Category Archives: Episode Writeup

The Demon Girl Next Door S2 – Episode 1

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be embarking on a new leg in a familiar journey, as we check out the second season premiere of The Demon Girl Next Door. Though it was billed as an irreverent genre-savvy comedy, Demon Girl’s first season proved to be far more than that, exploring and critiquing the assumptions of its demon/magical girl dichotomy with uncommon acuity. Though they couldn’t be further apart tonally, Demon Girl actually ended up echoing many of Madoka Magica’s thoughts regarding how magical and demon girls map to society’s compartmentalization of women into either “spotlessly righteous” or “irredeemably fallen” categories, each a cage with its own attendant injustices.

In spite of dabbling in such pointed social commentary, Demon Girl has maintained an irrepressibly positive tone throughout, echoing the indefatigable spirit of its anti-heroine Shamiko. Condemned as a demon girl to be perpetually vilified and defeated, Shamiko has turned lemons into lemonade at every turn, and ultimately become close friends with her “nemesis” Momo. The lessons of a lifetime of vilification – learning to forgive and find pride in yourself, accepting failure as a necessary precursor to success, and so on – have actually equipped her with the ideal tools to mentor her self-hating counterpart, whose own upbringing taught her that if she is less than perfect, she is nothing. Together, the two of them seek a future where magical and demon girls can coexist happily, if only to lessen the complications of their own eventual marriage. Let’s see what madness they get up to in season two!

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Bodacious Space Pirates – Episode 24

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today our crew stand on the brink of a conflict unlike any in recent history, as the disparate pirate community unites in defense of their way of life. Vessels which have for decades been dedicated to entertainment and smuggling will now prep for war, that they might forestall the end of legal piracy. With Marika standing as the young champion of this grand tradition, they will face down a terrifyingly advanced enemy ship, and attest in one voice to the enduring freedom of the stars!

Well, at least, I imagine that’s how things would go if this were a conventional scifi anime. Cathartic faceoffs and decisive battles indeed make for great television spectacle, but this is Bodacious Space Pirates, where history is measured in eras, not inches. It is not just one specific foe that threatens the space pirates; it is the continuous march of capitalism and empire, steadily colonizing the spots where freedom once flourished. Simply defeating this enemy vessel is not enough; if Marika and her compatriots are to survive, they will likely have to reach some accord with the Galactic Empire, to ensure piracy’s continued prosperity. Let’s see how our alliance is shaping up, as we return for another episode of Bodacious Space Pirates!

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Spy x Family – Episode 9

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Hello everyone, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. You folks ready for some Spy x Family? I’ve personally been eager to get back the Forgers’ preposterous family drama, and doubly excited given we’re squaring off with a fresh Studio WIT episode. That’s not to say that Cloverworks’ episodes have been bad in any way, but merely that WIT seem regularly determined to overachieve relative to their assignments, pulling off wildly ambitious feats of staging and anime-original sequences like that castle raid just because they can. Even for a more mundane episode like Anya’s entrance at school, dynamic layouts and choice flourishes of animation have helped to elevate Spy x Family’s already-excellent base material.

As for our narrative trajectory, we finished the last episode on one of the show’s first genuine cliffhangers, with Yuri demanding our newlyweds prove just how in love they are. Loid and Yor’s mutual discomfort with lovey-dovey stuff is more than a little improbable, but as long as it keeps facilitating hilarious moments of mutual awkwardness and strained gestures of affection, I’m happy to accept they possess the romantic chops of a pair of middle schoolers. Without further ado, let’s get back to Spy x Family!

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Anne of Green Gables – Episode 13

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today seems like a perfect day to fetch the wagon and set a course for Green Gables, checking in on the continuing misadventures of Anne and her unique family. In the wake of last episode’s brooch fiasco, I expect Anne and her adoptive parents to be closer than ever; having been forced to admit her own error, it appears that Marilla has perhaps embraced just a touch of humility, while also recognizing that her initial suspicions about Anne were entirely unfounded. Anne is not, as claimed, the wickedest girl Marilla has ever met – she is honest and kind and irrepressibly imaginative, and though Marilla may not understand that last virtue, she is just maybe beginning to appreciate it.

