Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I come to you with a fresh pile of films and more besides, as my house has just recently concluded our screening of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. The show ended up falling significantly below my expectations in terms of overall quality, but it was nonetheless quite interesting to see GAINAX struggling through their first television production, establishing many of the concepts that would go on to inform Evangelion, and otherwise fumbling through an oddly lopsided mixture of Lupin, World Masterpiece Theater, and Space Battleship Yamato. With Nadia done, I’m guessing we’ll be continuing our Gundam journey with Victory Gundam, and also finishing off the surprisingly addictive League of Legends: Arcane. But for now, let’s run down the spoils of our latest Week in Review!
Category Archives: Week in Review
Spring 2024 – Week 12 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Though it is technically the end of the spring anime season, the summer heat is currently reducing my cat to a sad puddle, and I am not faring much better myself. I have been attempting to beat the heat by preoccupying myself with essential anime viewing, and have so far made it just over halfway through Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. The show has been an interesting watch so far, more educational than fully entertaining, but certainly a worthy sort of education. Watching Nadia, it is easy to see elements that Gainax would reiterate in Neon Genesis Evangelion, but also hard to believe how they jumped from this show’s proudly rudimentary characterization to the thoughtful interrogations of its successor. I’ll have more thoughts on that when I finish, but for now, let’s burn through a fresh selection of films!
Spring 2024 – Week 11 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week I’m riding high on the back of another successful DnD session, as I lead my players through a post-campaign island adventure with a clear Indiana Jones coat of paint. It’s becoming a tricky thing to provide meaningful challenges for my party of heroes; DnD is reasonably well-balanced from around level four to level twelve (the point where Baldur’s Gate 3 wisely caps you), but after that you reach the point where rogues simply can’t be discovered, warriors can barely be harmed, and magic users can either fly or teleport past any physical hurdle.
As a result, old standbys like pit traps and pressure plates start to become more endearing than genuinely threatening, forcing me to come up with inventive new ways to either kill the party or trick them into killing themselves. Basically all of my experiments in this regard were successful, so I’m feeling more confident than ever that I can maintain a stream of worthy challenges for my near-demigod-level players. And of course, there was also plenty of time dedicated to screening whatever film features caught my fancy. Let’s check ‘em out!
Spring 2024 – Week 10 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. This week my housemate at last finished his rampage through Critical Role’s second campaign, featuring The Mighty Nein as reluctant would-be saviors of the realm. The campaign left me with increasingly mixed feelings throughout; while the actual cast of player characters was engaging, it felt like most of their arcs were left unresolved, and the party was so conflict-averse that they largely avoided the big dramatic setpieces their DM had planned. By the end, the campaign felt almost like a cautionary tale regarding the necessity of DM supervision, and I’m curious to see if the announced animated adaptation significantly improves the story, by actually including the conflicts (continent at war, emergence of elder gods) that the players chose to ignore. Regardless, having that campaign behind us has left plenty of time for film screenings, so let’s dive into the Week in Review!
Spring 2024 – Week 9 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. It would seem that summer has finally unleashed its fiery tendrils, as I am currently laboring under an oppressive, obnoxiously humid heat that has reduced my cat to a wilting blob on the sofa. Nonetheless, I remain steadfast in my dedication to bringing you only the freshest film reviews, be they features of yesteryear or alluring new productions. This week we actually caught up on a variety of recent films, checking out the latest escapades of the reliable Jason Statham while also continuing our journey through the world of Dragon Ball. Much screening time has also been dedicated to my housemate’s rampage through Critical Role’s second campaign, an adventure that has increasingly played like a cautionary tale regarding the role of the dungeon master. I might actually write up some thoughts about that campaign as a whole once we’ve reached the end, but for now, let’s break down the week in films!
