Hello everyone, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. We’re a couple weeks into the fall anime season now, and as it turns out, I actually have some anime to talk about. Though I spent much of the last two weeks luxuriating in the fact that I was no longer professionally obligated to watch all of the season’s new productions, it turns out I kinda do like anime, and so I’ve been slowly working through the properties that seem worth considering on my own time. I’ve also been playing a shit ton more Hades, but since my thoughts on Hades are still pretty much just “oh my god this game is so good Chiron bow is busted why am I writing I should be plotting my next run,” I’ll be sticking with the anime this time, and offering some brief assessments of the season’s alleged stars!
Dorohedoro – Episode 3
Folks, it is absolutely time for more Dorohedoro. Not only am I just generally down for more of this production’s charming shenanigans and gorgeous architecture, but we also happened to leave off on an absolutely intolerable cliffhanger, with Shin and Noi at last on their way to hunt down Caiman and Nikaido. The two major factions within this show’s cast have both proven themselves to be violent yet oddly adorable families, and considering this manga has gone on for eighteen years, I don’t expect them to murder each other quite yet. Then again, this is Dorohedoro, where life is cheap and death hilarious, so there’s really no telling who’s a truly plot-essential character.
Most importantly, Ebisu still needs her dang face back. So let’s not waste any more time, and set off once more on a journey through the magnificent decay of Hole!
Pokemon Sun and Moon – Episode 24
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve tried to deny it as long as possible, but autumn is truly in full swing over here, and the temperature has plummeted accordingly. New England has a pretty quirky seasonal schedule, in that we generally get around two months of summer, two weeks each of spring and fall, and around nine months of winter each year. In light of that, I’m doing my best to enjoy the rapidly falling leaves, as they’re essentially our one decent seasonal attraction, which makes for some unintentionally damning travel literature for anyone who actually lives here. “Come see the falling leaves, they make this frigid, unfriendly slab of coastline look nice for twelve days every year!”
All of this is to say that it’s cold and I’m mad and we’re watching some goddamn Sun and Moon. The show’s previous episode was a delightfully absurd Dugtrio-centered rock opera that made great use of Team Rocket, and I’m eager to see what our young trainers get up to next, be it continuing their island pilgrimage or just finding a weird rock in the forest or something. Let’s get to it!
Kaguya-sama: Love is War – Episode 3
Strap yourselves in folks, we’re checking out another episode of the last few years’ most beloved romantic comedy, Kaguya-sama: Love is War. Kaguya’s first two episodes were an unrelenting visual feast, demonstrating that director Shinichi Omata is just as comfortable elevating farcical conflict as he is illuminating somber dramas like Rakugo. Building off of Kaguya’s own fundamental design, Omata has constructed a dynamic world of red, white, and black contrast, with every scene offering creative new visual punchlines.
Of course, I knew going into Kaguya-sama that the direction would be fantastic, because Omata is one of our living legends. The bigger issue for me is the show’s somewhat repetitive comedic structure, an issue exacerbated by its as-of-yet unwillingness to really dig deeper into its characters’ lives. But even that seemed like less of an issue in the second episode than the first, and I’ve been told the show will continue to expand on its initial premise as it goes, evolving from its basic “spy vs spy reimagined as a love comedy” dynamic to a more character-focused story. With Omata at the helm, I’ll certainly have plenty to talk about either way, so let’s get right into another episode of Kaguya-sama!
Fall 2020 – Week 1 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s the end of an era this week, as for the first time in seven goddamn years, I haven’t actually watched all of this season’s new anime premieres. In fact, I’ve only watched one – Jujutsu Kaisen. It was pretty good! I might watch another episode.
Contributing to Anime News Network’s preview guide was certainly a rewarding experience, and it’s been interesting to see trends in the medium evolve over the last half-decade or so. But ultimately, saying “this wasn’t particularly good” has always been the least interesting part of criticism to me, and so I’m happy to be at a point where I can invest more in the shows I’m passionate about, and less in the shows that are an affront to any sense of taste or decency. So without further ado, let’s dive into a regular old Week in Review, and take a few swings at some interesting art!
Why It Works: The World is the Game: Designing Worlds After Breath of the Wild
For this actual week’s Why It Works post, I ended up writing an article I’ve been meaning to write for years, and gushing a whole lot about how Breath of the Wild fundamentally changed open world game design. We’re already seeing a variety of new games that move the genre away from the prevailing Ubisoft model, and I could not be happier about it. Let’s get to it!
The World is the Game: Designing Worlds After Breath of the Wild
Why It Works: Introducing the Incredible Director of the Horimiya Adaptation!
This week (well, last week, technically), I ended up springboarding off the Horimiya anime announcement to ramble about Masashi Ishihama. Ishihama is one of the industry’s unsung greats, so I’m always happy for an excuse to celebrate his catalog, and pray once more that his next work is the one that breaks him big. It should have been From the New World, heck, it absolutely WOULD have been New World in a more just universe – but unfortunately, anime is frequently a pearls versus swine situation, and most viewers just snorted suspiciously at From the New World before wandering off to the feeding trough. Anyway, enough doom and gloom, let’s celebrate Ishihama!
