Big Windup! – Episode 11

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to return to the field for a fresh episode of Big Windup!, with our team having successfully navigated Mihashi’s surprise birthday party. And I mean that “surprise party” in sort of the reverse of the normal sense, as Mihashi himself was the one who invited his team over to his house, thus surprising them with the reveal that their team meeting was actually a birthday party. Nonetheless, the gathering ultimately drew our team closer together, with Abe again resolving to carry this scrappy yet unexpectedly talented team to victory.

Though actually, his phrasing was a little more precise than that. Abe is no longer thinking in terms of “carry” or “exploit” – he’s come to realize that these are teammates he can genuinely rely on, not just tools to fulfill his own ends. Just as Mihashi was scarred by his resentful middle school teammates, so were Abe’s ambitions corrupted by his unreliable former pitcher. Smart as he was, he could not see the limitations of his own cynical perspective; but now, with a trusted team beside him, he’s learning to put his tactical thinking to use in service of trust-building gambits like “casually demonstrate to the rest of the team just how precise Mihashi’s pitches can be.” With his scheming now ostensibly aligned with the team’s greater good, I’m eager to see how our boys handle their first serious opponents. Let’s get to it!

Continue reading →

Spy x Family – Episode 32

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am beyond eager to charge back into Spy x Family, wherein the Forger’s Family Cruise is ratcheting up its tension and violent provocations by the second. When last we left off, Yor was on the verge of fighting the appropriately titled Sickle-and-Chain Barnaby, an assassin who apparently cares a great deal about appearances and very little about disguises. With this ostentatiously murderous assailant stalking the halls, how will Yor hide her assignment from her husband in the next room!?

I have no idea, but I’m quite certain the solution will be marvelous in its ingenious stupidity. That’s most of what I’m looking for here: ideas so stupid they loop back around to brilliant, something this cruise ship arc has so far offered in abundance. Drawing the family together for a group adventure always adds a welcome dash of spice to Spy x Family’s theatrics, and if protecting these informants prompts Yor to reflect on her relationship with her own alleged family, so much the better. Let’s see what madness awaits in a fresh Spy x Family!

Continue reading →

Summer 2024 – Week 3 in Review

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week has been a productive one on a variety of fronts, as I’ve been clearing out the last of my outstanding essay projects while also catching up on anime of both recent and venerable vintage. My viewing party just finished season one of the excellent Delicious in Dungeon, which now stands proudly beside Edgerunners among my favorite Trigger properties. Given my distaste for Imaishi’s dramatic preferences, I suppose it’s little surprise that I most enjoy Trigger’s more far-flung adaptations, but I nonetheless had a fantastic time with Laois and his crew. I’ve also been continuing my Gundam journey with Victory Gundam, which so far has proven one of the most tightly composed and altogether satisfying Gundams since the original series. And then of course, there have been The Films, a wandering collection of features spurred by idle whimsy, recommendations on Twitter, or just whatever happens to show up on Netflix. Let’s get to it!

Continue reading →

Witch Hat Atelier and the Magic of Discovery

Posted on by

The inside cover of Witch Hat Atelier’s sixth volume offers us a beautiful vision of undersea life, all captured through a diamond window pane as Coco stares outwards, hand pressed curiously, almost longingly against the glass. The text echoes both the magnificence of the scene and the necessity of care and confinement, stating: “The Assembly at the bottom of the sea. A bulwark to bestow witches safety, a prison to confine witches daily.” As Witch Hat Atelier has told us time and again, the unbound potential of magic means the most necessary quality of any would-be mage is restraint, an understanding that magic must be handled with care if it is to avoid inflicting more harm than it resolves. Albeit unknowingly, Coco destroyed an entire river ecosystem to save one human life – and to be frank, the fact that she didn’t understand what she was doing is no point in her favor. Humans are capable of unimaginable wonders, but ambition untethered by experience and restraint is frequently a recipe for disaster.

Continue reading →

Yuki Yuna is a Hero – Episode 11

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we return to a scene of epic tragedy, as the young two-time hero Togo faces off against all the forces of the cosmos. Everything she once believed in has been proven false; rather than noble defenders of her proud homeland, she has learned they are actually just human sacrifices, destined to torture themselves in pointless battles all for the sake of the Divine Tree’s sustenance. They are pawns of an arbitrary conflict between gods, and what’s worse, it was Togo herself who was utilized as the instrument of Yuna’s demise, guided into friendship entirely so Yuna might eventually be exploited as a “hero” as well.

It is a hard thing to learn your home only sees you as meat for the grinder, particularly for someone as civic-minded as Togo. Her desire to support her home and Yuna’s general concern for those surround her were both ruthless exploited by the Taisha; drawn away from their genuine community-oriented club activities, their selflessness was instead directed towards an arbitrary conflict of and for the gods alone, a shortsighted response to heaven’s own shortsighted failings. Given all this, it is no surprise that Togo now wants only to burn it all down, and at least ensure no future heroes are similarly betrayed by their own kindness. Let’s see how her battle fares!

