Folks, I am watching more Pokemon and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop me. While I did indeed only recently watch Sun and Moon’s previous episode, that episode turned out to be entirely taken up by Ash’s first Grand Island Trial. And while I certainly enjoyed watching Ash compete in his first major battle of the series, twenty minutes of straight action meant I’m still feeling criminally deficient in the style of slice of life, vacation-centric shenanigans that I actually love most about this show. Sun and Moon has an incredibly charming core cast, a beautiful aesthetic, and a fundamental understanding that Alola itself can serve as an inherent dramatic reward, whether we’re exploring its towns, beaches, or mysterious jungles. Wherever this episode takes us, I’m hoping the show finds some new ways to celebrate its inviting setting and terrific ensemble cast as we return to Sun and Moon!
Spring 2020 – Week 9 in Review
Alright folks, pile in, pile in. The film screenings were plentiful and excellent this week, as I watched classic crime dramas by Scorsese and Coppola, two Miyazaki masterpieces I’d never experienced, and finally got to Ari Aster’s terrific Midsommar. I’m frankly feeling pretty crime drama’d out at the moment; when looking for classic films that also won’t bore my housemates, I’ve apparently returned to “well, this one has guns in it” a few too many times, and will have to find other ways to keep my overstimulated housemates happy. But for now, please enjoy the fruits of my labor, as I run down a fresh and rewarding set of films in the Week in Review!
Summer 2020 Season Preview
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This is usually the point in this article where I say I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed, but let’s be real here: we’re all stuck inside, time has no meaning, and individual days are beginning to meld into one endless, featureless procession of the eternal Now. I hope you’re all doing your best to cope with quarantine in your own ways, but either way, time has been accelerating all throughout the spring, and at this point it feels like no surprise to already have reached the summer preview.
COVID’s global presence also means that the summer anime season has been dramatically diminished, with a great number of shows either pushed back or cancelled entirely. Fortunately, the surviving properties contain a few shows I’m genuinely hyped for, and frankly, I wouldn’t want all these already-overworked animators putting themselves in any danger, anyway. Without further ado, let’s run down the most intriguing prospects of the summer season!
The Girl in Twilight – Episode 3
Hello all, and welcome back to Why It Works! Today we’re exploring more of The Girl in Twilight, a show whose first episode intrigued me and second episode impressed me, which makes me eager to see how it expands from here. Using the handy motif of shifting between radio frequencies, Twilight has established a world where disruptive choices create branching parallel worlds, with each potential choice forming its own ongoing reality. But rather than get swamped in the nitty-gritty of scifi minutiae, Twilight has immediately directed its conceit towards questions of identity and society, through first shifting our heroes to a world where all women are assigned a marriage partner at the end of high school.
I was excited to see Twilight using its fantastical elements to immediately explore such a charged and identity-shaping concept. The greatest strength of Twilight’s first episode was how quickly and convincingly it established the dynamic personalities of its main characters, as well as the distinctive relationships they share. With that bedrock already set, the show is now able to explore how culture actually shapes identity – how it conditions us to see certain concepts as laudable or alien, and in this particular world’s case, how oppressive societal mandates can essentially grind down our individual personhood.
All this social commentary and reflections on identity are precisely my sort of shit, but we’ve also got a more urgent problem to deal with: Nana, who has indeed been granted her wish of “a universe of hot guys,” and now may not even want to come home. This place is strange, but she is wanted here – in contrast, she already feels like an outsider in her own original home. Let’s see how her friends deal with her current predicament!
Kaiba – Episode 2
Kaiba’s second episode opens on a monologue that serves as both a description of its world, and an articulation of its central question. “Are memories one’s soul, or one’s spirit? This is a world where memories can be turned into data, and stored.” The age-old question of where our fundamental “identity” resides is further complicated by the next line, as the narrator explains that in this world, “bad memories are deleted, while fun memories are downloaded.” If memories can be altered, it seems inappropriate to consider them our “soul” – but if we are nothing but that collection of memories, being altered and bartered and passed from body to body, what other selfhood could we be said to possess?
Spring 2020 – Week 8 in Review
Alright folks, pile in, pile in. This week saw my household running through a gauntlet of classic films, ranging from neo-noir highlights to Kubrickian nightmares, with a bonus pair of recent favorites tossed in for seasoning. As quarantine stretches on and time continues to lose any sense of meaning, I’ve begun measuring my life more in films than in weeks, meaning a day without a film basically ceases to exist. This is probably not good for my sense of self or long-term health, but I think we’re all doing the best we can at the moment, and if my coping mechanisms can be turned into Content, I’m happy to indulge them. Let’s see how I survived the last few days, as we storm through another Week in Review!
Why It Works: What Anime Should You Check Out After Avatar: The Last Airbender?
With the spring season largely cancelled by COVID, the anime-adjacent thing I’ve most enjoyed recently has undoubtedly been the utterly fantastic Avatar: The Last Airbender. And fortunately, with Avatar having recently gone up on Netflix, this was also the perfect time to recommend anime mirroring a variety of its many strengths. I kinda regret I didn’t fit in a “fully articulated character arcs” segment, but there’s probably only so many times I can recommend March comes in like a lion and Monogatari before someone starts yelling at me. Mushishi will have to do this time!
What Anime Should You Check Out After Avatar: The Last Airbender?
Symphogear AXZ – Episode 2
You folks ready for some goddamn Symphogear? I know I certainly am! Season four’s first episode didn’t so much conclude as it ran out of frames mid-sentence, with the Main Gears still in the midst of battle with some nefarious alchemists, while the Auxiliary Gears squared off against a giant magical sand worm. The gang hasn’t faced a giant magical sand worm yet, but I suspect they’ll approach it using a tried and true method: singing about their feelings while beating the shit out of it with various weapons, possibly with a transformation sequence or two tossed in there for flavor. Now that we’re all back on the same page, let’s dive right into the continuing adventures of SYYYYMPHOOOOOGEAARRRRRRRRRRR!
Pokemon Sun and Moon – Episode 10
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time! It has been far too long since we visited the islands of Alola, at least from my perspective, and I’m eager to dive into another episode of Pokemon Sun and Moon. And we’ve got a genuinely climactic episode in store for us, as Ash at last takes on his first Grand Trial, and hopefully completes the first major step of his island pilgrimage. Last episode saw Pikachu and Rowlet teaming up to conquer this island’s Totem Pokemon, offering perhaps the strongest demonstration yet of this production’s ability to turn the rigid, turn-based combat of the Pokemon games into energetic, tactically rewarding action scenes. Given how well this show’s art design has elevated even its slice of life material, I’m eager to see how the show illustrates its major battles, and also just happy to check in with this show’s charming cast again. Let’s get to it!
The Big O – Episode 5
Hey everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m excited to be returning to The Big O, and once again exploring the world of Paradigm with Roger and his companions. Episode four actually shed at least a glimmer of light on some of this show’s core mysteries, as Roger’s search for a missing author led him to first encounter the mysterious Schwartzwald, and then ultimately discover both an ancient cityscape and a half-formed Megadeus in the bowels of Paradigm’s subway system. With even the subway system itself having long fallen into disrepair, it is clear that just as Paradigm’s residents are building new lives on a bed of buried memories, so too is the city itself constructed on the forgotten bones of an older world. Questions of memory and identity are baked into the core of The Big O, and whether this episode continues to tug at the threads of those mysteries, or simply offers another stylish and exciting neo-noir adventure, I’m happy to dive back into this excellent production. Let’s see what Paradigm holds in store!