Category Archives: Episode Writeup

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You – Episode 11

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are in for some absolute nonsense, and that’s even by the already-nonsensical standards of 100 Girlfriends’ usual fare. Having infiltrated Hakari’s house in order to rescue her from her tyrannical mother, Rentaro was eventually brought face-to-face with the tyrant herself, the imperious Hahari Hanazono. Then, after being thoroughly moved by her tale of love and loss, Rentaro tearily gazed into Hahari’s eyes – and realized that yes, she too is one of his destined soulmates.

So, both one of his fellow high schoolers and that girl’s own mother are going to end up in the Rentaro family, apparently. Well, we knew we were in for absurdity right from the start, and I suppose it’s only a small step from founding the Rentaro Family to that clan consuming other families entirely, enveloping both mothers and daughters in Rentaro’s boundless love. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how this story was going to top the preposterousness of Kusuri’s whole deal, but they immediately found a way. God bless them, they found a way.

Anyway, enough marveling at how gloriously stupid this turn of fate is. Let’s admire the fallout!

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Agent Aika – Episode 1

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re checking out a new production, as we explore the first episode of late-90s OVA Agent Aika. The show falls in a venerable tradition of fanservice-laden action-adventure projects that flourished following the widespread adoption of home VHS players, which allowed artists to bypass the strict standards of TV broadcasting, and create explicitly adult-aimed entertainment for the broadening anime market. Agent Aika director Katsuhiko Nishijima was basically a legend of this era, having directed the similarly horny Megami Paradise and Najica Blitz Tactics, alongside the monumental Project A-ko (from which I suspect Agent Aika derives its name).

Nishijima wrote, boarded, and directed this first episode, so we’ll clearly be seeing about as unfiltered an example of his aesthetic philosophy as possible. He is here complemented by frequent collaborator Noriyasu Yamauchi, who would work as character designer and animation director on a number of Nishijima projects, and still occasionally lends his AD talents to modern productions like Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon (dear lord modern titling conventions are obnoxious). They are both essential figures of an oft-overlooked era in anime history, so I’m eager to get better acquainted, and Agent Aika’s tale of post-apocalyptic ruin exploration sounds like a lovely place to start. Let’s get to it!

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Galaxy Express 999 – Episode 7

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am delighted to be returning to the somber yet fanciful Galaxy Express 999, a parade of cosmic wonders imbued with a keen understanding of humanity’s self-defeating nature. Tetsuro journeys across the galaxy in pursuit of a dream that seems to invite only ruin; stop by stop, he chronicles the wreckage of others who hoped to find meaning at the end of the line, their regrets as boundless as the stars in the sky.

Tetsuro’s last excursion neatly summed up the duality of Galaxy Express, as Tetsuro found himself marveling at the strange gravity and endless volumes of the Comet Library, only to nearly become imprisoned by overwhelming medical debt. These exceedingly timely trials point to the universality of Galaxy Express’s concerns; so long as we labor under capitalism and see technology as an escape from the drudgery of our daily labors, we will continue to dream false dreams, with even our ambitions confined within the cage of what the profit motive allows. No matter how beautiful the scenery looks at a distance, drawing closer will reveal those sacrificed for the ambitions of our jailors, the endless ranks of the damned on Mars, on Pluto, or praying to “at least take my child” from the clouds of the Comet Library. No matter how far we journey, the cruelty of this world built on exploitation remains. Can Tetsuro truly hope to travel beyond the greed of mankind? Let us find out together.

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Yuki Yuna is a Hero (Washio Sumi Chapter) – Episode 4

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I announce with great trepidation that we are returning to Yuki Yuna is a Hero’s Washio Sumi Chapter, after three straight episodes that have been a delightful mix of group bonding and tactically grounded Vertex takedowns. If this were any other show, I’d at this point expect this is the tone we should assume going forward, and simply enjoy the charming vignettes shared by Togo, Gin, and Nogi. But this is goddamn Yuki Yuna, and what’s more, we know precisely the fate awaiting these girls down the line.

