Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am laboring under a backlog of would-be essay writing, as my article on Wong Kar-wai’s gorgeous In the Mood for Love is proving itself stubbornly resistant to wrangling. As such, I’ve had to sacrifice some of my weekly film viewing writeup time at the altar of Kar-wai, but never fear – my current film writeup backlog has ballooned to over thirty pages, so the adjustment should be complete without any disruption of service on your end. And professional scrambling aside, my house’s instatement of a daily genre-shifting movie timetable has continued to work wonders for our diversity of features, even if we’re still pulling tricks like “Shaw Brothers movies work for action, foreign films, and pre-80s features, right?” Also Gundam! We’re currently barreling through Zeta Gundam, and I’ll surely have plenty to say about that in short order. But for now, let’s run through a fresh collection of films in this singularly frantic Week in Review!
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Fall 2023 – Week 3 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week saw me once again consumed by the seemingly impossible task of finding an affordable apartment, while generally attempting to come to peace with the vast, foreboding uncertainties that seem so unavoidable of late. Twitter being consumed by Musk, Crunchyroll being consumed by Sony, my house being consumed by fire; lately it’s seeming like everything I build is erected on a bedrock of sand, making it tough to feel like I’m actually moving forward. I suppose all I can really measure my time in is pride in the work I complete, and I’m certainly proud to still be maintaining my essay-per-week pledge in the midst of all this chaos. And in spite of still lacking stable lodging, my crew’s movie screenings have at last regained their prior regularity, offering a welcome jolt of stability in these difficult times. I’m hoping I’ll have positive housing news to report next week, but for now, let’s break down some fresh feature films!
Summer 2023 – Week 7 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been a hectic week on my end, as me and my housemates have been racing to find a new apartment that’s anywhere close to affordable (and also accommodating of our beloved Eevee). It’s been ten years since any of us checked the rental market, and it turns out the city has spent that time upping its rates to accommodate the average billionaire looking to spend some time off his moon-yacht, leaving scant affordable housing for the rest of us. Nonetheless, we’ve got at least a couple prospects lined up, and have spent the time in between apartment viewings consoling ourselves with the indomitable spirit of Goku and his companions. Yes, Dragon Ball Z Kai has indeed become a fixture of our viewing schedule, and has left me with a few thoughts regarding the father of modern shonen. Let’s get to it!
Hugtto! Precure – Episode 37
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am delighted to be returning to Hugtto! Pretty Cure, for an episode that by all accounts is going to be almost incomprehensible to me. Our last episode involved the main Hugtto party linking up with about half a dozen previous Cure generations, some of whom they were already acquainted with, all of whom were essentially new to me. Having rallied these supplementary ranks, we then saw half a dozen other Cure parties get frozen in time, trapped in the re-unveiling of Dr. Traum’s totally bullshit time control robot.
For long-time Cure aficionados, I imagine these meetups are a familiar element of the Precure package. For me, this has been a somewhat overwhelming but altogether charming journey through decades of design sensibilities, with each new team demonstrating the diversity of what Pretty Cure can be. The franchise appears to possess a gratifyingly straightforward “if it’ll make for a fun crossover, do it” approach to worldbuilding, while the appearance of all these classic Cures likely gives the current animation team a chance to bring characters they grew up with to life, much like how One Piece’s current staff is stacked with lifelong One Piece fans. When you’re given a chance like that, magic frequently results, so I’m eager to see what wonders await in this pan-Precure bash. Let’s get to it!
Spring 2023 – Week 12 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It is currently a muggy, clouded, altogether inhospitable day out, but I refuse to let nature’s frankly childish behavior ruin my afternoon. This has been a week marked by a variety of gratifying personal milestones: I released my last writeup of the excellent Simoun, caught up on both my Witch Hat Atelier and Chainsaw Man articles (currently in my drafts), and finished Mitsuo Iso’s fascinating Dennou Coil, while also plotting out much of the remainder of my house’s D&D campaign. I suppose it’s no great secret that accomplishing things makes you feel accomplished, but it’s nonetheless been a great source of pride and energy to see my “Current Outstanding Projects” pile diminish so significantly over the past half year. I’ve got more fun stuff coming, but for now, let’s explore some fresh films and Mitsuo Iso’s acclaimed production as we burn through the Week in Review!
Spring 2023 – Week 5 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am in an exceedingly good mood, as not only will I be hosting a session of Dungeons & Dragons later, but this particular session will open with the doling out of treasures and reputation boosts the party has earned for their recent adventures. You know those chapters of One Piece where Big News Morgans reports on how awesome the Straw Hats have been lately? Yeah, I love that shit, so I’ve cribbed it wholesale for my party’s quest to form an alliance across the various countries of my campaign setting. One of the great pleasures of DnD is seeing how your choices create a lattice of secondary consequences spiraling out around you, and I’m eager to dazzle my party with a full report on what they’ve accomplished. But don’t worry, my manic production of DnD materials has done little to interfere with our movie screenings, with this week’s viewings offering both classics and creepers of varying caliber. Let’s run down the Week in Review!
A Tropical Fish Yearns For Snow – Volume 1
It’s funny, but often the hardest things to criticize are those which are simply Nice. Not wildly ambitious in their formal construction, not instructive or at least humorous in their variable failings, but simply a very pleasant time with some likable characters. So it goes for A Tropical Fish Yearns For Snow, whose first volume charmed me utterly, while also leaving me with little to offer beyond an earnest “I just think they’re neat.” But I will try my best to explicate that feeling a little more, as we explore this gentle and charming love story.
A Dream of Justice: Knives Out
As we continue our perilous journey through the twenty-first century, it seems clear that the idea of satire as it was previously understood is essentially dead. Effective satire requires not just a coherent target, but also some common framework of experience; a lens of viewing society we all recognize, through which the effective satirist can lampoon that which is both outrageous and mundane. Satire presents the world as we assume it to be, but twisted so as to reveal the perversity of our assumptions. Satire, ultimately, is a tool through which one person can turn to another and say, “look, now do you understand my point of view?”
Why It Works: Worldbuilding, Storytelling, and Weaving a Song
For this week’s Why It Works, I pulled together an old-fashioned “philosophy of storytelling” essay, centered on the relationship between worldbuilding and dramatic structure. As usual, this was initially prompted by my perpetual annoyance at people Doing Stories Wrong, but I think it ended up in a fairly approachable place. Exploring the give-and-take of drama and narrative structure is just absolutely fascinating to me, and I’ll be happy if I can spark that fascination for anyone else out there. Here’s the piece!
Worldbuilding, Storytelling, and Weaving a Song
Summer 2020 – Week 9 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week marked the end of an era I commenced several months ago, when I first told my housemate “hey, you should finish Adventure Time so we can check out Steven Universe.” Having at last arrived at the end of Steven Universe Future, I can happily affirm that Steven sits comfortably alongside Avatar: The Last Airbender at the absolute peak of non-Japanese animation. Along with Steven, I also caught on anime’s own current thematic juggernaut Deca-Dence, and even snuck in a viewing of Bill and Ted’s first adventure. Let’s break ’em all down in the Week in Review!