Category Archives: Week in Review

Summer 2026 – Week 5 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week I’ve been keeping active in spite of this summer’s absolutely brutal humidity, heroically jogging through the pain before collapsing into an air-conditioned puddle. I’ve also been keeping busy on the anime screening front by finishing off the first season of Witch Hat Atelier, which proved, well, likely as good as it could be. The unfortunate issue with Witch Hat Atelier is that it is so well-suited to its original medium that any adaptation will almost necessarily be a lesser version, and though this production team is obviously excellent, there’s basically no way to effectively translate the original manga’s deftness of paneling, or to perfectly balance its drama versus its humor. Still, it’s certainly a strong show in its own right, and will undoubtedly find a place within my annual wrap-up. I’ll likely be tackling one of this ongoing season’s many apparent delicacies next, but in the meantime, let’s burn down the week in review!

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Summer 2026 – Week 4 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Summer’s passing us by with alarming speed, but I’m doing my best to make the most of it, having recently discovered some excellent new jogging routes around my neighborhood. It’s been a bitter pill to swallow that diet and exercise are indeed the truest routes to physical and mental health, but I’m at least working to complement such disappointingly mature revelations with plenty of cartoons and videogames. As far as that goes, I recently screened the excellent Gunsmith Cats OVA series, and have also been bashing my head against Mina the Hollower for a couple of weeks now. The game is clearly made with love, but it often feels like the developers take their love of “old-school design sensibilities” to a self-defeating extreme; I like many hard games, but I have no patience for obtuse design as a shortcut to difficulty, and I feel like Mina too often strays over that line. And of course, there have been plenty of our regular movie screenings, so let’s get started on the week in review!

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Summer 2026 – Week 3 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I hit a nice personal milestone this week, as I finally reached the end of my annual “get off your ass and out jogging” progression chart, meaning I am apparently qualified to run a 5k. This feels nice in an intellectual sense, even if it conflicts with my own physical impression of my body as a rancid, decaying husk, and I’m gonna do my absolute best to keep that energy going through the months to come. Meanwhile, my house just finished up Magical Knight Rayearth, leaving us once again in search of a worthy legacy production. Given my last two summers were shared with Sailor Moon and Slayers, whatever comes next has some big shoes to fill, so I’d appreciate any recommendations regarding classic (or recent, I’m not picky) anime to munch through. In the meantime, let’s burn down the week in review!

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Summer 2026 – Week 2 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been a productive week over in my neck of the woods, as I’ve munched through movies, reader articles, and novel-writing with equally dogged determination. I’ve nearly broken the two hundred page mark on my current manuscript, and though it is indeed a piece of garbage with no redeeming features to speak of, I’ve grown quite fond of it all the same. My house’s eternal march through anime history has also continued in earnest, with the first third of Magic Knight Rayearth proving an enjoyable (if fairly formulaic) fantasy yarn. I’d prefer if it deviated a bit more from magical girl staples into less rigid fantasy drama, but the cast are fun and the look is great, so it’s tough to be too disappointed. I’ll likely have a final report on that one in short order, but for now, let’s burn down the week in films!

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Summer 2026 – Week 1 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. The summer anime season appears to be an absolute deluge of quality cartoons, but in characteristic fashion, I have so far not sampled any of them. Look, I spent most of a decade writing for ANN’s preview guide, I feel like I can be forgiven for my temporal obstinance when it comes to new shows. Nonetheless, even I feel tempted to check out such enticing propositions as a new Naoko Yamada show or fresh Kyoto Animation adaptation, so I’ll likely be diving in myself in short order, presumably when enough episodes have been released to make a proper meal of any of them. In the meantime, my house has been knocking off film viewings and supplementary series with uninhibited abandon, so let’s see what treasures await in the Week in Review!

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Spring 2026 – Week 13 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. With the summer anime season already commencing, we’ve got an absurd bounty of promising new productions to look into, from Naoko Yamada’s A Witch in Mongolia to the new Ghost in the Shell, dazzling aesthetic throwback Goodbye Lara, and even a brand new adaptation from Kyoto Animation. Sometimes I have to scramble to fill out my year in review posts, but between this season’s contenders, Witch Hat Atelier, and Journal With Witch (it’s clearly a particularly witchy year), 2026 is looking to be one of the strongest years in anime for quite some time. Meanwhile, my own house just finished up the original Bubblegum Crisis, leaving me wavering between Magic Knight Rayearth and Galaxy Express 999 as our next legacy viewing. I’ll let you all know how that shakes out soon enough, but in the meantime, let’s run down the week in films!

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Spring 2026 – Week 12 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I finished my run-through of Final Fantasy VIII this week, offering welcome closure to a lingering adolescent quest, in spite of the game’s third act being exceedingly underdeveloped. I suppose it’s a credit to the game’s character writing that I felt annoyed by how swiftly everything wraps up; this is definitely one of the best overall parties within the Final Fantasy lineage, and I’ll absolutely miss them. With that concluded, I’ve also been continuing a Blue Lions run of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which has led me to the amusing revelation that there’s no real justification for house leader Dimitri’s behavior, he’s just Like That. Sorta figured his route would offer similar revelations of intent to Black Eagles and Golden Deer, but nope, Dimitri’s just some kind of feral, vengeance-driven creature. I’ll hopefully be wrapping that adventure up shortly, but in the meantime, let’s run down the week in films!

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Spring 2026 – Week 11 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week has been defined by an extremely nostalgic journey for me, as I’ve been hacking my way through Final Fantasy VIII for the first time since junior high. Though it’s always been overshadowed by the apparently immortal FFVII, I’ve always been fond of FFVIII’s unique aesthetic style and highly personal story, and have been enjoying seeing my fond memories rewarded with a cast of characters that’s just as endearing as I remembered. The whole junction-refining magic system also scratches the Persona fusion center of my brain just right; I can see why many players would prefer a more traditional approach to spellcasting, but I really appreciate how Squaresoft followed up the titanic FFVII with such a bold swing, particularly considering their fearful, self-cannibalizing recent development choices. I actually got stuck somewhere in Ultimecia’s castle as a teenager, so I’ll also be enjoying actually beating the game for the first time sometime next week – but in the meantime, let’s run down the week in films!

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Spring 2026 – Week 10 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been a productive week on my end, as I’ve been keeping up my jogging routine, hacking away at the new book, and sampling a variety of new productions courtesy of you generous readers. My only scribing struggle at the moment seems to be balancing my own fiction with a return to writing DnD quests for my friends; I’d sorta been using DnD as a springboard back to traditional fiction, so I’m both out of practice and somewhat loathe to divide my already-limited writing time. That said, “my friends are clamoring to play through more of my adventures” is an extremely good problem to have, and in the meantime, I’m quite enjoying the ongoing theatrics of my housemate-DMed new campaign. And of course, the movie screenings have maintained their place of pride within my weekly endeavors, so let’s quit with the rambling and get to some films!

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Spring 2026 – Week 9 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We’ve finally hit June, which in pretty classic Me fashion is naturally a call for a wave of “oh god, summer’s started, that means summer is on its way to being over” anxiety. My extremely bad brain aside, it’s actually been a fun week on the home front – we snuck in two D&D sessions taking us halfway through an ongoing tournament, got started on the admittedly inferior but still-pretty-fun Dirty Pair Flash, and began a replay of Final Fantasy VIII, which I hadn’t touched since high school. Alright, technically it’s just my housemate who’s made actual progress – I just spent three hours playing Triple Triad in the opening area, precisely like god intended. I’ll perhaps venture further than Balamb Garden in the week ahead, but for now, let’s run down the week in films!

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