Pokemon Sun and Moon – Episode 2

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m thrilled to be continuing one of my most recent Current Projects, as we explore the second episode of Pokemon Sun and Moon. Sun and Moon’s first episode was an end-to-end buffet of charming, flavorful character animation, from the remarkable expressiveness of Ash and his friends, to the unique and energetic movements of the colorful creatures around them. Setting aside the appeal of Pokemon specifically, that episode felt like a celebration of animation as a tool for humor, worldbuilding, and warmth, imbuing the episode with an expressiveness and fluidity that effortlessly brought Alola to life.

Of course, show premieres tend to be more fluidly animated in general, both because productions naturally want to create a strong first impression, and also because first episodes enjoy the healthiest production buffer, and most time to get difficult cuts completed. I doubt that second issue will be as relevant for a show with as rigid and long-running a schedule as Pokemon, but I’m still not expecting a feast to match the first; fortunately, it just so happens that Sun and Moon’s overt narrative offers plentiful hooks as well, from the long-term excitement of challenging each island’s master, to the day-to-day fun of hanging out with one of the franchise’s most endearing casts. Whatever the future holds, I’m happy to get back to Sun and Moon!

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Fall 2019 – Week 5 in Review

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Hey folks, and welcome back to the Week in Review! I’m unfortunately still behind on Vinland Saga, but I think I have a pretty good reason for it this time: I’ve spent the last four days feeling sick as a dog, coughing all through the night, and trying to make up on lost sleep all through the day. I’m feeling somewhat better now, but I’m also behind on basically all of my projects, so Vinland Saga will have to wait until next week.

Fortunately, this week’s other new episodes still gave me plenty to discuss! Legend of the Galactic Heroes is such a rich and politically acute production that each episode prompts a short essay’s worth of reflections, and Stars Align continues to stake a claim as one of the year’s very best dramas. Let’s break down all (er, most) of the latest anime highlights in one more Week in Review!

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Simoun – Episode 20

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It is with great expectations and more than a little fear that we return for the twentieth episode of Simoun. On the one hand, this show is brilliant. It started off by introducing an imposingly broad main cast, but has successfully humanized every single member of Chor Tempest, and built them into something very much like a family. At the same time, the show has consistently emphasized how all of Chor Tempest’s feelings are reflective of far larger conflicts within their society, with various characters’ loyalty to or emotional reliance on their patriotism, religious faith, or whatever else that moves them directly feeding back into their personal conflicts.

Simoun is one of those stories that demonstrates how thematically driven fiction can engage with complex, universally relevant subjects in a way that a direct essay or argument never could. By framing its thoughts on war, duty, and religion in the context of characters we’ve come to know so well, it demonstrates the true human complexity of these situations, and the paralyzing reality of discovering your country or faith was only a walled garden, and not the world itself.

On the other hand, Simoun has been really friggin’ mean! A few episodes ago we lost Limone and Dominura, who probably both fell within my top five characters in the show. Just last episode, we lost Mamiina, who was easily my favorite remaining character in the show. At the rate we’re hemorrhaging favorites, I expect the show’s final episode to focus on a heated argument between Bridge Adviser C and Overwhelmed Soldier E, with every actual named character having heroically sacrificed themselves. I’m impressed and annoyed at the same time, but either way, it’s time to move. Let’s see what tragedies await in Simoun’s latest episode!

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Chihayafuru S3 – Episode 3

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Alright everyone, we’ve not a moment to waste here. Chihayafuru’s third season has begun, and within two brief episodes, we’ve already found ourselves in the midst of one more tournament arc. While Chihayafuru is very comfortable executing on training arcs, episodic vignettes, and sequences focused on propelling its central relationships, it is undoubtedly most comfortable, and most entertaining, in the midst of its regular tournament arcs.

And why not? When it comes to stories based around one-on-one competitions like karuta, and particularly ensemble productions like this, the tournament arc is the most natural venue for compressing all of a narrative’s strengths into a concise dramatic structure, complete with naturally rising tension and a continuous feed of fresh antagonists. No need to find some contrived excuse for gathering and battling all your prior enemies: they’re there for the tournament, and that’s explanation enough. The trajectory of your protagonist can be balanced by the journeys of their friends, while the natural winnowing of a tournament’s progression means that as the active battles get more intense, the in-show audience is filled with beloved characters to cheer them on. As Nishida just demonstrated, even one-on-one tournaments don’t have to feel isolating: our heroes are fighting together, and given how well this show has built up all their relationships, I can truly believe in their camaraderie and mutual trust. Let’s dive back into Chihayafuru’s pre-Masters tournament!

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Princess Tutu – Episode 26

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As Gold Crown Town falls under the shadow of the Raven, and Rue is drawn back into her father’s malevolent clutches, I still can’t help but feeling total elation at how far our heroes have come, and how fully they have surpassed their roles in Drosselmeyer’s story. Rue has broken free of the raven’s influence, and declared a love for Mytho so sincere that it broke him free of his own shackles, and reversed his transformation into the Raven’s puppet. Fakir has accepted his role as storyteller rather than knight, and guided his friends towards an ending he hopes might save them all. Mytho has rejected the narrative of falling in love with Princess Tutu, and instead pledged himself to Rue at any cost. And Ahiru has accepted she might never be with the prince, but can feel only the slightest tinge of regret at that; after all, her feelings of distant adulation for Mytho were only ever the pangs of adolescent infatuation, combined with her own desire to express herself so freely and beautifully.

