Category Archives: Week in Review

Winter 2025 – Week 3 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We’re still deep in the January doldrums at this point, but I’ve been keeping busy however I can, and it seems my tabletop associates are at last emerging from their hibernation and bellowing for treats. It’s significantly harder to set up DnD sessions now that we don’t share an apartment, but the spirit is willing even if the scheduling is weak. I’ve also been making good on my resolution to get back into traditional fiction this year, and have already written a short story that’d been bouncing around my head for months. Plus I’m still munching through the delightful Metaphor Refantazio, which is so good it’s actually becoming a bit of a problem in terms of getting to other projects. Nonetheless, my film viewings continue apace, and I’ve curated a fresh collection of reflections for you all to peruse at leisure. Let’s get to it!

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Winter 2025 – Week 2 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am looking out at perhaps the first clear day of the new year, a sight that would perhaps inspire me to get off my ass and go enjoy some nature, if it weren’t also twenty goddamn degrees outside. Instead, I will likely stay safely indoors and play a whole bunch of Metaphor: Refantazio, which has succeeded in inheriting its Persona brethren’s capacity to utterly take over my life. Seriously, we’ve got like turn timers running to ensure everyone gets an equal share of Metaphor, it’s an absolute mess over here. Anyway, with two hour timers separating Metaphor play sessions, I’ve also found time for plenty of film features as well. Let’s break ‘em down!

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Top Anime of 2024 (And Year in Review)

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Hello folks, and welcome to the end of another year on this swiftly decaying orb. There’s no sugarcoating it; this has been a year of absolute horrors on the global stage, with my own government doing its best to sanitize a ruthless genocide while the world at large slips further into regressive, reactionary social attitudes and outright fascism. The neoliberal consensus of the early 2010s has broken on the back of capitalism’s increasingly ruthless post-COVID exploitation, and the best message the alleged adults in the room could muster was “things are fine the way they are,” a message that resonated so poorly it sent a narcissistic, buffoonish reality show host back into the most powerful seat in the world.

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Winter 2025 – Week 1 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s the beginning of a brand spanking new year, and though all signs point to a renewed slate of horrors bearing down on us, I’m determined to at least start the year with as much confidence and enthusiasm as possible. I mean, we’ve got… what, that Elden Ring multiplayer spinoff coming at some point, right? And I think Hades 2 will be coming out of early access? Plus One Piece will be coming off hiatus in a few months, and I imagine Toei will be pulling out all the stops for Egghead’s finale. Alright, so we’ve got some stuff to look forward to, that’s definitely a start. I’ll keep brainstorming new reasons for the season, and in the meantime, let’s ring in the new year with a fresh collection of films. On with the Week in Review!

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Fall 2024 – Week 12 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you from the midst of more end-of-year preparations, as I simultaneously chart out my favorite anime of the year, and also cram in as much Dead Dead Demons as I can before the dead dead deadline. I’ve been enjoying the show more now that I’m past the point I read in the manga, and am no longer directly comparing the two; taken as a work in its own right, it provides a fatigued, almost fatalistic snapshot of our lives on the cusp of apocalypse, perfectly echoing both our real-world inability to contest the decline of late-stage capitalism, as well as the ease with which that uncertainty lets us justify the unthinkable. I’ve also been puttering away at some big Dungeons & Dragons projects, and am currently nearing the end of designing a “quest” that’s in truth a brief campaign in its own right, featuring a fully populated boom town and a variety of Wild West-evoking side quests. I’ll probably let you know how that turns out either here or in my Vox Machina pieces, but in the meantime, let’s break down the week in films!

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Fall 2024 – Week 11 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you from the midst of another cold, gloomy December day, as I wonder to myself why exactly we choose to end the year at the conclusion of such a miserable month. How are we supposed to feel optimistic about the new year at the end of fuckin’ December, when the cold’s already seeped deep into our bones, and the promise of spring is still several brutal months away? I’d frankly prefer it if we were continuously running through an April-to-September circuit, with no threat of frigid weather looming over us, and the promise of a fresh summer never more than a couple months away. Of course, I’d miss Halloween, but perhaps we could just push that back a month and have it serve as September’s end – I mean, it’s not like September’s got anything else to do with its time.

Anyway, where were we? Ah yes, the Week in Review. Let’s break down some films!

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Fall 2024 – Week 10 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It is fucking cold out as we enter our first week of December, and what’s more, my neighborhood’s usual street parking has been outlawed in deference to the kind of New England blizzard which may well never return to Boston. So I’m cold and I can’t park anywhere and the year’s nearly ending, which of course always heralds its own signature suite of anxieties and responsibilities and reflections on our eternal, unstoppable relinquishing of days, just in time for January to inform us that yes, it is indeed possible to be colder and more miserable than December, just watch me. So that’s where I’m at right now, but I’ve at least gotten most of my Christmas shopping done, and am also so far ahead on my reader projects that I’ve indulged in some more DnD retrospective pieces, which I’ll hopefully be sharing with you soon. In the meantime, cold weather only means more movies, so let’s see what we’ve got in the latest Week in Review!

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Fall 2024 – Week 9 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week has seen me fully immersing myself in 2024-in-review catch-up projects, as I’ve both torn through the first major arc of Monogatari’s Off Season and begun my viewing of the Dead Dead Demons adaptation. Both have been quite enjoyable so far; Nadeko’s latest adventure served as a surprisingly touching coda to her identity-forming adventures, and Dead Dead Demons has certainly been adapted with care, even if it feels a little superfluous in its absolute loyalty to Inio Asano’s paneling. Admittedly, it must be a terrifying thing to try adapting an artist as preternaturally gifted as Asano, but it sadly feels like such an exact adaptation only reveals the animation’s inability to match the impact of Asano’s compositions. Nonetheless, the strength of the source material still makes for a compelling ride, and I’m looking forward to catching up on the year’s key films as soon as possible. In the meantime, let’s break down the films I’ve snuck in the week’s margins!

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Fall 2024 – Week 8 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to… dear god, it can’t really be week eight of the fall season already, can it? Is November even a real month, or just a collective hallucination that carries us directly from Halloween to Christmas? Anyway, yes, it is apparently time for the Week in Review, and I am still embarrassingly behind on my annual anime catch-up. I know I should really be watching this year’s outstanding productions rather than more Armored Trooper Votoms, but the heart wants what it wants, and right now it wants to watch Chiricho to emerge from the bloodstained field of battle only to discover his own personal war has just begun. Alongside that, we’ve been marking the encroaching holiday season with a variety of seasonally appropriate film productions, which I’m sure you’re eager to hear all about. Let’s celebrate the increasingly all-consuming Christmas spirit with the latest Week in Review!

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Fall 2024 – Week 7 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We’re truly nearing the end of the year at this point, which means it’s getting to that time when I must actually examine the animated year in retrospect, and catch up on any key productions I might have missed. Uzumaki fell apart and Dandadan’s second episode still failed to grab me, but there’s still plenty else I need to check on, from the Dead Dead Demons adaptation to the latest installments in the Monogatari and Sound! Euphonium franchises. Between those, Delicious in Dungeon, and the year’s superb film crop (Naoko Yamada and Kiyotaka Oshiyama!), this is looking to be an altogether laudable year in anime, before we even get to backlog personal projects like Sailor Moon. I’ll be starting on all that shortly, but in the meantime, I have of course continued sampling whatever films either catch my fancy or rudely invade my screen via my roommate’s craft-neutral curiosity. Let’s break ‘em down!

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