Author Archives: Bobduh

Anne of Green Gables – Episode 18

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we’d take a stroll over to Green Gables, where Anne is currently embroiled in the midst of a great crisis. With Diana’s utterly unreasonable mother still holding the Currant Wine Catastrophe over Anne’s head, our heroine was forced to break a sacred vow, and at last return to school. Though Mr. Phillips and Gilbert remain detested foes, Anne is determined to be strong for her bosom friend’s sake, and has even learned that the imagination-bereft Millie Andrews is actually a pretty nice girl.

So yes, it has all been a maelstrom of torment for our beleaguered young Anne, as she has been sure to tell anyone who will listen. However, the tempests of adolescent emotion are as fickle as they are fierce, and I imagine this particular storm will blow over in time for Christmas. In the meantime, I’ll be happy enjoying Anne’s preposterous editorializing of her profoundly normal problems, as well as the sumptuous realization of Green Gables offered by Takahata and his formidable team. Let’s get to it!

Continue reading →

Galaxy Express 999 – Episode 4

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to continue our journey aboard the Galaxy Express, and see what wonders the cosmos have to offer us. Well, I say that like I’m expecting anything good to happen, when in truth Tetsuro’s journeys have mostly centered on veneers of exotic beauty peeling away to reveal cores of profound tragedy. The abandoned sands of Mars, the superficial freedom of Titan, and even the majestic beauty of one-time train attendant Claire, all vivid dreams that soon proved themselves nightmares of mankind’s eternal, self-destructive striving.

Of course, theme-ravenous cynic that I am, Galaxy Express 999’s broader reflections on society, capitalism, and whatever else Matsumoto can think of has only made the experience all the more rewarding for me. Through its mixture of fantastical vistas and humanity-in-decline parables, Galaxy Express has proven itself a paragon of one of my favorite genres: the post-apocalyptic travelog, typified by stories like Girls’ Last Tour and Kemurikusa. As it turns out, the ruins of mankind’s hubris serve as an ideal venue for ruminations on what is most essential to humanity, what we must hold sacred even when all else has crumbled. Let’s see what wonders await us at the next station!

Continue reading →

Yuri is My Job! – Episode 3

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to return to Cafe Liebe, and see how things are faring for our hapless kohai Hime. After being conscripted into service as a replacement for her manager Mai, Hime swiftly managed to trip over or smash into basically every convention of their fictional girls’ academy. Though she has some vague understanding of the genre territory being explored, the lingo is still foreign to her; she has mastered a precise script of feigned modern-day courtliness, but her affectation bears only a passing resemblance to the assumed calls and responses of Liebe Girls’ Academy.

Of course, that precise formality of assumed language is exactly why Liebe’s customers find this performance so enticing. Hime is talented at improvising in the manner of a genuine social butterfly, but the genre-born assumptions of Liebe flatter a very different audience, comforting those who, like Kanoko, find the vagaries of spontaneous conversation foreign and intimidating. Scripts provided by fiction allow those who have difficulty expressing themselves organically to connect with others; when the rules are so clearly defined, there is little fear of putting your foot in your mouth. And of course, it’s not like organic conversations don’t follow their own unspoken scripts, as Hime’s initial talents well demonstrate. All human interactions are in part a performance of selfhood, and through Cafe Liebe, Yuri is My Job! is consistently demonstrating the differences and nuances of performing for yourself, for the sake of being understood, and for the approval of an assumed audience. Let’s see how Hime fucks it up this time!

Continue reading →

Fall 2024 – Week 3 in Review

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This has been a grim week in currently airing anime, as Uzumaki’s second-episode production collapse was swiftly followed by the announcement that One Piece would be taking a six month hiatus. This delay is perfectly understandable given the franchise’s absurd string of film-quality episodes, but it also reduces my current viewing schedule from a healthy three productions to just Dandadan, which I’m not even sure I’m continuing anyway. Nonetheless, I will persevere in the way I always have: by continuing to watch lots of classic anime, and contenting myself with the enormous library of distinguished older productions still awaiting me. I’m nearly done with Trigun at this point, and still having a lovely time with it, but have of course also made time for my regular film features. Let’s break ‘em down!

Continue reading →

Sailor Moon and the Pleasures of Adaptation

Posted on by

The past few weeks have seen me charging through Sailor Moon, which I’ve long considered one of the most egregious outstanding gaps in my anime education. The series pits Usagi Tsukino and her fellow middle schoolers-slash-sailor guardians against a wide array of foes, as they stumble their way through adolescence while also fighting off supernatural beasties on a seemingly daily basis. Though most episodes follow a fairly similar pattern, the show remains consistently heartwarming, and has been a generally rewarding ride – though not, I must admit, for precisely the reasons I expected.

Continue reading →

Spy x Family – Episode 34

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive right into the presumed conclusion of Spy x Family’s action-packed cruise arc, wherein Yor has fended off countless would-be assassins while Loid does his best to be a Perfectly Normal Man. I am proud to say that both have conducted themselves admirably; Yor’s efforts have prevented any harm from coming to her charge, and Loid has (with a little help from Anya) engaged in such profoundly normal activities as miniature golf and wearing everything in the gift shop.

Along the way, Yor has been challenged to find the answer to a fundamental question: why exactly does she fight? Yuri no longer needs her protection, and while she once saw the Forgers as a cover for her actual work, she’s now more committed to their collective life than her original purpose. What she has decided serves as a tidy echo of Loid’s convictions: she must fight to ensure other families enjoy such happiness, using her skills to preserve peace just as Loid fights for all the lonely orphans of war. I’m sure the two would be quite proud of each other, if revealing their secrets wouldn’t immediately put them in mortal opposition – but for now, I’m just happy Yor’s found a meaningful reason to fight, a drive that will hopefully prompt future growth. Let’s see if we can catch the last of the fireworks!