Introducing the Incredible Director of the Horimiya Adaptation!
The Big O – Episode 8
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to continue our investigations into the city of Paradigm, as The Big O seems intent on outdoing itself every single episode, and I absolutely need to see where this masterpiece of aesthetic leads.
The Big O’s sixth episode was elevated by storyboards courtesy of Kazuyoshi Katayama, one of the main artists behind the stunning Giant Robo. But Katayama’s influence is clear beyond that latest adventure; along with serving as an overall director on The Big O, he also handled the storyboards for The Big O’s first three episodes, essentially setting the cinematographic tone for the series.
After that, episode seven was storyboarded by another major Giant Robo veteran: Akihiko Yamashita, an acclaimed Studio Ghibli animator who handled not just storyboards, but also character design, animation direction, and even some key animation on Giant Robo. It’s clear enough why The Big O possesses such an overwhelming sense of scale and beauty; it’s being captained by the artists responsible for perhaps the greatest example of scale and beauty in giant robot history.
Along with its legendary storyboarder, last episode also featured a script by Chiaki J. Konaka himself. Konaka is likely most famous for his collaborations with artist Yoshitoshi ABe: Serial Experiments Lain and Texhnolyze. Both of those shows demonstrate both a fascination and distrust in modern technology and transhumanism more specifically, as well as a slow, contemplative pace that feels right at home in The Big O. Between all of them, these three might be what truly defines the “soul” of The Big O.
However, as you might have noticed, we’re not watching episodes six or seven; we’re on number eight. Episode eight was both storyboarded and directed by Tetsuya Watanabe, an artist who frankly never broke big in any major way; his biggest directorial projects seem to be Schwarz Marken and Rumbling Hearts, neither of which are anything to write home about. Both storyboarding and directing is a big responsibility, so I’m intrigued to see his unique take on this remarkable franchise. Let’s get to it!
Pokemon Sun and Moon – Episode 23
You folks ready for some friggin’ Pokemon? Sun and Moon’s last episode served as a sort of communal celebration of Ash’s many new friends, as Ash’s entrapment inside an angry sandcastle forced the whole secondary cast to work together towards a solution. Considering the fun personalities and general slice of life warmth of Ash’s companions is one of Sun and Moon’s greatest strengths, this unsurprisingly resulted in a pretty great episode. Pallosand made for a very entertaining kaiju, Snowball and Popplio got to play the heroes, and the whole main cast proved they’ve become a competent and loyal fighting force.
I’d be happy to see the whole team face off against another irate mega-pokemon this week, but I’m guessing we’ll be switching gears instead, and embarking on an entirely new kind of adventure. Whatever the future holds, I’m sure Sun and Moon will find a way to make it interesting, and I’m happy you’re all accompanying me for the journey. Let’s enjoy another day in Alola!
Oregairu S3 – Episode 1
Oregairu is a special property for me. I started writing episodic criticism about anime all the way back in 2013, and Oregairu was one of the very first shows I tackled that spring. Presenting a young man with a deep well of sadness and a vastly inflated sense of his own perceptiveness, I saw my own teenage self – bitter, lonely, genuinely pretty smart, and desperately wondering why other people seemed so happy, but I felt so empty.
Hachiman, like many lonely boys, chose to comfort himself through pulling at the uncomfortable seams in the relationships of others, while claiming that he himself chose the “path of the bear,” and willfully accepted isolation. But seasons have come and gone since then, and Hachiman has learned that genuine human connection, as painful as it often seems, is the only thing truly worth seeking. Mutual understanding may be impossible, but in Yui and Yukino, he has found two friends who are at least willing to seek it with him, embracing the pain and the joy of leaving yourself truly vulnerable.
Yui is no stranger to this process; she’s been accepting the pain of seeking honest connection all along, even when Hachiman and Yukino’s emotional defense mechanisms led to them stonewalling or lashing out at her. Without Yui’s strength and kindness, Hachiman and Yukino would never have reached this point – but now, her tendency to sacrifice her own needs for those of her friends is leaving her incapable of pursuing the relationship she truly wants. Yui has had a crush on Hikki ever since they first crossed paths, but knowing what that relationship might do to Yukino, she’s learned to bite her lip and suffer alone.
Finally, Yukino’s problems are the most intractable of all of them. Though she has consistently struggled with the same sense of social isolation that haunted Hachiman, and felt similarly disdainful of her peers’ superficial relationships, unlike him, she chose to rebel through excellence. Acing every test and challenge placed before her, she made herself a living example of her brutal standards – a tactic she undoubtedly learned from her family life, where actively failing was out of the question, and only proving her isolated excellence allowed her to maintain any sense of autonomy. But now, just as Yukino is reaching out for genuine connection with her friends, that family has appeared again, demanding their prodigal daughter return to the fold. As we enter season three, Yukino’s family situation looms overhead, while the end of high school lurks in the distance. Can this fragile bond survive the upending of their entire social paradigm?