveling beyond the journey’s end, catching up with Frieren and maybe learning something about human nature or nostalgia in the process. Frieren’s first episode demonstrated a refreshingly meditative approach to fantasy drama, focusing not on some big arbitrary external threat, but on the simple, inescapable melancholy of growing older, watching things you love pass into memory, and finding some peace with what you have left.

While defeating a demon king might not be easy, I’d imagine finding purpose and satisfaction in such an objective certainly is. But for the rest of us, the process of identifying and appreciating what is most important to us is not quite so obvious. We are driven by dreams that are frequently unfulfilled, beset by anxieties that are often as not unresolvable; life is riddled with such disappointments, and the great task of living is not “defeating” these challenges, but learning to find joy in the imperfect messes we make of ourselves. Frieren blinked, and the man who loved her was nearing his death – how might she go forward and live such that future happiness will not similarly pass her by? Let’s find out!

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Spring 2024 – Week 7 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you amidst a frenzy of creative passion, as both the Evangelion writeups and new DnD projects are flowing abundantly. With our current campaign briefly on hold, my playing party just concluded a two-part post-campaign adventure in the world I created for our last campaign, this time both designed and led by one of our other players. The experience offered a refreshing perspective on campaign and narrative design; I am a creative-first top-down designer, meaning I essentially write a drama and then set to work translating it into DnD’s mechanical structures, whereas this two-parter’s designer is a mechanics-first, bottom-up designer, meaning he designs an interesting mechanical puzzle and then finds a creative coat of paint for it.

It was interesting to see how that mindset incurred various second-order effects in terms of how the sessions played out, and it’s also got me hungry to run my own adventures again. It is a wonderful feeling to have run a campaign that my players are clamoring to return to, and once I’ve concluded this Eva era, I’ll be eager to share some of my design documents with all of you. In the meantime, we’ve got a fresh pile of films to explore, so let’s get to work!

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Neon Genesis Evangelion – Episode 19

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We begin shortly after the last episode’s grotesque conclusion, with Shinji still in the pilot seat. Not because he’s been forced to, not because he can’t escape, but instead because he refuses to leave. Having witnessed what his father is capable of, having been made complicit in this violence upon his friend Toji, Shinji has at last reached his moral limit. A grim irony there; if Shinji had a more compassionate father, one who actually wanted to see his son succeed, this would likely be a moment of pride. His anxious son, who has so often simply gone with the flow and accepted the directions of others, is at last making a stand for something he believes in. But Gendo does not want his son to be a young man of firm convictions and unerring moral character; he wants Shinji to be a tool, and Shinji is now proving himself a defective one

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Big Windup! – Episode 10

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to announce we’re returning to Big Windup!, and checking in with the increasingly reliable battery of the anxious pitcher Mihashi and cynical catcher Abe. Big Windup!’s first stretch was largely preoccupied with Mihashi unlearning the bad instincts prompted by his traumatic middle school experience, and gaining the confidence to form a genuine partnership with Abe. With Mihashi having achieved at least a degree of trust in his curmudgeonly catcher, we then turned to Abe’s own history, as he described the frustration of the self-absorbed Haruna sinking his own middle school team’s aspirations.

The symmetry of these experiences points towards Big Windup!’s general understanding of personal psychology, its emphasis on the fact that we are all products of our prior experiences, carrying baggage and preconceptions through which we filter and contextualize any new information. Mihashi’s servile affectation is simply the “solution” to conflict he carried over from middle school, while Abe’s bitterness and need for control are clearly an overcorrection from his time with Haruna. Of course, there’s more to it than that, because humans are complicated: Abe would always be less of a people person given his fiercely analytical mind, while Mihashi’s inherent sensitivity to emotions is part of the reason why he felt the frustration of his prior teammates so deeply. And on top of all that, we’ve got the crunchy mechanical structure of baseball itself, a sport that through its distinct, repeated confrontations of batters and pitchers is uniquely well-suited to tactical feints and mind games.

It’s a rich and nourishing stew of variables, and it’s been far too long since we dug in. Let’s return to the pitch for a fresh episode of Big Windup!

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The Big O – Episode 19

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am delighted to at last be returning to The Big O, after an outrageously overlong stay of absence. Big O’s mixture of noir drama, robot action, and philosophical interrogation of identity has made for a show unlike any I’ve seen, one of those unique genre blends at which animation uniquely excels. The show is expertly woven with internal mysteries, but they’re frankly unnecessary to maintain its allure; not when every episode offers something so novel and compelling, whether it’s Dastun’s lost movie love or last episode’s Beck insanity.

With our last escapade serving as perhaps the most irreverent of the series so far, I’m guessing things will settle a bit this time, as we presumably return to the question of Roger defining himself outside of Rosewater’s shadow. Roger has always seen the Big O as his method of enacting change in this world, his will to protect and redeem Paradigm made manifest – but if his identity as a pilot is also Rosewater’s design, can he truly hope to change his destiny through the very means that destiny was provided? Regardless, I imagine we’ve got plenty of sumptuous imagery and charming Roger-Dorothy moments ahead of us, so let’s get right to it!

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Spring 2024 – Week 6 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We’re finally hitting the warm weather at this point, so I’m happy to be sitting with my windows open and a pile of Evangelion writeups in front of me, all eagerly awaiting their final revisions. It may in retrospect have been psychologically unwise to leave half a dozen deep dives into the mindset of depression and self-hatred all stacked up at the end of my funded projects, but honestly, it’s actually been an absolute pleasure returning to these episodes that still loom so dramatically in my own media development. As it turns out, Evangelion is really, really good, truly one of the great works of narrative art, and every episode I revisit only offers all the more to appreciate. The characters are so richly drawn I can relate to aspects of all of them, and it also simply feels good to at last be fulfilling these long-outstanding requests. Anyway, I’ll likely have the next Eva writeup for you on Monday, but for now let’s see what films I snuck in the margins of the week!

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