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Fall 2019 – Week 4 in Review

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Japanese broadcast scheduling issues have left us with an unusually “fun-sized” Week in Review this week, which is a term candy manufacturers use to market their smallest portions of candy, since “this candy has less candy than the other candies” is apparently a bad marketing pitch. All this is to say that only Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Stars Align actually aired this week, so that’s what we’ll be talking about! Fortunately, Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Stars Align are both incredibly good shows – Stars Align has not once let up on either its fluidity of animation or acuity of adolescent perspective, while Legend of the Galactic Heroes only becomes more gripping as it moves into the genuine meat of its drama. Let’s break down these two excellent franchises’ latest attractions in this fun-sized Week in Review!

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Why It Works: The Young Titans and Ailing Empires of Legend of the Galactic Heroes

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Today on Why It Works, I dove once more into Legend of the Galactic Heroes, to explore the fascinating contrast of Reinhard von Lohengram and Yang Wen-li. Each of them are rich characters who are simultaneously compelling both as individuals in their own right, and as representatives of their distinct philosophies on shaping human history. Legend of the Galactic Heroes consistently urges us to look beyond the assumptions of our immediate political moment, and I’m always happy to celebrate its far-seeing perspective. Here’s the piece!

The Young Titans and Ailing Empires of Legend of the Galactic Heroes

Girls’ Last Tour – Episode 10

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You all ready for some charming adventures on the brink of oblivion? Well I certainly am, and I’m the one who picks what order these posts get released in, so I hope you’re ready too. It’s been a few weeks on my end since we last watched an episode of Girls’ Last Tour, but my love of this show certainly hasn’t diminished – in fact, I think the show’s ninth episode was far and away one of its best so far.

Chi and Yuu’s robot companion turned out to be a charming and poignant addition to the cast, and his adventure served as a tidy illustration of the vaguely defined and ephemeral nature of life itself. Conversations about language and empathy led naturally towards a genuine action setpiece, and the episode resolved on the painfully frank “the fish and I will live for a little longer now. Though we will all die one day.”

From Yuu and Chi themselves to the architects of their dying city and beyond, nearly all of Girls’ Last Tour’s human characters fret about impermanence. Whether it’s through capturing their existence in a stone monument, leaving personal effects behind, or achieving a feat that cannot be matched or forgotten, they all wish to somehow survive this bleak moment, and at the very least remain in memory. But as Yuu and Chi have regularly demonstrated, monuments which last beyond their creators lose their original meaning, and gain new resonance in the lives of those who witness and inherit them. All things end; and in light of that, it’s important not to hang all your hopes on the future, and appreciate the moments of your life as you live them. Girls’ Last Tour is ultimately very sympathetic to Yuu’s worldview; she certainly needs Chi to survive, but as she trounces around this playful apocalypse, she is truly in her element. “If you keep living, something good will happen” might not seem like much, but it’s something. It’s enough.

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Chihayafuru S3 – Episode 2

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Alright folks, let’s get right back to season three of Chihayafuru! It’s currently Wednesday, and I just logged on to Crunchyroll hoping the new episode had been released, only to see that two new episodes have somehow already been released. That doesn’t make any sense to me chronology-wise, but I’m not going to look a gift Chihaya in the mouth, and am eager to get back to the karuta drama. Last episode served as a fast-paced but generally effective return to the series, using an early series of flashbacks to remind us of both the rules of karuta and the relationships between Chihayafuru’s leads, before diving right into Chihaya and Taichi’s training with the Fujisaki team. Their training under Sakurazawa went on to lay out a variety of threads for us to follow, from Chihaya’s quest for a more strategy-minded understanding of karuta, to Taichi’s Chihaya-bound relationship with karuta itself.

Though Taichi’s relationship with karuta has always been closely tied to his feelings for Chihaya, the consistent reiteration of that across season three’s premiere seems to imply that we’ll at last be directly addressing that fact, and moving him towards either a more honest relationship with Chihaya or a healthier one with karuta. At the same time, Chihaya’s new understanding of Taichi’s situation feels like a neat echo of her newfound interest in strategy. In both her personal and competitive life, Chihaya has always been propelled forward by her single-minded love of karuta, an instinct that at times has made her feel more like a narrative force than a fully realized person. Chihaya’s desire for a more thoughtful approach to karuta seems mirrored by her new awareness of Taichi’s feelings, as if in both karuta and her personal life, she’s finally taking a moment to step out of her enthusiasm and assess the world around her. I’m excited to see Chihaya taking steps towards greater self-awareness, and am expecting some gloriously thorny drama ahead for her and Taichi. Let’s see what’s in store in the next Chihayafuru!

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Pokemon Sun and Moon – Episode 1

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time! Can you feel the excitement? CAN YA FEEL IT? That’s right, it’s new series time, and today we’re beginning a series that I’ve been wanting to watch for years now. Just in time for the next generation of Pokemon, we’re diving back in to the last generation of Pokemon, and checking out the widely acclaimed Sun and Moon anime!

Though the Pokemon anime has been running consistently ever since its start back in the ‘90s, it’s traditionally been seen more as a series for young Pokemon enthusiasts than the “sakuga crowd” or whatnot. That’s not to diminish its importance, of course – on the contrary, Pokemon was one of the most important properties in introducing and normalizing anime in the west. I myself was a fan of pokemon specifically before I learned the appeal of anime more generally, and even saw the first Pokemon movie when it came out in theaters (it came with a free Pokemon card!).

But while Pokemon has always been a massively influential cultural force, its progression into a visually accomplished production has been significantly more gradual. Sun and Moon represents a serious break in this franchise in terms of its character designs, as designs that had remained relatively static for nearly two decades were reimagined with softer lines and rounded curves, making them far better suited to fluid character animation. I’ve already played the Sun and Moon game, and found its cast immensely charming there, meaning I’m very excited to see them in motion, and to return to an anime I haven’t watched since I was a child. Let’s check out the first episode of Sun and Moon!

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