Category Archives: Episode Writeup

Ojamajo Doremi – Episode 40

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Settle down kids, it’s Doremi time and that’s final. In our last episode, Ojamajo Doremi proved it can actually weave Onpu’s ongoing antagonism into the show’s usual classmate-focused mode, as she brainwashed a hapless upperclassman into briefly falling for our orb-haloed heroine. “Doremi in love” episodes are always a bunch of fun, and this one was no exception, while also benefiting from one of the strongest sets of layouts the show has put together yet. Between last episode’s love drama and the episode before’s kaiju shenanigans, it feels like Doremi’s visual mastery of its own drama is improving over time, which is almost frightening to me. If Doremi gets too much more visually appealing, I’m not sure any of us will have the power to stop it.

Beyond its own inherent appeal, last episode also ratcheted up the urgency of dealing with Onpu’s witch delinquency (witchlinquency?). She’s not casting constant illegal spells at Ruka’s command – she actually just is That Bitch, and even Ruka is totally unable to control her. She’s also made it perfectly clear that she feels no guilt or responsibility for her actions, so it’s probably going to take a disaster closer to home to make her realize what a turd she’s being. Whether this week sees us challenging Onpu directly or rambling through more classroom drama, I’m eager to see whatever’s in store. Let’s dive into another episode of Ojamajo Doremi!

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Bloom Into You – Episode 3

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Buckle up folks, it’s time for another episode of the altogether excellent Bloom Into You. The show’s first episode offered a poignant and consistently convincing glimpse into our heroine Yuu’s worldview, and the followup extended that grace of illustration to her “friend” Touko and the greater world around them. So far, director Makoto Katou’s fondness for rich colors and saturated lighting have aligned perfectly with Bloom Into You’s dramatic intentions, creating a world that can alternately feel lonely and claustrophobic or as fancifully beautiful as a shoujo confession scene. The careful execution of sequences like Touko kissing Yuu have created a consistent and fascinating tension between the world as Yuu experiences it, and the world as she’s been led to believe it’s supposed to be. The conflict playing out in Yuu’s thoughts is thus beautifully echoed by the world around her, resulting in a show whose visual style perfectly mirrors its dramatic priorities. When you couple that compelling aesthetic holism with the show’s generally strong dialogue and compassionate approach to its core conflict, you end up with an altogether excellent high school drama. If the show can keep this up, we’re in for a very rewarding journey. Let’s embark on our next episode!

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Ojamajo Doremi – Episode 39

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Pack it in folks, it’s time for more Ojamajo Doremi. The show’s last episode featured a welcome return to the show’s most reliable and rewarding mode, as we were introduced to Doremi’s classmate Ryota and his profound love of giant monsters. Like many of Doremi’s best episodes, there was no clear moral hook to Ryota’s tale – it was simply a quiet story about the hurt we can cause each other as friends, the legitimacy of all our passions, and the need to forgive. Its conclusion may have been boosted a bit by the introduction of a magically summoned kaiju, but that didn’t make it any less of a sensitive human story.

That episode also demonstrated that the presence of Onpu and Majo Ruka won’t necessarily be dominating our ongoing narrative. Onpu is basically just another classmate now, and though Majo Ruka is obviously up to no good, whatever good she’s not getting up to is apparently transpiring somewhere else. I’d like to see some stories that rope Onpu more directly into Doremi and the others’ lives, but so far she’s been pretty much an entirely antagonistic figure, and I’m not sure the show is going to make her sympathetic before we formally clash with her and Ruka. In light of that, I’d be fine with basically any direction this episode could take – classic classmate drama, Onpu-centric story that humanizes her a bit more, or direct confrontation with Ruka that also gives Onpu more substance. As long as it’s not more witch frogs, I think I’m good.

Alright, that’s enough preamble. Let’s see what’s in store for Doremi and her long-suffering friends!

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Bloom Into You – Episode 2

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Today we return to the so-far excellent Bloom Into You, and take another stab at surviving the teenage experience! The show’s first episode demonstrated a variety of unique strengths, from its attractive backgrounds and purposeful direction to its fairly convincing characterization and dialogue. Yuu’s insecurities and overall personality already feel reasonably well established, though she’s still mostly been characterized in terms of her feelings towards romance. Touko is a bit further away from us, but that’s expected and intentional – episode one was largely from Yuu’s perspective, and Touko is a mystery to Yuu.

