Hello everybody, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve sadly got a pretty quick Week in Review for you all this week, as I didn’t actually get around to too many films. On the other hand, my house did push through a fair amount of anime, even beyond our continuing voyage through One Piece. I’m still keeping up with My Hero Academia, even if it seems like the world at large has moved through several Next Big Things since then, and we also made a final push through the last peaks of Bleach’s adaptation. Shonen series have basically consumed all the time slots I was previously dedicating to exploring western cartoons and prestige dramas, so while I feel a little guilty that The Wire and The Sopranos and whatnot have to wait, I simply cannot imagine I would be having more fun with them than the Straw Hats at the moment. You guys will get your turn, I just gotta see what Luffy does over the next seven hundred episodes first. In the meantime, here are my scattered weekly thoughts!
Category Archives: Week in Review
Spring 2021 – Week 4 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve once again got an oddball collection of films for you all this week, along with more reflections on my ongoing journey with One Piece. I’ve learned over time that you really have to tune down the amplitude of praise people apply to their favorite properties, as they’re generally speaking from a position of deep emotional attachment, and more expressing that than anything essential to the property itself. Because of that, claims of One Piece being some uniquely spectacular shonen kinda faded into the din of claims that every show is uniquely spectacular – thus, I have been completely blindsided by the fact that One Piece actually is as good as everyone says it is. It’s doing stuff in shonen that I’ve associated with Hunter x Hunter and literally nothing else, and I’ve found myself hooked on it with precisely that same HxH intensity, a need to barrel through episodes like I’m stuffing my face with delicious, narratively nutritious popcorn. But we’ll get to that soon enough – let’s first start off with some films, as we bound through the Week in Review!
Spring 2021 – Week 3 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve got a bit of an odd selection for you all this week, as a fair amount of my standard movie-watching time was once again consumed by One Piece. I am loving the heck out of One Piece, but I’m also noticing a problem developing here – given my amount of free time, the show is more or less functionally infinite, so I’ll have to find a better way of managing my watch schedule. Still, having a pile of Chimera Ant-scale arcs in my future is a nice feeling; it’s been some time since I felt this much natural incentive to plow through an anime, so I’m cherishing the feeling, and letting it serve as a reminder that plenty of great shows are still hiding out there. I’ll find you, great shows! Just listen to the sound of my voice, or… no, no, I’ll come to you. Just wait right there!
Anyway, the Week in Review.
Spring 2021 – Week 2 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We ran through a wild grab bag of films this week, touching on fantasy, action, comedy, and even a Musical Filmic Journey that more or less defies characterization. Along with these various films, I actually have been watching a fair amount of anime in my free time, though I haven’t even started with the spring season yet. Instead, I’ve mostly just been gorging myself on One Piece, powering through Skypiea as I work on Monster Hunter Rise, and having an altogether terrific time with it. Did you folks know One Piece is good? Niche property, I know, but probably deserves a second glance. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll dig into that at more length, so let’s dive right into the Week in Review!
Spring 2021 – Week 1 in Review
Hey all, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I watched a grab bag of horror movies this week, along with continuing my journey through the Ghibli catalog. I’m frankly getting a little anxious about that Ghibli journey at this point; I now only have one Miyazaki left, two Takahatas, and then a light scattering of their non-royalty productions. That’s not enough movies! Like my dive into Mamoru Oshii, I’m realizing that what initially felt like an intimidating library of canon classics actually comprises just a handful of films, and when I’ve watched them, that’ll be it. Anime is extremely young among art forms; if you’re judging from Tezuka onwards, its birth is actually still within living memory. Fortunately, there are still plenty of other mountains to climb – I certainly need to watch the pre-Ghibli Toei Doga films, I’ve got a bunch of key ‘70s and ‘80s series to examine, etcetera. But it’s an odd feeling to realize a once-imposing slate of historical context is now largely behind me, and when I’m done, there will be no more Miyazaki or Takahata films to enjoy. I guess you can’t really have a journey without a journey’s end.
Anyway, enough of that melancholy nonsense. Let’s break down some films!