Continue reading →

The Legend of Vox Machina S3 – Episode 1

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am thrilled to announce we are returning to the adapted tabletop adventures of Vox Machina, that unruly band of heroes tasked with saving Tal’Dorei from the draconic Chroma Concave. Their escapades have proven both entertaining stories in their own right, and also persistent vehicles for discussion of tabletop gaming more generally. As someone who came late to tabletop gaming from a background in traditional fiction, I have a voracious appetite for any sort of lessons worth gleaning from the ramblings of Matt Mercer and his players, and have been impatiently awaiting this return to the field.

As for my own DnD adventures, it’s apparently been most of a goddamn year since we last checked in, so yes, I have news to report. The campaign I had at that point been running for around fourteen months came to an end in late winter, with my players battling an avatar of Asmodeus atop the high tower of the ninth circle of hell. It seemed an appropriately bombastic conclusion for my adventure, which followed the classic “the enemy you have been fighting was actually a pawn of the real threat” formula to swerve (with plentiful foreshadowing, mind you) from a pan-Dale civil war to a struggle to prevent hell’s emergence into the mortal realm. Old allies were recalled, grand foes were slain, and our sorcerer used grease to make the princess of hell fall on her ass at least three separate times.

Since then, we’ve begun a new campaign, with one of my campaign’s players DMing us through the on-book Curse of Strahd adventure. This has resulted in a chilling discovery: on-book DnD kinda sucks! It’s basically a sandbox designed for randomized NPC conversations and combat encounters, possessing none of the guided narrative focus and subsequent dramatic payoffs that is DnD as interpreted by groups like Critical Role. Fortunately, my group came prepared for just such a possibility, as this time we’re essentially creating our own wholly player-side character arcs, and doing our best to remain in-character all through our active sessions. I’ve been leading the charge with this, with my experience running a whole pile of NPCs making it easy to slip into the guise of Tilly the Goblin Cleric, who is a little intimidated by the gloomy world of Barovia, but doing her best to keep spirits high and limbs properly attached.

I’ve been further solidifying our player-side development through the creation of Tilly’s Reports, essentially formalized, in-character session notes that help to keep the party on the same general page dramatically. I’d be happy to share those and more news of our ongoing DnD trials later, but for now, it’s past time to get on with the adventures of Vox Machina. Onward!

Continue reading →

Fall 2024 – Week 2 in Review

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been a dubious week in seasonal anime, as Uzumaki’s second episode demonstrated a total collapse in animation quality, while Dandadan’s premiere proved perhaps a touch too frantic and boner-centric for my delicate sensibilities. Nonetheless, I charge bravely onward in this media wilderness, consoled by the fact that there will always, always be more fantastic films for me to watch. We hit a couple significant ones this week, pairing one of the greatest achievements of film’s early years with an intriguing recent innovation in horror cinema. And I’ve also been filling in more gaps in my anime education, by munching through the first half of Trigun’s iconic original adaptation. I’ll have more to say on that once I’m through, but for now, let’s charge through some films!

Continue reading →

Yuki Yuna is a Hero (Washio Sumi Chapter) – Episode 1

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. You all ready for some suffering? I had figured saving the entirety of humanity at enormous physical and emotional cost would have earned the girls of Yuki Yuna a reprieve, but apparently the beatings must continue. With more than a little trepidation, today we journey onward into Yuki Yuna is a Hero’s Washio Sumi Chapter!

If anything, we’re now actually worse off than we were before, as this is a story with a known and terrible ending: the tale of Togo’s first run as a hero, wherein she was adopted into a family blessed by the Divine Tree in order to be exploited as a sacrifice to their god. We learned enough from the first season to grasp the broad beats of this narrative, so what I’m most intrigued about is gaining more context regarding the Divine Tree itself, its nature and how it expresses its will.

The idea that humans are simply pawns in wars between overwhelming eldritch identities, and that we’ve furthermore chosen to ally ourselves with one such implacable being in order to cling to survival, is a fascinating conceit for a magical girl drama. Additionally, human resilience in spite of a profoundly broken world is one of my favorite dramatic juxtapositions, embodied even in that “if anyone says there’s no reason to hope, I’ll prove them wrong every single time” line that gave my site its name. Let’s see how our heroes rally against the dying of the light as we return to Yuki Yuna!

Continue reading →

Skip and Loafer – Episode 10

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’d like to settle down to enjoy a cozy new episode of Skip and Loafer, and see how Mitsumi is faring with festival preparations. Our last episode offered one of this production’s most enchanting tone pieces so far, vividly realizing the nostalgic, lackadaisical atmosphere of Mitsumi’s summer vacation. You could practically feel the sun and taste the watermelon as Mitsumi reunited with her old friends, with this gentle romantic comedy demonstrating its command of boarding, pacing, and sound design can compete with the best slice of life productions in the business.

Now that we’ve returned to school, the race is on to prepare for the upcoming school festival. But while Mitsumi is prepping for the trials ahead, Shima is still bound by the past, unable to embrace his high school life in the wake of his prior transgressions. That’s somewhat understandable given he’s literally got an old friend shouting “how dare you embrace high school in the wake of your prior transgressions” right in his ear, so my current hope is that Ririka and Mitsumi actually meet and hash things out, prompting Shima’s childhood friend to perhaps lighten up and embrace forgiveness. Regardless, I’m sure we’re in for some thoughtfully written and altogether charming shenanigans, so let’s not waste any more time hypothesizing. Onward to the festival!

Continue reading →