Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’m delighted to announce that this week I actually did the goddamn thing, and checked out around half a dozen of the season’s new airing anime. Gundams, shonen hits, anime-originals; you name it, I watched it (so long as your names coincide with the handful of buzz-heavy productions I actually screened). The fall season is proving to be a historically odd moment in anime production; we’re receiving a wide array of prestige productions, but the industry is in complete crisis mode in terms of staff and scheduling, meaning even some massively hyped productions are already showing cracks. We’ll likely be seeing a variety of production collapses in the weeks to come, but for now, this appears to be one of the most stacked anime seasons in years. Let’s break it down!
Category Archives: Week in Review
Fall 2022 – Week 2 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Look, I know last time that I mentioned I’d be watching some seasonal anime, and that is still absolutely going to happen, but today I nonetheless must admit I only bear gifts of movie reviews. But hey, some of those movies are anime! That still counts, right? We’ve got some Takahata, we’ve got some apocryphal Naruto adventures, and we’ve got the usual scattering of live-action productions, this time including a double feature of “what if fate was kind of an asshole” films. I’ll demand my housemates screen the requisite quantities of chainsaw men and mercurian witches shortly, but in the meantime, please enjoy this peace offering of random film thoughts. Let’s get to it!
Fall 2022 – Week 1 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. The fall season has officially begun, and we’re already being treated to a deluge of genuinely intriguing seasonal contenders. The Witch from Mercury was already on my radar, but hearing that Hiroshi Kobayashi is going full Kiznaiver and Ichiro Okouchi is going full Utena has me even more excited to check it out. Without a feature film draining resources, My Hero Academia is looking more visually impressive than it has in quite some time, while I can’t even guess just how impressive Mob and One Punch Man’s debuts will be. It’s an exciting time in seasonal anime, and I’m frankly tempted to emerge from my slumber and embrace the weekly grind once more. Not right now, of course; I still haven’t seen anything at the moment, but I imagine I’ll have some debut thoughts ready for next week. For now, let’s explore a fresh set of feature films, as we burn down the latest Week in Review!
Summer 2022 – Week 13 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are sadly reaching that point in the anime season where we can no longer even pretend it’s still summer, as the season’s shows air their final episodes and we wait for the onset of the fall deluge. Fortunately, as someone who has already escaped from the seasonal viewing grind, I have ascended to a point where time has no meaning beyond the steady shift of the sun’s gaze and the encroaching winds of winter. As long as it’s still warm out it’s still summer to me, and I’m going to enjoy it for as long as this blighted New England landscape lets me. As for the week in media, my usual film selections were once again complimented by a touch of animated razzle-dazzle, as we continued our Naruto investigations by sampling its first feature film. Let’s see what treasures await as we run down the latest Week in Review!
Summer 2022 – Week 12 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I have got some real seedy, stinky trash for you all, as I rummage through the refuge of grindhouse cinema American and global alike, and also review a film that validates every meme that’s been made about it. Fortunately, all of the non-memefied films we watched were actually quite enjoyable, while my continuing rush through missed anime films introduced me to an instant classic I’m sure to watch again. We’ll get to that eventually, but for now let’s surrender to the joys of exploitation theater, as we charge through one more Week in Review!
Summer 2022 – Week 11 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’ve got an unusually on-brand collection of films for you all, as my house powered through both a recent anime romance and Satoshi Kon’s final masterpiece. It’s frankly kind of ridiculous that I hadn’t seen either of these films yet; it’s not actually that hard to keep up on distinguished anime film releases, and I’ve only got like a dozen or so left to check out, so I should probably go ahead and polish off that portion of the medium. Regardless, I had an excellent time with both Josee and Paprika, and have supplemented them with a couple intriguing live action additions for spice. Let’s explore the final work by one of anime’s greatest masters, as we charge through the latest Week in Review!