Winter 2021 – Week 13 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Lately I’ve been thinking, as I often do, about just how terrible fandom can be. In the past, I saw fandom as just another natural expression of art appreciation; but lately, it’s beginning to feel like art appreciation and fandom are actually contradictory poles, antagonist routes you can pursue in your relationship with art. Obviously, a great deal of fandom is harmless and empowering – sharing personal experiences of shows you loved, creating new art based on them, etcetera. But fundamentally, a great deal of fandom seems to be about the search for community and validation – we find the works that resonate with us, and then build a home inside their fandom. We accept a fictional universe as it is, and set to work cataloging it, rather than questioning or critiquing.
In contrast, to actually grow as an art creator or enthusiast, we must seek the new. We must broaden our horizons, accept the limitations of our existing perspective, and embrace humility as we explore new artistic experiences, rejecting the idea that we are “bonded” to any one work in particular. These two instincts don’t have to be at odds, but they often prove to be – and with fandom at this point overwhelming art discourse in general, often any pointed criticism or urges for expanding your horizons are met with an emotionally empowered wave of anti-intellectualism. When you gesture towards the distant, alluring mountains of artistic history and achievement, fans frequently respond with “there are no mountains, all ground is equally flat, and how fucking dare you imply otherwise.”
Fans see their favorites as their identity, and thus a call to expand their horizons sounds like an attack on their personality – but in truth, the fundamental error here is defining your identity by your favorites in the first place. Art can play a different role in different people’s lives, and there’s no shame in simply not being that curious about exploring art – but in an era where consumption is identity, art critique can often sound like character assassination. And of course, production studios are happy to encourage their fans to be rabid defenders of their IP; if they could sell audiences the same product every year forever, they’d be delighted to. We’re currently at a point where fans are defending their right to be condescended to from the “mean” critics, who are bullying them by pointing out that other art exists. It’s a strange state of affairs, and I’m not really sure how we can “fix” this discourse, but it’s been on my mind lately, as I watch folks hang up their artistic curiosity and become Brand Defenders.
Anyway, I also watched a bunch of great movies this week. Let’s talk about those.
Winter 2021 – Week 12 in Review
Oh my god, have we got some shit to wade through. My house began this week in film with an awful mistake, as I actually joined my housemates for a genuine hate-watch. I’ve on the whole stopped seeking out things that I know are going to be bad; there is infinite great media out there, which is all great in a variety of new and enriching ways, whereas bad media tends to be predictable, familiar, and dull. It doesn’t feel fulfilling to flex on something that’s bad; it’s too easy, and generally I’d rather just enjoy something good. Well, I broke that rule this week, and I duly paid the price for it. Fortunately, the rest of this week’s viewing experiences were much more compelling, so let’s just take the medicine first then, as we plow through another Week in Review!
Winter 2021 – Week 11 in Review
Hello all, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. I had a fairly light week in extracurricular film studies this time, as my free time was mostly just spent hammering out the last act of Control, and also playing even more Slay the Spire. Look, the game has twenty difficulty levels for four different decks, and is specifically designed to tell me I’m awesome for learning to draft Magic cards in middle school, so me and it will likely remain acquainted for quite some time. In the meantime, I did manage to sneak in my second Dario Argento film, as well as an interesting but flawed recent attraction, and yes, even more Bleach. Without further ado, let’s break ‘em down in the Week in Review!
Winter 2021 – Week 10 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Over in the hyperbolic media chamber, this was a week of projects, as I dug into games that had been sitting on the shelf for too long, and also passively watched maybe fifty episodes of background anime. After my housemates decided to watch the Bleach live action film (my review: it’s an anime live action film), one of them was inspired enough to return to The Source itself, and power through the entire goddamn Soul Society arc. So for once, the answer to “where is Bleach” is truly “here is Bleach.” We’ve got that and more to get to, so let’s start powering through the Week in Review!
Winter 2021 – Week 9 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’m pleased to report that I’ve had a delightful past week in film, running through an array of productions that were overflowing with all sorts of entertaining monsters. My house held a “monsters then and now” double feature of the original Godzilla and the new Monster Hunter, we chewed through a terrific home invasion film, and we also checked out Shudder’s mean-spirited yet hilarious new horror-comedy. Giant monsters, human monsters, goofy monsters, and monsters you hunt down in order to collect parts to make your big sword even bigger and swordier – perhaps not the most genre-diverse crowd, but an entertaining one nevertheless. Let’s break ‘em all down in the Week in Review!