As such, Washio Sumi has instead been an exercise in ruthless dramatic irony, inviting us to learn and care about these heroes with full knowledge their journey will end in disaster. This unique perspective has played naturally into the sense of doomed cyclical inevitability represented by the Divine Tree system; it’s as if we’re watching Madoka Magica play out from Homura’s shoulder, certain this path will end in disaster, hoping against reason that catastrophe might be avoided. The original Yuki Yuna played like a senseless tragedy; this plays like a premeditated crime, a long con perpetrated against the most passionate and self-sacrificing among us. If Yuki Yuna is hoping to raise our hackles against the systemic abuse of the young facilitated by jingoism and organized religion, it is certainly succeeding. Good luck out there, girls!

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Big Windup! – Episode 15

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to Big Windup! in the heat of the action, as our boys attempt to defeat last year’s summer tournament winners in the very first round. As we enter the bottom of the first inning, Nishiura have already proven themselves a sharper team than their opponents expected; Izumi scored a clean base hit to start the team strong, and a sequence of sacrifice plays almost earned them an early run. Sadly, cleanup hitter Tajima was struck cleanly out, leaving our team without an advantage as they face their opponents’ first at-bat.

In pure state-of-play terms, that’s basically everything the last episode covered. But in terms of underlying strategy, the episode proved a feast of subtle back-and-forth, as our batters and the opposing battery felt each other out, probing for weaknesses while attempting to conceal their own. Asa Higuchi’s manga is closely attuned to both the mechanical and psychological conflicts concealed within baseball’s drama, and Tsutomu Mizushima is the perfect choice for articulating such conflicts in motion, having demonstrated through works like Girls und Panzer his mastery of visually conveying tactical drama. Seeing Nishiura in action is like watching a kite we’ve loving crafted first take flight, and I’m eager to see how high they can soar. Let’s get back to the action!

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Ojamajo Doremi Sharp – Episode 14

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we’d take a stroll down to Maho-dou and check in on the ojamajos, who are surely getting up to some preposterous trouble even as we speak. I mean, the last episode saw Doremi considering marriage to a philandering cowboy entirely so she could consume his herd of cows, an engagement that was only thwarted by her learning they were actually dairy cows. Our girls are not exactly the paragons of selflessness and maturity you might expect from magically empowered guardians – they’re just messy, frequently misguided kids, for whom magic is just as often a source of calamity as a solution to it.

Of course, that’s precisely what makes Ojamajo Doremi so compelling. Its characters are multifaceted and self-defeating in ways that don’t just make for great comedy (and excellent faces), but which also demonstrate the actual, unvarnished process of growing up and attempting to find your place in the world. They clash and dream with relatable pettiness and ambition, making their ultimate attempts to make right and help others an example all can aspire to. It is the messy characters who hang closest to our hearts, for there is nothing more human than messing up, and nothing more admirable than seeking kindness in spite of our foibles, than picking ourselves up and trying again. Let’s see how these girls mess up next!

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Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – Episode 8

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d stop in with Frieren and the gang, and see how their journey towards the land of departed souls is progressing. When last we left off, the team had run into a snag in the northern territories, with Frieren ending up imprisoned due to her unwillingness to make nice with demons. Unfortunately for everyone, it has since been made clear that Frieren was actually right to distrust, as apparently the illusion of civility is simply a garb demons adopt in order to lower the guards of their enemies.

In the abstract, this style of “humanity’s enemies are inherently evil” worldbuilding has fallen out of fashion in recent decades, for understandable reasons. Intelligent races that are “born evil” simply don’t tend to facilitate interesting stories, and instead naturally evoke a sort of “we are right to conquer the savage natives” colonial queasiness. Robbing cultural clashes of their moral complexity is a dicey proposition, so I’m hoping this particular choice dovetails in some meaningful way with Frieren’s thoughts on aging and legacy, the realms in which it truly shines. Let’s see how our sleepy elf is getting on!

