The Demon Girl Next Door – Episode 6

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to be returning to The Demon Girl Next Door, where we last left off with Shamiko wishing for a donut pillow, so her horns won’t hurt so much when she sleeps. I feel like that wish basically sums up the Shamiko existence: even lying down to sleep is a painful and difficult task, replete with dangerous hurdles to traverse. But at the same time, that wish also illustrates her humility and indefatigable spirit. Life being tough is just how it goes for Shamiko, and though she could really use a donut pillow, she’ll surely muddle through regardless.

A girl like Shamiko could really use a friend to spoil her, and we may have found one in the reluctant Magical Girl Momo. While Momo seems to be well-off and competent in most things, she lives alone, and appears to have no friends beyond her incompetent nemesis. Her life as a magical girl has been one of austerity, loneliness, and obligation, and it seems like Shamiko might be the first good thing that’s happened to her in a long time. The two of them clearly need each other, so let’s not keep them apart any longer, as we dive back into The Demon Girl Next Door!

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Spring 2022 – Week 1 in Review

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Hey everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been a very Dungeons & Dragons-themed week at my house, as I continued to munch through episodes of Vox Machina, while my own campaign group convened for our first spring session. The confluence of these events had me in a focused game-design mode during our live session, as I sifted through the various motivations of our individual party members. D&D can be many things to many people, and it certainly is a variety of things for our group: one of our party members most delights in crunching their character’s numbers, while another mostly wants to express their character’s outrageous personality, while a third is largely concerned with our adventure’s fantasy worldbuilding. It’s not just “difficult” to balance these desires – it is, to some extent, impossible to satiate all of them without stepping on some toes. And that precise impossibility of “perfect form” is what makes the whole affair so interesting to me, as more a continuing thought exercise than a solvable equation.

Oh, and we also watched some movies this week! I’ve actually got quite the diverse selection for you all, so let’s not waste another moment, and charge on into the Week in Review!

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Oregairu S3 – Episode 11

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be diving back into Oregairu’s final season, where when we last left off, Sensei had finally stepped in to help guide our severely mixed-up protagonist. Both Hachiman and Yukino have been laboring under Haruno’s prognosis of “codependency” all season, assuming that their implicit methods of supporting each other were in some way fundamentally childish or unhealthy.

Of course, what Haruno is actually describing is “friendship” and “mutual trust,” concepts which are undoubtedly foreign to her world, but which are nonetheless healthy aspects of any developed social life. In truth, the only thing holding Hachiman and Yukino back is their own insecurity; they’ve actually discovered the sincere bonds they were seeking, they just don’t have enough faith in their feelings to believe it. Hopefully that push from Sensei will provide Hachiman with the confidence he needs, as our long-suffering service club members only have two episodes left to sort things out. Let’s get to it!

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Simoun – Episode 23

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be reviving a long-dormant article series, as we continue our journey through the fascinating world of Simoun. I didn’t really intend for this gap between entries to get so enormous; I was up to date on articles for quite a while, and by the time a new article was funded, I was far enough removed from the show that it seemed hard to reconnect with. But having read my last few episodic posts to refresh myself, I feel more or less reattuned to the trials of Chor Tempest, and ready to see this journey through to the end.

When last we left off, Chor Tempest had struck a crucial victory, having won the battle for the capital so decisely that their enemies were forced to accept a peace treaty. But given the rapid advancements of their foes in the wake of acquiring their own Simouns, as well as the plain fact that Simulacrum’s continued existence serves as a foot on the neck of all poorer nations, I can’t imagine that peace will be a lasting one. Fortunately, outside of the members that are either dead or flung into the distant past, Chor Tempest has never been more unified. Let’s see how they weather the potential end of Simulacrum society!

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The Legend of Vox Machina – Episode 2

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d continue the story of Vox Machina, and see if this story has found its footing. The show’s first episode was handicapped by an insecurity that I see in a lot of these “American fantasy for adults” properties, an insecurity that tends to express itself as a reliance on vulgarity and ultraviolence as shorthand for seriousness. Along with showing off their “mature bona fides,” these displays demonstrate irreverence or contempt for the generally self-serious tone of such properties, assuring audiences that it’s okay to like this one.

If you can’t tell, I have nothing but disdain for this instinct. It is far less shameful to earnestly invest in your story than continuously apologize for it, and the instinct to associate maturity with ultraviolence seems deeply juvenile in its own right – the plaintive cry of “it’s not cartoons, it’s anime.” Fortunately, the second half of this show’s premiere saw the story finally stepping off its own cloak, and demonstrating some earnest drama across the main crew. We’re still in pretty by-the-books fantasy territory, but that’s how all D&D campaigns start; the nuance is found in how your story blooms, and I’m eager to see it happen. Let’s get back to the trail!

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Winter 2022 – Week 13 in Review

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Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I have at this point established perhaps a month worth of buffer in terms of film reflection pieces, and hot damn is today’s crop a good one. I don’t know what exactly inspired this week in past-Nick film screenings, but he was clearly on a roll, charging through psychosexual drama and epic Hollywood spectacle alike. In more recent news, I’ve been gobbling through my commissioned episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina, utterly seduced by the fun of tramping along with a well-balanced D&D crew. It’s been a satisfying week in film and television alike, and I look forward to sharing my future fiction-versus-game design ramblings with you all. But for now, let’s power through some films!

