Author Archives: Bobduh

Call of the Night – Episode 5

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Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m feeling a certain yearning for the wild side, a clamoring for deviant adventure that can obviously only be sated with some Call of the Night. Granted, our featured nightwalkers aren’t exactly the most intimidating of creatures; in fact, they spent most of their last encounter debating the significance of a first kiss and also playing Street Fighter. Nonetheless, their dissatisfaction with daylit society and slow progress towards mutual trust have been an overall delight, a charming slow burn of romance and incidental escapades.

Through both its careful color design and the anxieties of its main cast, Call of the Night has been articulating a poignant sense of dislocation within modern society. This fundamental loneliness is balanced by the tentative intimacy shared by Kou, Nazuna, and newcomer Akira; none of them are quite sure where they belong, but all of them are desperate to not be alone. All that plus a heaping helping of sensually charged imagery makes Call of the Night a natural continuation of director Itamura’s Monogatari-forged expertise, and a show I’m always happy to revisit. Let’s not waste any more time then, and see what Nazuna and her human companions are up to!

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Summer 2024 – Week 4 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. This week I hit another milestone in my backlog progress, as I finally watched the last Rebuild of Evangelion film, 3.0+1.0. I’d been saving the viewing until after I finished my original Eva writeups, and am quite happy I did so; the film offered a worthy sendoff to the franchise at large, and I am currently hard at work chiseling an article to match. In contrast with the relatable myopia of the original series, the Rebuilds offer a path beyond Evangelion altogether, grasping towards a world where human connection need not be quite so torturous, and where we might learn not just to coexist, but to work together in building a gentler future. Anyway, I’ll have more to say about that once my piece is finished, but in the meantime, this week also featured its requisite share of film viewings. Let’s get to it!

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The Boy and the Heron

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m thrilled to announce that we’ll be stomping our way through Hayao Miyazaki’s latest allegedly final feature, last year’s How Do You Live?, released abroad as The Boy and the Heron. Though its original title refers to a 1937 novel by Genzaburō Yoshino, it is apparently not a direct adaptation, and that’s frankly all I want to know about it. The film’s own promotion was limited to a single, ambiguous image of a man decked in a bird-like costume, implying both extraordinary confidence on Studio Ghibli’s part, and also an apparent desire for audiences to enter the film with no meaningful preconceptions.

That’s an easy enough request for me to fulfill; new Miyazaki films are rare events, and I count myself lucky that I’ve been able to admire this last act of his illustrious career in real time. From animating feats of fancy in Toei’s early films like Puss ‘n Boots and The Flying Phantom Ship, Miyazaki went on to spearhead some of the greatest TV productions of the ‘70s and ‘80s, before forming Studio Ghibli and becoming anime’s premier international ambassador. His remarkable catalog needs no introduction, and recent works like The Wind Rises demonstrate he’s still as passionate and determined to express a personal truth of artistry as ever. Let’s see what The Boy and the Heron has to offer!

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Big Windup! – Episode 11

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Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to return to the field for a fresh episode of Big Windup!, with our team having successfully navigated Mihashi’s surprise birthday party. And I mean that “surprise party” in sort of the reverse of the normal sense, as Mihashi himself was the one who invited his team over to his house, thus surprising them with the reveal that their team meeting was actually a birthday party. Nonetheless, the gathering ultimately drew our team closer together, with Abe again resolving to carry this scrappy yet unexpectedly talented team to victory.

Though actually, his phrasing was a little more precise than that. Abe is no longer thinking in terms of “carry” or “exploit” – he’s come to realize that these are teammates he can genuinely rely on, not just tools to fulfill his own ends. Just as Mihashi was scarred by his resentful middle school teammates, so were Abe’s ambitions corrupted by his unreliable former pitcher. Smart as he was, he could not see the limitations of his own cynical perspective; but now, with a trusted team beside him, he’s learning to put his tactical thinking to use in service of trust-building gambits like “casually demonstrate to the rest of the team just how precise Mihashi’s pitches can be.” With his scheming now ostensibly aligned with the team’s greater good, I’m eager to see how our boys handle their first serious opponents. Let’s get to it!

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Spy x Family – Episode 32

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Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am beyond eager to charge back into Spy x Family, wherein the Forger’s Family Cruise is ratcheting up its tension and violent provocations by the second. When last we left off, Yor was on the verge of fighting the appropriately titled Sickle-and-Chain Barnaby, an assassin who apparently cares a great deal about appearances and very little about disguises. With this ostentatiously murderous assailant stalking the halls, how will Yor hide her assignment from her husband in the next room!?

I have no idea, but I’m quite certain the solution will be marvelous in its ingenious stupidity. That’s most of what I’m looking for here: ideas so stupid they loop back around to brilliant, something this cruise ship arc has so far offered in abundance. Drawing the family together for a group adventure always adds a welcome dash of spice to Spy x Family’s theatrics, and if protecting these informants prompts Yor to reflect on her relationship with her own alleged family, so much the better. Let’s see what madness awaits in a fresh Spy x Family!