Continue reading →

Skip and Loafer – Episode 8

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive back into Skip and Loafer, for an episode that promises some of our most intense drama so far! I know, honestly not the biggest threat for this charmingly mild-mannered production, but I’m nonetheless excited to see Shima confront some of the lingering aspects of his past, and for Mitsumi to grapple with what exactly Shima means to her.

So far, Mitsumi has been enjoying a lighthearted high school life by virtue of her own personal buoyancy, being able to both draw people towards her and rise above her own insecurities through her earnest positivity and relative maturity in pursuit of her life goals. She has avoided friction by not imposing herself on others, but love is necessarily an imposition: a hopefully positive one, yes, but nonetheless a request to meaningfully insert yourself into the life of another, and act with their feelings in mind with the understanding that they’ll be doing the same.

As Shima’s old friend noted, our boy has already unconsciously begun this process, but introducing a rival for his affections will quite likely force him to make his connection with Mitsumi explicit, which would go against the carefree persona he’s adopted as a shield against painful consequences. Shima had gotten very close to the point of successfully shrugging his way into a relationship with Mitsumi, but Ririka’s arrival seems poised to force him into actively committing to his desires, with all the unwanted responsibility that entails. Let’s see how our lovebirds fare as we return to Skip and Loafer!

Continue reading →

Summer 2024 – Week 2 in Review

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week I am sorry to announce that I watched some deeply obnoxious movies, which I’m sure sounds like a good time to all you vultures out there. I honestly do not pick out films intending to hate-watch them; I am always looking to be fulfilled, enlightened, or at least just entertained, while watching a bad movie to me just feels like being stuck in traffic for two hours, waiting for the journey to end so I can get on to something genuinely enriching. Nonetheless, a wide enough trawling of features will inevitably result in some stinkers, and this week my fearless embrace of any and all horror films resulted in some painful misses. Let’s break both them and one fantastic consolation prize down as we storm through the latest Week in Review!

Continue reading →

Blue Flag – Volume 3

Posted on by

The first image of Blue Flag’s third volume, presented before we even get to its opening chapter, is of Taichi and Touma playing happily as friends, captioned with “Together as children despite the differences in their interests.” It’s a moment that captures a great deal about Blue Flag – the manga’s veneration of the incidental, deeply specific moments that survive in memory and ultimately shape our perception of our own life, as well as its indifference to the superficial markers of alleged kinship or similarity that define so many adolescent relationships. No common interest could equal the bond of shared experience and sympathy connecting Taichi and Touma. The people who are most important to us are not necessarily the people who are most like ourselves – they are those who inform and expand our understanding of both ourselves and others, securing their position among those dazzling incidental fragments that encompass our life in retrospect.

Continue reading →

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – Episode 3

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we might check back in on the gentle drama of Freiren: Beyond Journey’s End, and see what our perpetually unbothered mage and her young apprentice are getting up to. Our last episode actually covered a great deal of ground, taking us from the last years of Heiter’s life through the first years of Fern’s wandering with Frieren, which turned out to involve a lot less glamor than Fern was expecting. Helping with errands, gathering niche magical proficiencies, and venerating those who came before: Frieren’s passions are not exactly the peak of fantastical drama, and that is precisely what makes this production special.

In our frequently action-obsessed animated media ecosystem, the idea of fantasy not being a route to power, but instead a tool for achieving greater understanding, appreciation, and integration into the world around us makes for a lovely change of pace. And Frieren doesn’t simply luxuriate in its unique atmosphere; through the course of its meditative vignettes, it takes the long view in grappling with the idea of a “life well-lived,” using its heroine’s unique perspective to consider how we might pass each moment without regret, as well as the legacy we will ultimately leave behind us. Great acts of momentary glory tend to fade in memory; what remains is often intimate and incidental, allegedly idle moments shared with the people we love. Let’s see what our wandering mages get up to this time!

Continue reading →

Star Driver – Episode 25

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I imagine we’re in for one hell of a bumpy ride, as we join Takuto for the grand finale of the whimsical, richly layered, and altogether thrilling Star Driver. With anime legends Igarashi and Enokido at the helm, Star Driver has offered plenty of the theatrical embellishments, adolescent psychological inquiry, and grand theories of human relations that I’d expect from such distinctive, creatively driven artists. We’ve rambled from baseball episodes to creation myths, pursuing all the while that indistinct horizon of the adult world, where the legends and rituals that have guided us prove themselves either trustworthy signposts or merely the bars of a larger cage.

Southern Cross Isle’s patriarchal order is ultimately ruled by fear; fear of female agency, fear of the adult world, and most fundamentally fear of being unmoored, of no longer being the lord of your domain. Sugata’s predecessors feared losing power so much that they essentially became avatars of power alone, sacrificing their ability to choose their own destiny just to ensure that others would be similarly contained. Kiraboshi have come up with a unique solution to their simultaneous fear of the external world and desire for greater power: simply expand their cage outward, capturing the entire world within the domain of their abilities. But to those who’ve chosen to walk away from the island, to all those painted women Tokio failed to capture, the solution is far simpler. Can Takuto break the bars of Southern Cross, and rise fearlessly upward into adulthood? Let’s find out!

Continue reading →