Author Archives: Bobduh

Spy x Family – Episode 20

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to get back into Spy x Family, and see what ridiculous nonsense the Forgers have been up to in our absence. Our last episode proved an intriguingly frictious experience, pushing against the presumed boundaries of Tatsuya Endo’s spy drama sandbox. Spy x Family is a situational comedy first, a found family drama second, and a war drama a distant third, and though it can usually juggle those aspects with relative grace, there are inherent tensions in its premise that will undoubtedly surface again. I’m particularly intrigued to see how Endo handles the characterization of Desmond’s father, whose narrative position naturally draws together all of Spy x Family’s contradictory instincts.

But for now, I assume we’re in for some more immediately gratifying shenanigans, and I’m absolutely ready for them. Genre tensions aside, Spy x Family remains immensely entertaining, Endo having proven himself a master of slapstick, deadpan, and anticlimax. Let’s see what lunacy awaits as we return to Spy x Family!

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Spring 2023 – Week 11 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I come to you from the midst of a week that offers no reasons to suffer its completion, with the One Piece manga, One Piece show, and even my goddamn D&D campaign all taking the week off. It is difficult to see purpose in existence when I am denied my weekly trickle of media dopamine, but fortunately, the entire collected history of cinema was here to comfort me through it. This week featured a varied assembly of car thieves, satanic monsters, hungry sharks, and even some nazis in hiding, making it easy to forget that our lives are spent mostly in anticipation of moments that will pass even before they are fully savored. Let’s rage against the dying of the light with some delightful feature films!

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The Necessity of Shingo Natsume

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“My style is to have no fixed style. Other people would accuse me of having a style, though. It may be that I understand myself the least.” – Shingo Natsume

I’ll admit, I got off on the wrong foot with Shingo Natsume. My formal introduction to his work was One Punch Man, a show that seemed to me an embodiment of anime’s increasing artlessness and lack of narrative ambition, the growing divide between animated aesthetic form and meaningful narrative, emotional, or thematic content. It was simply “man punches hard” animated as beautifully as possible, and “man punches hard” is a story anime has told countless times, a story perhaps only outnumbered in its evocations by “me horny.” And as the years have gone by, it seems this divide between form and content has only widened, with modern animator troves like Jobless Reincarnation offering nothing of substance, while sequels and indistinguishable light novel adaptations dominate the wider landscape.

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Thunderbolt Fantasy S3 – Episode 3

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am pleased as punch to be returning to Thunderbolt Fantasy, as its third season most recently introduced one of the franchise’s most delightful characters: Chao Feng, the sadistic murder princess of Bewitching Melody of the West. Chao Feng effortlessly won my heart through her twin enthusiasms for music and murder, and I am thrilled to see her getting upgraded from a side story antagonist to a main series threat. While I can’t imagine we’ll be getting a repeat of Bewitching Melody’s guitar duel murder brawl, simply having her around and craving Lang’s performances is sure to add a delightful note of chaos to our proceedings.

So far, our heroes have spent this season mostly stumbling into beehives, seeking one enemy only to trip headfirst over another. They’ve attracted the ire of evil swords, corrupted monks, malevolent cults, tyrannical rulers, and the entirety of the demon realm, making Lin Xue’s yearning for a decent nemesis seem perhaps a touch premature. I’m eager to see what our terrible princess makes of these new arrivals, so let’s dive back into Thunderbolt Fantasy!

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Bocchi the Rock! – Episode 7

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Heyo folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’ve got my ticket in hand, and am eager to shuffle into Starry for Kessoku Band’s first four-member performance. Well, technically they performed a trial song that one time, but playing for two people is quite a different experience from playing for an unruly live crowd. Fortunately, Bocchi’s recent street performance clearly did some work in bolstering her confidence, and in particular helped her towards a key personal realization: your crowd is not your enemy, they actually want you to succeed.

For most of her musical career so far, Bocchi has essentially treated her desire to play music and connect with fans as something to apologize for – like listening to her music is inherently an imposition, and thus she has to either hide her identity or trick people into paying attention. But with one eye opened towards the street crowd, she is beginning to realize that people actually want to hear her music, and that the experience of playing live is inherently a conversation between musicians and audience.

