Hello all, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time! Today we’ll be embarking on a new notes project, as we explore the first episode of 2018’s The Girl in Twilight. This show was technically just the first wing of a theoretical multimedia project that also included a mobile game, a specific cross-promotional mix that has become increasingly common in recent years. It’s only really the mobile game aspect that’s new, though; anime are rarely green-lighted as fully self-contained commercial objects, and are generally intended to at the very least sell toys or music. In the age of massive mobile game sales, anime productions have naturally migrated towards promoting more mobile games; though in The Girl in Twilight’s case, the game it was promoting barely survived until the end of its own seasonal airing.
Moreso than its promotional intent, The Girl in Twilight’s most noteworthy feature is the presence of Kotaro Uchikoshi, who contributed the show’s base concept and scenario. Uchikoshi’s anime work has been pretty limited; his biggest “claim to fame” there is writing 2015’s Punch Line, which was a conceptually interesting and visually appealing production whose unfortunate “if I see panties the world ends” gimmick kept me from sticking with it. However, Uchikoshi is also responsible for writing the acclaimed Zero Escape game trilogy, along with a variety of other reality-bending, mystery-centered visual novels. The golden age of visual novels has tragically passed (they too have largely been replaced by mobile games), but Uchikoshi is considered one of its titans, and I’m excited to see his ideas at work in The Girl in Twilight. With our journey’s first steps established, let’s dive into The Girl in Twilight!