Spring 2024 – Week 8 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am proud to announce that I’ve actually fucking done it – my last episodic Evangelion writeup is already sitting in my drafts, and I’m feeling confident it’s one of my best so far. Charging through this last act of the show in a matter of weeks turned out to be the perfect way to approach it; I could feel the same sense of desperation and longing as our poor pilots, calling back to the many times I marathoned Evangelion back in high school and college. The show is still just as poignant and insightful as it struck me back when it was permanently reshaping my brain chemistry, and I feel fortunate to have this chance at articulating just how much it means to me. Anyway, those will be popping up over the next few weeks, but for now I’ve got a fresh selection of film features for your perusal. Let’s get to it!
Spring 2024 – Week 7 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you amidst a frenzy of creative passion, as both the Evangelion writeups and new DnD projects are flowing abundantly. With our current campaign briefly on hold, my playing party just concluded a two-part post-campaign adventure in the world I created for our last campaign, this time both designed and led by one of our other players. The experience offered a refreshing perspective on campaign and narrative design; I am a creative-first top-down designer, meaning I essentially write a drama and then set to work translating it into DnD’s mechanical structures, whereas this two-parter’s designer is a mechanics-first, bottom-up designer, meaning he designs an interesting mechanical puzzle and then finds a creative coat of paint for it.
It was interesting to see how that mindset incurred various second-order effects in terms of how the sessions played out, and it’s also got me hungry to run my own adventures again. It is a wonderful feeling to have run a campaign that my players are clamoring to return to, and once I’ve concluded this Eva era, I’ll be eager to share some of my design documents with all of you. In the meantime, we’ve got a fresh pile of films to explore, so let’s get to work!
Spring 2024 – Week 6 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We’re finally hitting the warm weather at this point, so I’m happy to be sitting with my windows open and a pile of Evangelion writeups in front of me, all eagerly awaiting their final revisions. It may in retrospect have been psychologically unwise to leave half a dozen deep dives into the mindset of depression and self-hatred all stacked up at the end of my funded projects, but honestly, it’s actually been an absolute pleasure returning to these episodes that still loom so dramatically in my own media development. As it turns out, Evangelion is really, really good, truly one of the great works of narrative art, and every episode I revisit only offers all the more to appreciate. The characters are so richly drawn I can relate to aspects of all of them, and it also simply feels good to at last be fulfilling these long-outstanding requests. Anyway, I’ll likely have the next Eva writeup for you on Monday, but for now let’s see what films I snuck in the margins of the week!
Spring 2024 – Week 5 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you in the midst of a furious productivity burst, as I charge through my last outstanding Current Projects while also working on various independent creative endeavors. Having broken through the anxiety of doing right by Evangelion’s most legendary episodes, I’ve been savoring my return to the series that first sparked my love of anime, and learning I do indeed have a whole lot to say about the show that made me who I am. And with my house now steadily marching through their third DnD campaign, I’ve been balancing independent writing between whittling journal entries describing that campaign’s progress and plotting out postgame adventures for our previous campaign.
There’s little more satisfying than hearing your players demand they get to spend more time in your world, and I’m doing my best to honor that request with suitably harrowing new adventures. Anyway, I might share some of my in-character diary entries or design documents soon, but for now, we’ve also got a pile of fresh films to talk about. Let’s get to it!
Spring 2024 – Week 4 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been another productive week on my end, as I’ve reduced my outstanding Current Projects to less than a dozen essays and other features, with my article buffer now encompassing more than a month’s worth of drafts. I’ve matched that productivity with a fair portion of off-the-books anime viewing, as we munched through more of Gundam’s supplementary Universal Century projects, as well as anime films both venerable and vestigial. Having watched so many of the early Toei films, I’m now looking to round out my ‘80s animation education, while also likely taking a break from Gundam to watch some other outstanding series; I haven’t quite decided yet, but Nadia, Mononoke, VOTOMS, and Moribito are all high on my list. Anyway, I’ll catch you all up on that when I get to it, but for now let’s break down my latest animated escapades!