Summer 2022 – Week 10 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am in recovery mode, having just spent four and a half hours leading my players through their first major dungeon crawl. Well, actually a castle crawl in this case, but regardless, it took me like fifteen hours to build that whole thing, and my party crushed it in one session. A winding stretch of countryside and full castle infiltration, five separate encounters each with their own unique mechanical dynamics, half a dozen fleshed-out NPC characters… my players are content-hungry beasts, and I don’t know how I’m possibly going to stay ahead of them. Plotting out adventures for those monsters basically consumed all my usual film screening time, but I’ve fortunately still sitting on about fifteen pages of film review buffer, so don’t you worry about any disruptions in the Week in Review pipeline. I’m sure attempting to juggle all this will catch up with me soon enough, but for now let’s not think of such things, and instead wander our way through some fresh cinematic selections. Onward!
Summer 2022 – Week 9 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Alas, we have reached that point in the summer season where it still being “summer” feels like a cruel joke, as leaves fall and the winter chill returns. Every year, I run a version of that me sowing/me reaping tweet regarding the summer season, delighting in the fact that “it’s still the spring season! There’s so much summer left!” through June, and raging at the reality of “it’s already fall! This summer season is a lie!” in September. Fortunately, I’ve got plenty of films here to keep my mind off things, which this week included Jordan Peele’s outstanding new feature. Peele’s films always impress me, but I think Nope might actually be my favorite of his films, and I’m eager to tell you why. Let’s get to it!
Summer 2022 – Week 8 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Though this article title claims there’s somehow still a third of the summer season to go, it certainly doesn’t feel like summer’s still in full, or even partial swing. Overcast skies and underwhelming temperatures seem determined to get a head start on seasonal affective disorder, but I’m rallying the best I can with a healthy diet of media properties. My housemate has continued his marathon of Naruto without pause, bringing us all the way to the end of the Pain arc, which is basically where I stopped reading the manga as a kid. This process has only reaffirmed that Naruto’s writing is kinda terrible, but it’s also introduced me to the remarkable talents of animator/director Toshiyuki Tsuru, so on balance I can’t really complain. And of course, there was also a fine array of film viewings, with the usual servings of horror and suspense complimented by some martial arts and musical selections. Let’s see what the week had to offer!
Zoku Owarimonogatari – Episode 4
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d check back in on Araragi’s progress in Zoku Owarimonogatari, wherein he most recently stumbled across an unexpectedly human Kiss-Shot. Aside from that, Zoku’s last episode was mostly consumed by Yotsugi wandering around and repeatedly mocking Araragi, i.e. your classic mid-arc Monogatari nonsense. Also, Nadeko did the Misato Big Gulp, so that was also some essential content right there.
As far as Zoku’s themes are concerned, the most impactful sequence of the episode was undoubtedly Sodachi’s reflection on the nature of mirrors. As she pointed out, mirrors are not perfectly reflective: they only reflect around eighty percent of the light they take in, meaning some portion of what they reflect is always lost in the balance. Beyond their literal meaning, her words can be interpreted in two ways that are both relevant to this story. First, in a “fantasy mechanics” sense, it is likely that this loss of essence is the reason all of mirror-world’s characters seem so diminished, only expressing one partial aspect of the original people they represent. And secondly, in a more philosophy-of-Monogatari sense, her words speak to the impossibility of fully knowing ourselves, as our impressions of our own identities will always be blurred and incomplete.
Nisio Isin is wise enough to understand that the clarion call of Monogatari – “you must come to know and love yourself, for only then can you truly connect with others” – is more of a hope or prayer than a truly achievable goal. It is what is most difficult and also what is most essential; in a world of chaos and disappointment, self-love is the only route to harmony or contentment. This path towards accepting the self has taken many forms over Monogatari’s various adventures, and in Zoku, this directive is further complicated through the admission that our “selves” are also variable, and impossible to draw fully into focus. But all that’s basically why I love Monogatari; it’s smart enough to understand that true self-actualization is likely impossible, yet optimistic enough to still hope for happiness for all its muddled-up heroes. Let’s get back to the action!