Anne of Green Gables – Episode 3

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to Anne of Green Gables, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I’ve actually been looking forward to this return for most of a week now; the show has already captured my imagination, offering a window into a sedate yet beautiful world, where the peaceful mastery of Montgomery and Takahata intertwine.

Many of anime’s finest attractions advertise themselves with great fanfare, promising dazzling animation highlights and stories like nothing you’ve seen. Anne of Green Gables is more my speed: a work of extraordinary craft that still sees the mundane as worthy of attention, helping to reacquaint us with the beauty of the living world, and the profundity of small acts of kindness. I feel at home in its lovingly painted hills, and comforted by the presence of its humbly human characters. Productions this generous are an odd quirk of history, borne of production conditions that ebb and subside, never to return. I am thus thankful it exists at all, and doubly thankful to be exploring it with you readers. Let’s return to the rolling fields of Green Gables!

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Eureka Seven – Episode 8

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be diving back into a property that we last touched five goddamn years ago, as we return to the long-dormant Eureka Seven. It’s been so long since we watched Eureka Seven that my last episode’s writing style feels almost unrecognizable, so yes, this is a pretty weird feeling for me. That said, I still have a pretty clear recollection of Renton’s journey so far, and can’t imagine we’ll have too much trouble getting reacquainted with the Gekkostate and its many strange inhabitants. Emerging from the earth to claw at the sky, let’s celebrate the reanimation of Eureka Seven!

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Fall 2021 – Week 5 in Review

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Hoo boy, we watched some garbage this week, folks. It wasn’t really intentional – my housemates have learned to schedule their hate-watching outside of my hangout hours, and we entered all of these films with the hope of at least being entertained, if not enriched by the experience. But somehow the cards just didn’t fall in our favor, and we ended up watching a half-dozen or so films that peaked at “middling” and bottomed at “how much longer is this, again?” So congrats folks, it looks like I’ll be back on my old bullshit for a moment, as I callously assess and disregard a pile of film productions, and also mention maybe one or two ones. Let’s get to it!

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Adachi and Shimamura – Episode 12

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I have some bittersweet news, as we’ll soon be reaching the end of a delightful journey, and leaving some friends behind. Yes, it’s time at last to watch the conclusion of Adachi and Shimamura, and see if these two mixed-up kids are gonna make it out okay.

Of course, it’s unlikely that this episode is going to feel truly definitive in its resolution of our heroines’ drama. For one thing, the light novel series this show is based on just released a new volume five days ago. But more importantly, Adachi and Shimamura are still a great distance away from true emotional honesty, or even a comfortable understanding of themselves.

This isn’t their fault, obviously; I mean, they’re high schoolers, how well could they know themselves? But it’s a credit to Hitoma Iruma’s storytelling that I can already see the road sprawling out beyond them, the hills they’ll traverse and hurdles they’ll encounter on the way. Adachi and Shimamura are imperfect and unsure in resoundingly human ways, and at all times, their story has emphasized that our identities are not fixed points.

The Adachi and Shimamura we met at the beginning of this story are quite different from the Adachi and Shimamura we now know, or the ones we might meet in the future. The easy, ignorant solace of their first few encounters has been lost; they each know too much about the other, and have each grown in their own way. Adachi has gained the confidence to act on behalf of her desires, while Shimamura has begun to feel like she has desires, after a long period of emotional dormancy. The desire for intimacy and inevitability of change have set our heroines on a tumultuous course, but their feelings for each other have held strong. Let’s join Adachi and Shimamura for one last time!

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Pokemon Sun and Moon – Episode 47

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am delighted to announce that we’re returning to Sun and Moon, after more than a month away. It’s not Sun and Moon’s fault we didn’t visit sooner; the show is outrageously charming, and I’m always happy to check out another episode. But I’ve been making an effort to balance my output of the various reader-funded projects lately, and that’s put Sun and Moon on the backburner as I build up the stock of Oregairus and Toradoras and whatnot.

Well, I’ve been building that stock for a month straight, and I think I’ve earned a day in the sun. When last we left off, some major narrative gears seemed to be creaking into motion, with the awakening of the Ultra Beasts and the machinations of Lusamine’s lab associate both promising future trials. I’m eager to see all that play out, but also would be perfectly happy with a lazy beach episode, and maybe some Team Rocket shenanigans. There are really no wrong answers with Sun and Moon, so let’s not waste any more time, and get back to Alola!

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ODDTAXI – Episode 10

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Through the miracles of science, it has become easier than ever to measure our success in the world, and compare it to the wealth of others. Where once we might have fretted blindly over the potential riches and happiness of our peers, now their successes are easy to tabulate – just a click away, listed and formatted through a whole ecosystem of social media platforms. Never again must you be tormented by the fear that unknown others are beating you at life; now you can know they are, through their carefully pruned instagrams and twitter feeds and facebook pages.