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Scum’s Wish – Episode 10

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we return to the clusterfuck of emotional torment that is Scum’s Wish, as Hana returns from an alleged “heartbreak trip” designed to help her get over her feelings for her teacher, now that she finally mustered up the courage for her doomed confession. Of course, this is Hana we’re talking about, so that grieving process was here combined with a fresh set of entreaties towards her long-suffering friend Ecchan, who she refused to either let in completely or break cleanly away from. As such, both of them remain stuck in a painful limbo, with Hana promising to “wait until Ecchan is ready” to draw closer, ensuring neither of them can properly move on.

That’s how it tends to go in this lovelorn production. And frankly, speaking of “love” in the context of Scum’s Wish seems inappropriate; for if any of these characters are in love with anything, it is more likely their own egos than their various would-be paramours. Hana loves the feeling of being wanted and cared for, the feeling of possessing another, and the sweet anguish of lacking either; her feelings towards her peers are superficial, but her feelings about those feelings are rich and nourishing, enough to sustain an entire inner universe of imagined intimacy.

To this utterly misguided heroine, seemingly starved for love but in truth starved for perspective, our last episode offered an unexpected guide: her onetime rival Moka, who urged her to take a minute and smell the flowers (or savor the Danish, as the case may be). Hana’s feelings of romantic longing are all-consuming specifically because she has let them consume her, because there is nothing in her life but this desire to be wanted. Hana needs to learn who she actually is on her own, what Hana herself enjoys and cares about, beyond how such interests might affect her relationship with her various would-be soulmates. Let’s find out if Hana can Get A Life as we return to Scum’s Wish!

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BanG Dream! Ave Mujica – Episode 1

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Well folks, it’s finally happened. Just a year and change after the conclusion of the fantastic BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!, we have arrived at the long-awaited/dreaded debut of Ave Mujica, the gothica-drenched followup to the adventures of Tomori and friends. While Tomori took the breakup of her beloved band CRYCHIC as an opportunity for personal growth, and ultimately drew together four fellow “lost girls” into the symbol of persistence that is MyGO, Sakiko has apparently spent the interim dedicating herself to becoming as mentally unwell as possible, and has now resurfaced in a lace mask and corpse paint on a stage that looks suspiciously like a sacrificial altar. You guys here for a good time? Ready to party? Too bad, wrong fucking band. We’re here to have a bad time.

So yes, I am pretty darn excited. With both director Kodai Kakimoto and series composer Yuniko Ayana returning from MyGO, I have every expectation that Ave Mujica will maintain its predecessor’s playful elegance of cinematography and richness of character drama, offering a new tangle of expectations, allegiances, and one-sided grudges to furnish its melodramatic performances. And given the maximalist aesthetic of Ave Mujica itself, I’m confident that constancy of execution will extend as well to MyGO’s just-barely-tongue-in-cheek tone, allowing us in the audience to fully sympathize with its characters while still finding humor in their self-important histrionics. Is the night of Sakiko’s liberation at hand? Let’s find the fuck out.

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Yuri is My Job! – Episode 6

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to Cafe Liebe, where it seems Hime and Mitsuki might well be on the verge of an emotional breakthrough. Though Mitsuki is still frankly terrible at expressing herself outside of the formalized confines of Cafe Liebe’s performance, Hime’s declaration that she would “never betray Yano” clearly got through to her, affirming the doubts she was already possessing regarding how their first friendship ended. And in spite of not understanding Mitsuki’s admittedly vague statements, Hime can see the change in her as well, and is beginning to embrace her own genuine emotions.

Of course, genuine emotions are difficult to express at Cafe Liebe, where every idle passion is formalized into a rigid dance, and every statement of longing must meet the approval of a judgmental audience. In its systems of hierarchy and rejection of anything betraying convention, Liebe has turned the once-freeing context of yuri drama into its own form of social confinement, with the online comments of attendees now serving the role that Hime’s classmates performed in grade school.

Transgressive art breaks boundaries and allows unlimited personal expression, but transgressive art turned into an industry (or worse, a fandom) becomes an institution with strict expectations and inarguable internal rules. Mitsuki briefly found solace in the reliability of these rules, but she’s now discovering the feelings she bears towards Hime do not necessarily fit within the interpretation of love demanded by Cafe Liebe. Can Hime save both her relationship with Mitsuki and their performance as Schwestern? Let’s find out!

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