The show is also demonstrating an extremely welcome sensitivity when it comes to gay relationships. I’m used to the inherently salacious “this is such a scandal” approach of shows like Citrus or Love To-Lie Angle, but here, two girls potentially being in love is treated with genuine sensitivity. Not only are Yuu and Touko’s feelings treated with respect, but the show has already naturally illustrated the inherent social pressure to conform to your assumed sexuality. Scenes like Yuu’s friends lamenting that her lack of interest in boys means they “can’t have girl talk” demonstrate how young gay people aren’t just beset by out-and-out bullies and bigots; the base assumptions of a heteronormative society can leave us isolated even from our closest friends.

Finally, I’m also very intrigued by Bloom Into You’s fractured relationship with shoujo storytelling. The show opened with Yuu outright declaring her fascination with love as depicted in adolescent fiction, and the first episode constantly presented a negotiation between interrogating shoujo storytelling and outright embracing it for its own purposes (like for Yuu’s fairy tale introduction to Touko). I’m fascinated by the uneasy relationship between not just our lives and our expectations, but also reality and the fictions we make of it, so Bloom Into You’s restless dance with fantasy is also very compelling to me. With all that said, let’s dive into another episode!

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Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha – Episode 8

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As we return for another episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, I’m overjoyed to have a serious announcement: the show is actually great now. I was frankly getting somewhat worried through the first few episodes, as the show’s initial aesthetic uniqueness faded into a pretty ho-hum monster of the week formula, but both episode six and episode seven impressed me in clear and very different ways, and I’m now very happy to be genuinely excited about what happens next. It always makes me feel a little guilty when I have negative or deeply mixed feelings on something someone cared enough about to actually support me writing about, and as I’ve said many times, I vastly prefer watching stuff I find genuinely compelling to sending up stuff I find pretty bad, so I’m more than happy to finally be able to bring my full, genuine enthusiasm to this project.

But enough about me and my various complexes – let’s briefly recap what those two episodes did right. In episode six, Nanoha matched the strongest set of layouts it’s yet offered to personal drama which made terrific use of the show’s signature quality, its tendency to let mundane or incidental scenes play out for far longer than similar shows. Episode six was a triumph of form, demonstrating not only that Nanoha absolutely possesses an inspired sense of visual composition, but also that it was able to use its narrative strangeness in genuinely effective ways.

In episode seven, the show demonstrated that its consistent episodic buildup had actually been something of a long con, establishing an expectation of dramatic scale that was swiftly overturned by the formal introduction of the show’s space force. Leaping gracefully between theoretically disparate but ultimately compatible genres, while also fully establishing Fate as a compelling heroine in her own right, Nanoha’s seventh episode went a long way towards investing me in Nanoha’s actual plot, just as six restored my faith in its aesthetic vision. With Fate having returned from her “home” and a new Jewel Seed hanging in the balance, I’m excited to see how Nanoha’s newfound solidity informs this return to Nanoha and Fate’s clashes. Let’s get right to it!

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Ojamajo Doremi – Episode 38

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Saturday has come again, and it’s absolutely time for some more Ojamajo Doremi. Doremi has entered a somewhat odd interim phase in its current arc; after Onpu’s dramatic debut and declaration of intent, she’s mostly just hung around, acting occasionally villainous but more often just indifferent to our heroines’ plights. Her nefarious benefactor Majo Ruka obviously has a legitimate stake in sabotaging Rika and her ojamajos, but Onpu mostly just seems down for whatever, and willing to work with any side if it sounds like fun.

In meta-genre terms, Onpu and Ruka’s appearance has kept Doremi focused on fanciful witch world conflicts, from the dramatic race of two episodes ago to the witch frog invasion last week. This makes sense; like with Ruka’s first appearance, it’s difficult to pull off a classic “one of our classmates has a problem”-style episode while also keeping things focused on the inter-witch drama, and so Doremi is temporarily prioritizing its magical worldbuilding over its moral lessons. Unfortunately, these episodes don’t tend to be as strong as Doremi’s standard material – the system of magic in this world is too arbitrary to really invest in, and these episodes tend to lack the satisfying emotional substance or thematic payoffs of the more realistic conflicts. Still, Doremi has always managed a reasonable balance of its various component materials, and I’m guessing this recent swing towards magical malevolence will pay off soon. Let’s see what schemes Ruka and Onpu cook up this time!