As for the production team, this episode will be reuniting us with the storyboards of Seiji Okuda, a regular Takahata/Miyazaki collaborator who also contributed a number of boards to Heidi, Sherlock Hound, and Lupin III, with a script by Anne regular Seijiro Koyama. Koyama traded off scripting duties with Takahata for a number of these early episodes, and with such reliable key staff in attendance, I expect this episode to hew closely to Takahata’s overall vision of the show. Let’s see what awaits us in Anne of Green Gables!

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The Legend of Vox Machina – Episode 11

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to The Legend of Vox Machina, and perhaps glean another tip or two to carry back to my own tabletop misadventures. To be honest, things have actually been moving quite smoothly in my campaign; we reached my invented capital city a few sessions ago, and the players have since then been having a great time exploring this playground of bounties, quests, and colosseum challenges I’ve built for them. I’m too much of a narrative-minded guy and too poor at improvising to provide a truly open-ended sandbox, but I think we’ve hit a good compromise between freedom and guide rails, and my individual encounter design sensibilities are improving all the time.

As for the hapless members of Vox Machina, we last left off on a moment of shocking betrayal, as Cassandra sided with the Briarwoods over her long-lost brother. It seems beyond question that this is in some part a result of the Briarwoods’ foul sorceries, but it’s nonetheless a bold play by Mercer. Within the list of Possible Complications offered in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, “the party is betrayed by a former ally” is the only entry complimented by “(use this one sparingly)”, and for good reason – if the party begins to believe they can’t trust any of the characters around them, or that established characterization might be reversed at a whim, their investment in the world will drop precipitously. That’s obviously not going to be a problem with a committed group like this, but it’s an example of a conceit where exploiting it simply to increase dramatic volume might actually provoke the opposite effect. Player investment in non-player characters is hard-earned, so think twice before you betray that trust!

Alright, that’s more than enough narrative design preamble. Let’s get back to the action!

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Ganso Tensai Bakabon – Episode 4

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. You all doing alright today? I’m personally feeling quite fine, as I’ve got the weekend right in front of me and a fresh episode of Ganso Tensai Bakabon on the plate. Charming in its comedy and absolutely jaw dropping in its art design, Bakabon is one of the strangest artifacts of ‘70s anime I’ve come across, overflowing with a level of main staff talent that basically any anime would kill for.

Thirty-odd episodes plus an opening directing by Osamu Dezaki. Art direction by the incomparable Shichiro Kobayashi. Countless other positions filled by key, lasting associates of Oshii, Dezaki, and Studio Ghibli. The more you dig into the show’s staff listing, the more you come across figures like, say, Kazuo Oga, an art designer who’s contributed background art to basically every Ghibli film. Bakabon’s credentials are preposterously impressive, boasting luminaries who’ve elevated decades of the medium’s best productions, and all of them here dedicated to the rambling adventures of a little goblin man and his accommodating family. It’s basically ‘70s Nichijou, making it almost impossible not to love. Let’s see what our gremlin father gets up to next!

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Star Driver – Episode 10

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Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am beyond eager to get back to Star Driver, whose narrative is currently being invaded by a rampaging Mizuno. After appearing as a brief figure of mystery two episodes ago, this most recent episode saw Mizuno crushing hard on Takuto, forcefully inserting herself into the drama department, and ultimately revealing her status as one of Southern Cross’ legendary shrine maidens. In a mere twenty minutes, she has charged through as much personal drama and lore shakeups as took the original cast half a dozen episodes, handling it all with a wave and a smile.

