As we return to Witch Hat Atelier, our first title page sees our young mage bedecked in flowers, with even our adorable squirrel-caterpillar creature in attendance to celebrate the fun of an approaching festival. The intent seems clear – after the heavy, portentous drama of the last few chapters, both Qifrey and his students have clearly earned a moment of rest. Witch Hat Atelier is perfectly comfortable stretching towards fantasy action or large-scale drama, but its heart resides in the day-to-day interplay of these young witches, as both their collaborations and the manga’s distinctive realization of those actions demonstrate the inherent thrill of bettering yourself, of marching determinedly towards your next skill horizon, and of making sure to be kind to yourself and stopping to smell the roses along the way.
Category Archives: Essay
Direction and Atmosphere
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I was recently asked to write a piece on direction and atmosphere in anime, in line with my previous piece regarding the priorities of Laid-Back Camp and similar shows. I initially struggled with the concept, as that older piece is largely self-contained, and focused mainly on evangelizing for shows that don’t prioritize narrative action. A lot of my pieces at Crunchyroll were basically predicated on the question of “how do I get someone who’s only watched Naruto or Demon Slayer to enjoy Hyouka,” meaning they were content to end on the suggestion of branching out and letting their readers arrive at their own conclusions. But you folks are a very different audience; anyone who is interested in my thoughts on Wong Kar-wai probably doesn’t need to be convinced dramatic minimalism can be compelling, so I won’t waste your time with an entreaty on slow cinema’s behalf.
Blue Flag – Volume 4
Seiya storms the barricades as we open Blue Flag’s fourth volume, first challenging his brother Touma on his reckless actions, then turning his barrels towards our other leads. As in his first appearance, Seiya cuts through all this adolescent anxiety like a hot knife through butter, casually dragging Taichi aside and challenging Futaba on her relationship with the pair of them in one easy gesture. When high school dramas only feature high schoolers, their perspective can get a bit myopic, naturally embracing the sense of consequence and finality that attends untested adolescent emotions. Emerging from childhood into anxious self-awareness, adolescents can naturally feel overwhelmed or paralyzed by the choices before them, seeing in each choice made an endless hall of potential doors that have all slammed painfully, permanently shut.
This is understandable; not only are they thinking about how their presentation and actions affect others’ impressions of them for basically the first time, they’re combining that understanding with the natural anxiety of high school, the first time in most of their lives where the stage after this one isn’t known or guaranteed. So they really do have the chance to screw up their lives in lasting, consequential ways, making it all the harder to make any key decisions.
Witch Hat Atelier and the Perils of Ambition
The cover of Witch Hat Atelier’s seventh volume sees Coco journeying forth with lantern in hand, charting the unknown while looking nervously over her shoulder. She has been integrated into this world so quickly it’s almost dizzying, and her magical future looks bright, but it is natural at times to feel out of sorts or floundering when you’re on a journey of discovery. Coco’s earnest desire to expand her understanding is perhaps the single greatest quality a would-be artist or craftsman can possess; for after all, the essence of the seeker is not mastery, but curiosity. Granted, endless curiosity can gradually foment endless ambition, and when your urge to know more outstrips your understanding of what you have already gained, tragedy can easily result.
A Thankless Passion: Look Back
Why is it that we create art? Certainly not for the adulation of the crowd; for beyond the theoretically accommodating audience of your close family and friends, there is little chance you’ll be impressing anyone without putting in thankless, outrageously time-consuming practice for any hope of positive return. Doubly so for financial incentives, which have frequently eluded even the most popular and historically celebrated of artists. Is it simply so difficult for us to express our feelings plainly and move on with our lives? Is there some form of egoism inherent to our species, that we must believe our particular thoughts are so noteworthy they demand public distribution? Is making art just another way of fearing death?