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Symphogear XV – Episode 9

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Hello everyone, and welcome the fuck back to Wrong Every Time. Are you ready for some Symphogear? We’re currently barreling towards the climax of one of anime’s most bombastic productions, having just run through a gauntlet of familiar and much-loved faces. With Miku’s life on the line, the villains of season three rallied for a dramatic counterattack, as both the Autoscorers and Carol herself squared off with the beleaguered Noble Red. Inevitably, of course, all their efforts were in vain: the beating heart of this series is the bond between Miku and Hibiki, and thus there’s no way it could end other than a reprise of Evil Miku.

Frankly, if Symphogear’s team had known from the start that they would last for five seasons, I doubt they’d have expended a dramatic resource as emotionally charged as “Evil Miku” back in season two. Miku has always been Hibiki’s emotional rock, and thus Hibiki’s story was bound to end on an interrogation of their relationship, with their feelings illustrated through grand acts of visual mayhem. Let’s see just how love conquers all, as we return to the grand finale of Symphogear!

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The Legend of Vox Machina – Episode 1

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Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be exploring a property that’s a little different from our usual fare, as we check out the first episode of the recently released Legend of Vox Machina. Apparently, this show is actually an animated adaptation of the web series Critical Role, which follows a group of friends through a variety of Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. I’m presuming that Vox Machina will in turn be abstracting the gamified elements into fiction, presenting this campaign as a fantasy narrative in its own right.

That sounds pretty interesting to me! As for my own experience in this field, I’ve never watched Critical Role, but I did check out a few episodes of Adventure Zone some months back. I like the concept of following along with a D&D campaign, but didn’t really find Zone’s banter gripping enough to stick with, so I eventually fell off it. My greater chunk of relevant experience is simply playing D&D; I never got the chance to play consistently as a teenager, so it’s been delightful to participate in a campaign with my housemates over the past year. I’m quite fond of my surly warlock Taliandrel, and more broadly find D&D’s mixture of game design, narrative design, and improv theater absolutely fascinating. Of course, like with all tabletop activities, the most important thing is the company you’re sharing it with – so let’s see what to make of our present company, as we tackle the first episode of Vox Machina!

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Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid S – Episode 1

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Hello everyone, and welcome to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be checking out a new production, one I’ve been deliberately holding off on for a while now. My complicated feelings about this property and its circumstances have been hard to pin down, but I suppose brooding over it hasn’t resulted in any conclusions, so here we are. Writing is what I do, so let’s do some writing about my relationship with KyoAni and Kobayashi.

Kyoto Animation’s Chuunibyou was one of the shows that first got me writing about anime, back when I was just posting comments on reddit. Learning to appreciate their larger catalog served as a substantial portion of my “anime education,” as shows like K-On! taught me the power of animation in the abstract, while dramas like Hyouka embodied all of cinema’s highest callings. Even as I grew fatigued with the narrative limitations and audience-view assumptions of anime’s seasonal output, KyoAni’s productions continued to accelerate beyond such limits, resulting in masterpieces like Liz and the Blue Bird. Anime’s core audience would never grow up, but Kyoto Animation could, and with directors like Yamada and Takemoto at the helm, they might even herald animation’s critical reappraisal on the global stage.

Admittedly, my hopes were largely based on my own desires; I was tired of anime’s limitations, and hoped that my favorite creators were tired alongside me. But with the Kyoto Animation fire, any hopes of their future global output were transformed to hopes for their very survival, for swift recoveries and good health to all that had lived on. What does the precise nature of their output matter in the wake of that tragedy?

Since then, many creators have moved on from the studio. Others have moved on from the industry entirely. But Kyoto Animation survives, still maintaining their commitment to collective creation, still serving as a beacon of positive business practices in an incredibly exploitative industry. And here we are with their first full post-fire production, and I’m simply not sure how to handle it.

Kyoto Animation is a studio of master artists, but anime is not a field that consistently rewards such mastery. It harnesses that mastery to frequent ill purpose, tasking the best animators in the world with illustrating how a man in the body of a child might sexually harass a woman, or exactly how much blood a human-shaped blood bag could really contain. Anime’s visual achievements are matched only by its narrative handicaps, and in season two, I’ve been told that Dragon Maid will embrace significantly more of the things anime is damningly known for. The entire character of the new dragon seems like an embodiment of everything I dislike about anime, and the things I’ve heard about the story… the fact of it is, I just can’t separate form from content any more. And though the original Dragon Maid had plenty of great moments, it also had plenty of stuff that at this point would be a hard veto on my continued investment.

So that’s more or less the source of my trouble. I will always love Kyoto Animation, but I’m just plain fatigued with anime’s bullshit, and thus am prepped and ready for a somewhat bittersweet experience. With both my hopes and fears established, let’s explore the first episode of Miss Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon S!

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Winter 2022 – Week 12 in Review

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Hey folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. My housemates and I are pushing towards the endgame of Elden Ring at this point, which has opened up our schedule for a wide variety of film screenings. As a result, this week’s post will be something of a lightning round, as we roar through a wide variety of features at the greatest possible speed. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel at this point; I’ve beaten all but one of the game’s secret bosses, cleared out all the side quests I can, and conquered every dungeon except the road to the ending. The big question for next week will be how I readjust back to post-Elden Ring life, but for now, let’s power through some goddamn movies!

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