As my tone might indicate, I am all for this shakeup, and can’t wait to see what Mizuno does next. In contrast with the relatively passive Wako, Mizuno seems to already be pushing Takuto out of his comfort zone, while simultaneously embodying a challenge to the conservative gender paradigm of the shrine maiden system. Her energy seems like a better match for Takuto’s own personality, and perhaps more than anything, she’s just plain fun to be around. Let’s see how Mizuno continues to resculpt this narrative, as we return to the fascinating Star Driver!

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Spy x Family – Episode 8

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Hello everyone, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to get back to Spy x Family, which most recently offered some clear strides in precisely the direction I was hoping for. My persistent complaint from the start of this production has been a relative lack of Yor interiority or agency, and episode seven provided exactly that, as Yor’s experiences with her brother informed her current advice on Loid’s parenting. Unlike Loid, Yor actually has some personal experience dealing with a young family member, and her words helped Loid realize he’d been treating Anya more as a faulty machine than a living daughter. That in turn led to Loid affirming Yor’s place in the family, as he told her to stop considering herself an outsider relative to him and Anya.

I’m very much hoping Yor follows that advice, and continues to loudly assert her own perspective. But either way, I imagine we’re in for some delightful chaos at Eden Academy, with Damien’s infatuation likely to cause even more problems than his prior anger. Spy x Family is continuing to find seemingly limitless lodes of comedy within its conceptual framework, and I’m eager to see whatever nonsense comes next. Let’s get to it!

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Bodacious Space Pirates – Episode 23

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re steering our ship towards Bodacious Space Pirates, which most recently introduced the threat of genuine pirate hunters to harass our intrepid heroes. This was all quite surprising, considering pirates don’t actually engage in any sort of illegal business; they’re basically a combination of traveling entertainers and high-stakes couriers, with all of their missions approved by a central authority.

As such, it’s hard to say who would have a vendetta against any pirates, much less the concept of modern-day piracy in general. And on top of that, we’ve now got some weirdo warping in while standing on top of his spaceship, in full cross-armed Gunbuster array. Bodacious Space Pirates has generally taken care to partition the tone of its various core elements; the lighthearted high school drama doesn’t undercut the grounded scifi worldbuilding, and vice versa. But a dude standing on top of a ship doing sentai poses feels like a traveler from a more super robot-informed universe, and so I’m eager to see how he slots into our existing configuration. Let’s see how this confrontation plays out in a fresh Bodacious Space Pirates!

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The Demon Girl Next Door – Episode 12

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today it seemed like the right time to check back in on The Demon Girl Next Door, and see how our luckless shadow mistress is faring. Last episode offered an unexpected deluge of backstory revelations, raining bombshell after bombshell on Shamiko’s tiny, horn-laden head. As it turns out, it was actually Momo’s sister who helped save Shamiko from the family curse, during the course of her attempts to protect all of this city’s luckless demons. Unfortunately, whatever threats she faced ultimately ended up sealing away Shamiko’s father, reducing him to an orange box the family uses as a makeshift table.

That’s a lot to take in at once! Frankly, it’s also a lot for us in the audience to take in at once, more than doubling our data points regarding this larger magical/demon girl paradigm. It seems that Momo is far from the first magical girl to doubt her mission; in fact, we appear to be living in an overall era of lost faith, with demon-slaying magical girls now more the exception than the rule. Instead, magical girls seem to have collectively acknowledged the inherent injustice of this whole Calvinist paradigm, and more recently have been working to offer the equivalent of social services and reparations to their arbitrarily condemned counterpoints.

All that serves as a humorous continuation of this show’s general themes, as well as an expression of its overall optimism regarding human nature. Rather than letting themselves be controlled by a process that seeks to dehumanize them, the magical girls of this world essentially unionized and rebelled, realizing they had far more in common with their alleged enemies than their overseers. A solution like this is what I’d expect this show to imagine as its potential endgame, so I’m quite interested to see how the drama develops now that we know a post-demon hunting paradigm has already been established. Let’s get to it!

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