Via the advent of social media, our every statement has become a performance, declaring our wit and wealth and social worth. Thousands of also-rans clamor for the spotlight, hoping to one day know the pleasure of waking up in fear every morning, terrified that your audience will figure you out. Everyone is a showman, and everyone is a fraud. We construct ideals out of quips and personal victories, sweeping all that might irritate the beast behind the show curtain. Even our admissions of weakness or exhaustion carry a hint of salesmanship – after all, vulnerability is relatable.

Odokawa never intended to serve as a weird human antidote to modern malaise; in fact, basically all of his life choices seem to reflect a man with little sense of self-worth, who’d rather drop out of society than contend with its trials. Nonetheless, his taxi cab has become a sanctuary of authentic performance, and over time, a source of meaningful personal bonds. In the back of Odokawa’s taxi, no one is performing for society – his seat is the place between performances, where characters like Taichi or Shun can catch their breath between fabrications. It is not to our followers, but our service workers who we present our most authentic self; and through this shelter of identity, Odokawa has cultivated friends who might just see him through the trials ahead. Let’s return to the remarkable ODDTAXI.

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Fall 2021 – Week 4 in Review

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Alright folks, pile in, pile in, we’ve got a full session to get through and no time to waste. As is so often the case, this was an eclectic week in film viewing, with our selections ranging from unimpeachable classics to balletic martial arts displays to subversive horror revivals. I even tried out some of this season’s new anime, though to be honest my experiences were routine enough that they’ll probably just slot in as a few lines at the end. But first, let’s charge through some assorted feature films, as we ramble past one more fleeting Week in Review!

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Kaiba – Episode 5

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Kaiba’s last episode was a tragic story of grief and abandonment, ending with the deaths of all parties involved. The episode before that was another story of grief and abandonment, ending with a mother sobbing over her sold-off daughter. In the world of Kaiba, the tensions of our daily lives are drawn to an unbearable tautness by the encroaching influence of biotechnological capitalism. These characters live in squalor and poverty, but many people throughout history have lived such. What sets Kaiba apart is the fullness of capitalism’s reach, and the uniquely terrible bargains it is sanctioned to make. Here, even our bodies are commodities – in fact, for the poor, they are one of the few commodities they possess with any real value. For the rich, this enables a dazzling new world of personal experience; for the poor, their bodies are just one more thing to be sold, one more thing that can be possessed to account for their debts.

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Hugtto! Precure – Episode 25

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It has been far too long since we last stopped in with Hana and the rest of the Hugtto crew, so today we’ll be remedying that post-haste, as we return to the charming world of Pretty Cure. The show’s last episode felt something like a post-act breather, as all the characters we’ve come to know joined together for a combined pool party and concert. It was a charming and low-stakes episode that nonetheless served as a key rite of passage for our team.

In keeping with Hugtto’s themes, that episode saw our leads taking tangible steps towards their futures, embracing adult responsibilities and taking charge within their community. The value of honest work, and the pride that comes from executing your craft, stand as core tenets of Hugtto’s philosophy. Having each struggled with doubts about their passions, our leads have learned to embrace their desires, whether those feelings lead them to figure skating or rock music or what have you.

Among all her friends, Hana remains the one without a clear professional trajectory. The very qualities that make her great at supporting others leave her personally unmoored; her talent is “supporting others in achieving their dreams,” and she’s at times wondered whether that’s really a talent at all. Her personality is a jumble of contradictions that make her perfectly suited to lead this narrative, and I’m eager to see how her journey continues. Let’s get right back to Hugtto Precure!

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The Big O – Episode 16

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to return to the streets of Paradigm, where Roger and Dorothy have recently been making incredible strides in illuminating their shadowed histories. After a first season largely defined by external, episodic mysteries, The Big O’s second half opened with dual investigations of our heroes’ own stories. Roger confronted his fabricated identity directly, casting away any doubts about his personhood by reasserting his current self. And Dorothy returned to the place of her birth, confronting her “siblings” and finding validation in Rosco’s unambiguously human existence.

The two have each cleared some key psychological hurdles, but for all that, the forces surrounding them are still shrouded in mystery. We know Roger was indoctrinated as a child, but not why, or what happened to the other children. We know that our Dorothy is one of many siblings, but almost nothing about her father’s ultimate intentions. Both Roger and Dorothy feel like the castaway orphans of a grand conspiracy, each tethered by their nature to Rosewater’s plan, but without a clue as to its nature or objective. Each of them fiercely value their independence, but exist within a world so artificial and tightly managed that true agency feels like a fantasy, forcing them to suffer continuous reminders that they are guided by forces outside their control. Can our fledglings crack the shell that is Paradigm, and reveal the truth of the world? Let’s find out!

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