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Summer 2024 – Week 3 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week has been a productive one on a variety of fronts, as I’ve been clearing out the last of my outstanding essay projects while also catching up on anime of both recent and venerable vintage. My viewing party just finished season one of the excellent Delicious in Dungeon, which now stands proudly beside Edgerunners among my favorite Trigger properties. Given my distaste for Imaishi’s dramatic preferences, I suppose it’s little surprise that I most enjoy Trigger’s more far-flung adaptations, but I nonetheless had a fantastic time with Laois and his crew. I’ve also been continuing my Gundam journey with Victory Gundam, which so far has proven one of the most tightly composed and altogether satisfying Gundams since the original series. And then of course, there have been The Films, a wandering collection of features spurred by idle whimsy, recommendations on Twitter, or just whatever happens to show up on Netflix. Let’s get to it!

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Witch Hat Atelier and the Magic of Discovery

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The inside cover of Witch Hat Atelier’s sixth volume offers us a beautiful vision of undersea life, all captured through a diamond window pane as Coco stares outwards, hand pressed curiously, almost longingly against the glass. The text echoes both the magnificence of the scene and the necessity of care and confinement, stating: “The Assembly at the bottom of the sea. A bulwark to bestow witches safety, a prison to confine witches daily.” As Witch Hat Atelier has told us time and again, the unbound potential of magic means the most necessary quality of any would-be mage is restraint, an understanding that magic must be handled with care if it is to avoid inflicting more harm than it resolves. Albeit unknowingly, Coco destroyed an entire river ecosystem to save one human life – and to be frank, the fact that she didn’t understand what she was doing is no point in her favor. Humans are capable of unimaginable wonders, but ambition untethered by experience and restraint is frequently a recipe for disaster.

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Yuki Yuna is a Hero – Episode 11

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we return to a scene of epic tragedy, as the young two-time hero Togo faces off against all the forces of the cosmos. Everything she once believed in has been proven false; rather than noble defenders of her proud homeland, she has learned they are actually just human sacrifices, destined to torture themselves in pointless battles all for the sake of the Divine Tree’s sustenance. They are pawns of an arbitrary conflict between gods, and what’s worse, it was Togo herself who was utilized as the instrument of Yuna’s demise, guided into friendship entirely so Yuna might eventually be exploited as a “hero” as well.

It is a hard thing to learn your home only sees you as meat for the grinder, particularly for someone as civic-minded as Togo. Her desire to support her home and Yuna’s general concern for those surround her were both ruthless exploited by the Taisha; drawn away from their genuine community-oriented club activities, their selflessness was instead directed towards an arbitrary conflict of and for the gods alone, a shortsighted response to heaven’s own shortsighted failings. Given all this, it is no surprise that Togo now wants only to burn it all down, and at least ensure no future heroes are similarly betrayed by their own kindness. Let’s see how her battle fares!

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Skip and Loafer – Episode 8

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive back into Skip and Loafer, for an episode that promises some of our most intense drama so far! I know, honestly not the biggest threat for this charmingly mild-mannered production, but I’m nonetheless excited to see Shima confront some of the lingering aspects of his past, and for Mitsumi to grapple with what exactly Shima means to her.

So far, Mitsumi has been enjoying a lighthearted high school life by virtue of her own personal buoyancy, being able to both draw people towards her and rise above her own insecurities through her earnest positivity and relative maturity in pursuit of her life goals. She has avoided friction by not imposing herself on others, but love is necessarily an imposition: a hopefully positive one, yes, but nonetheless a request to meaningfully insert yourself into the life of another, and act with their feelings in mind with the understanding that they’ll be doing the same.

As Shima’s old friend noted, our boy has already unconsciously begun this process, but introducing a rival for his affections will quite likely force him to make his connection with Mitsumi explicit, which would go against the carefree persona he’s adopted as a shield against painful consequences. Shima had gotten very close to the point of successfully shrugging his way into a relationship with Mitsumi, but Ririka’s arrival seems poised to force him into actively committing to his desires, with all the unwanted responsibility that entails. Let’s see how our lovebirds fare as we return to Skip and Loafer!

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Summer 2024 – Week 2 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week I am sorry to announce that I watched some deeply obnoxious movies, which I’m sure sounds like a good time to all you vultures out there. I honestly do not pick out films intending to hate-watch them; I am always looking to be fulfilled, enlightened, or at least just entertained, while watching a bad movie to me just feels like being stuck in traffic for two hours, waiting for the journey to end so I can get on to something genuinely enriching. Nonetheless, a wide enough trawling of features will inevitably result in some stinkers, and this week my fearless embrace of any and all horror films resulted in some painful misses. Let’s break both them and one fantastic consolation prize down as we storm through the latest Week in Review!

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