Misadventures in Dungeons & Dragons: Part Three
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today my buffer of reader bounties is so well-stocked that it would be an act of supreme hubris to write any further ahead, so I figured I’d instead check back in on my early adventures in Dungeons & Dragons, and see if we can sift some lessons out of my early mistakes. It’s been over a year since I last published one of these pieces, meaning looking back is only getting more embarrassing as I get more practice – but of course, improvement comes in much greater leaps and bounds early on, when there’s so much more you don’t know, but could easily learn through experience. It’s true of most things, but especially true for the mix of preparation, performance, and improvisation that is DnD: until you’ve actually hosted a live table session, there’s really no way of knowing precisely what you will and won’t need prepped to support you.
That’s the primary divide we’ll today be reaching, as we charge past the end of The Festival of Saint Agatha, and on into The Dreadful Tale of Castle Blackmire. Saint Agatha was my first adventure ever, save precisely one session of guest DMing our prior campaign, and thus I was basically guessing regarding the level of detail I needed to write into every quest. My first takeaway was a clear “need more prep,” meaning Blackmire would include more fully realized expository copy to more easily set scenes, and also more clear mechanical definition for conflicts I had previously, foolishly assumed I could “just figure out on the fly.” I am not a master of swift improvisation; my DnD work demands preparation to come alive, and balancing that level of preparation is something I’m still working on today.
When last we left off with this endeavor, our party of Dante the tiefling sorcerer, Arachne the half-elf/half-spider ranger, Garu the human rogue, and Dylan the crustacean paladin had successfully derailed some kind of sacrificial ritual, preventing the emergence of a dark harvest god and saving their friend Lugdug in the process. With both my main side quests for the town of Nettlebarn resolved, I figured it was time to pull the trigger on the town’s concluding drama, and get the team marching towards the city of Yhaunn, which would ultimately become their home for the trials ahead.
Ishitani Ascendant: One Piece Fan Letter
Among the many talents that have benefited from Toei’s renewed dedication to One Piece’s anime adaptation, there are none more spectacular or consistent than director Megumi Ishitani. Having first directed the final episode of Dragon Ball Super, she has since made an indelible mark on One Piece, affirming her talent through directing what is likely the series’ all-time greatest episode during its Wano arc. That episode revealed the absurd range of her aesthetic genius, the eye for storyboarding and cinematic embellishments that make every work she creates feel not just like an episode, but an event. That episode also embodied her unique talent for drawing diverse dramatic threads into one cohesive, thematically resonant whole – to basically synthesize One Piece’s appeal down to its purest essence, the yearning for connection and quest for liberation that are the story’s most poignant and central themes.
Passion in Motion: A Handful of Favorites
Hello friends, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I recently received a request to write some sort of “sakuga article,” meaning an article relevant in some way to the exemplary individual cuts of animation we anime stalwarts refer to as “sakuga.” This has been a source of some consternation to me, as I don’t generally consider myself particularly studied or well-informed when it comes to the specific craft of animation in the abstract. I know enough to describe why a cut feels evocative or impactful to me, but my specialties are first and foremost writing-related, followed by filmic technique, with animation following behind.
Light Through Glass: Rebels of the Neon God
Rain splatters against the phone booth glass, drops falling like the embers of fireworks spiraling in the distance. Their trails are lit by an indistinct whirl of city lights, perhaps cars or fluorescent signs, made obscure and thus somehow entrancing, their uncertainty of form promising riches and wonders. The beads of water are like liquid jewels, a beautiful contrast against the soot-streaked interior. Two boys huddle inside, hungrily passing cigarettes between them, then inserting a screwdriver into the terminal. A waiting bag is filled with the phone’s bounty, loose coins a pale imitation of those glittering lights – but here in the city, all truly bright things are indistinct and out of reach.
Sailor Moon and the Pleasures of Adaptation
The past few weeks have seen me charging through Sailor Moon, which I’ve long considered one of the most egregious outstanding gaps in my anime education. The series pits Usagi Tsukino and her fellow middle schoolers-slash-sailor guardians against a wide array of foes, as they stumble their way through adolescence while also fighting off supernatural beasties on a seemingly daily basis. Though most episodes follow a fairly similar pattern, the show remains consistently heartwarming, and has been a generally rewarding ride – though not, I must admit, for precisely the reasons I expected.