Many artists struggle with the contradictory desire to be heard and terror of being known, but the reason that struggle is worth it is that nothing can compare to the feeling of seeing someone’s eyes light up in response to something you created, and knowing your ideas and emotions enriched or spoke to them in some way. Now that Bocchi has experienced a brush with that feeling, I’m hopeful it will inspire her to greater confidence on the stage, but would also be perfectly content with more lovingly animated Bocchi freakouts. Let’s get to it!

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Spring 2023 – Week 10 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we enter into that strange period of the annual anime cycle where we’re pushing mid-June, yet still working through the final weeks of the spring’s shows. This mismatch has long been a source of comfort to me, ensuring me that although we might already be a significant way through summer, it hasn’t technically started yet, at least according to the arbitrary strictures of Japan’s broadcasting schedules. But alongside deluding myself regarding the dwindling days of summer, I also made sure to watch a scattering of new features, furnishing our usual horror selections with a recent animated feature and a very mopy Brad Pitt. Let’s break ‘em down! 

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Bloom Into You – Volume 5

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The first word I’d use to describe Bloom Into You’s manga, particularly in contrast with its animated adaptation, is sparse. Panel compositions are often defined by their vast, empty spaces, leaving plenty of room for the characters’ lingering, unspoken thoughts. This is a fine choice for a story like Bloom Into You, a story so preoccupied with the sense of deficiency or emptiness that haunts its two leads. Emptiness is what Touko sees when she considers what the future might bring – a wholly empty sky, the nothingness where her voice trails off, and the blueprint of behavior left by her sister ends.

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The Demon Girl Next Door S2 – Episode 9

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Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today is a good day: the sky is clear, the sun is shining, and we’re checking in on the continuing misadventures of Momo and Shamiko. Yes, it’s time for The Demon Girl Next Door, which most recently offered up a refreshingly low-stakes zoo trip. After all the propulsive and fantastical drama of season two’s first half, it was lovely to see Demon Girl return to the core dynamic of Momo and Shamiko at rest, still battling with their personal anxieties, but doing their best to improve for each other.

Frankly, it seems like the show has largely elaborated its underlying “what demons and magical girls represent” metaphor at this point, leading me to suspect future drama will lean more into the show’s character relationships and comedy. Ogura’s intimidating appearance at the end of last episode seems to support that guess, promising an episode of chaotic science and questionable ethics to come. Let’s see what the gang is up to in a fresh episode of The Demon Girl Next Door!

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Eureka Seven – Episode 17

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to be returning to Eureka Seven after far too long away, picking up after one of the show’s most impressive episodes to date. The combination of Sayo Yamamoto on direction and Chiaki J. Konaka on script made for a uniquely cinematic and psychedelic experience, with intimate, carefully boarded sequences like Renton overhearing Gidget and Moondoggie’s liaison bumping shoulders with tense, bewildering sequences of Eureka’s fraying mental state.

The episode was a perfect fit for both its key talents. Yamamoto is one of the few directors in anime who can evoke comfortable sexual intimacy, not just adolescent sexual preoccupation, making her the ideal choice for conveying Renton’s realization that he’s perhaps not quite prepared for what “joining the world of adults” really means. And Konaka has spent most of his career obsessing over fraying minds (most recently his own), making him an excellent choice for articulating Eureka’s mental disarray.

Ultimately, Renton was sufficiently chastened by his experiences to offer Eureka a genuine apology, and admit he’s still in over his head. Perpetual manchild Holland has made for an awkward role model, but Renton is fundamentally a good kid, more driven by his urge to connect than his need to impress. Admission of misunderstanding is the first step to true understanding; there is still much we don’t know about the Coralians, but if Renton can follow through on his pledge to earnestly engage with Eureka’s world, these two might just make it work. Let’s get to it!

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Spring 2023 – Week 9 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. While most of our weekly screenings aren’t really driven by any sort of guiding theme, one of my housemate’s larger meta-projects lately has been to test one of my other housemate’s variable tolerance for action movies. We’ve basically pinned down that an emphasis on practical stunts, focus on at least vaguely human characters, and minimum of grating machismo are generally the key factors allowing our action-averse companion to enjoy some apocalyptic mayhem. And this week in particular, we discovered a franchise that somehow nestles within the overlapping circles of all our interests: The Fast and The Furious. As such, today I bring to you the fruits of a week and a half of fast and furious features, as we raced from the original film all the way through F9: The Fast Saga. Plentiful spoilers ahead, but you really can’t describe this franchise without referencing the audacity of its twists and setpieces. Buckle your seatbelts, folks. It’s time to get furious.

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