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Bloom Into You – Episode 1

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time! Today we’re embarking on another new anime journey, as we explore the first episode of the ongoing Bloom Into You. I actually reviewed this episode once before for the ANN Preview Guide, but those pieces are designed mostly just to be a “is this worth checking out” snapshot, so today I’m happy to revisit it. As I mentioned in that post, my outside knowledge of Bloom Into You is fairly limited – I know it’s a generally well-regarded yuri romance known for its slow pacing and uncommonly sensitive emotional insights, but that’s about it. That’s more than enough for me, to be honest – I’m a sucker for romance and stories that respect and celebrate all our small emotional turns, so I’m very on board for a gentle love story.

As for this anime production, my only experience with director Makoto Katou is 2015’s Beautiful Bones. That show was certainly pretty, but I often felt its use of rainbow and pastel colors essentially overwhelmed the screen, saturating our perspective in a manner that felt more overbearing than evocative. Still, most of Beautiful Bones’ issues were more reflective of its source material than its visual execution, and with a well-regarded manga and veteran composer Jukki Hanada (Love Live!, A Place Further than the Universe, maybe half of KyoAni’s recent productions) handling series composition, I’m excited to see what Katou can really do. Let’s dive right into Bloom Into You!

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Princess Tutu – Episode 17

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We open Princess Tutu’s seventeenth episode with yet another strange, thematically resonant image; a rose standing alone, captured in either a mirror or a picture frame. “Once upon a time, there was a young man with a beautiful face” our untrustworthy narrator explains. “The people loved the handsome young man, but he never showed any interest in loving anyone. This is because all he loved was himself. When the young man, who had neglected to love anyone and sought only to be loved, found someone he truly cared for, he realized he had lost even the words to express those feelings.”

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Ojamajo Doremi – Episode 37

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Folks, it is absolutely time for more Ojamajo Doremi. With Doremi’s generous, handsome, and highly intelligent principle funder having recently stuffed the Doremi fund, we’re looking at Doremi Saturdays for a while to come, and I couldn’t be happier. The show’s last episode held to one of its less common modes – a wholly plot-focused adventure in the Witch World. Pitting Doremi, her friends, and their fairies against an uncommonly disciplined hare and an absurdly speedy tortoise, the episode was a gleeful celebration of Doremi’s very silly world, offering few life lessons beyond “if you’re making a hole for Doremi to crawl through, make sure to leave room for her hair orbs.”

That episode also saw the continuation of Onpu’s antagonism, though frankly, “briefly interrupting the girls for a conversation while shopping” isn’t exactly the height of villainy. Onpu is treading a difficult line of kinda sorta maybe attempting to sabotage the girls while also remaining their friends, which feels like a natural expression of her generally staged existence. Onpu likely sees friendship as perfectly compatible with villainy, because to her, both of these things are a kind of performance. The only thing she seems to genuinely care about is making sure she herself gets what she wants, and she seeks that goal with the bright smile and feigned innocence of a natural performer. We haven’t seen a single moment of true honesty from Onpu, and I’m eager to see the show actually investigate her character. Whether this particular episode focuses on her or not, I’m excited to see Doremi ramp up into another high-stakes arc. Let’s get right to it!

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Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha – Episode 7

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Today we’re jumping back into Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha! The show crossed a very important milestone last episode: it was actually, genuinely good. Nanoha’s been a perfectly watchable show from the start, and has been interesting enough in terms of its design and execution to give me plenty to talk about, but its first few episodes were neither so narratively gripping nor so compellingly executed that I’d actively recommend it. Things like its unusually mundane conversations and unique backgrounds were interesting aesthetic tools, but they weren’t being used to truly elevate the overall production.

That all changed last time, fortunately. On the visual side, the show’s background art was stronger than ever, offering a mix of dramatically charged and just-plain-beautiful compositions that made for an inherently compelling viewing experience. And on the narrative side, the show’s idle, incidental conversations contributed directly to the episode’s emotional core, naturally humanizing Nanoha’s relationship with her friends. On top of that, it seems like the show’s overarching paradigm is about to be broken as well, as the destruction of Nanoha and Fate’s staffs promises at least some disruption to the status quo. Boasting a new paint job, a greater mastery of its own strengths, and an urgent cliffhanger hook, Nanoha is looking stronger than ever as we enter its seventh episode. Let’s get right to it!

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