Tag Archives: Animation

Summer 2026 – Week 11 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. With the summer season coming to a close, I’ve at last begun catching up on its glut of prestige productions, beginning with the much-anticipated A Witch in Mongolia. The show has proven an absolute delight so far, continuing the thread of sharp, intimate historical drama begun by Yamada’s Heike Monogatari, and complementing her mastery of melancholy with a great deal of wit and courtly subterfuge. It’s an absolute delight seeing my favorite director expand her tonal and narrative palette while still embodying all the compositional delicacy and attentiveness to character that first dazzled me in her work. It’s been an incredible evolution from K-On! to here, and I’m exceedingly thankful that Science Saru has proven such a reliable partner for her talents. I’ll likely have more to say on that shortly (even if it’s just “season two when”), but for now, let’s run down the Week in Review!

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Alien Stage – Round 2

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to a novel recent production, as we check out the second episode or “round” of Alien Stage, the apocalyptical musical web series pitting hapless singers against each other in a contest to entertain their capricious alien overlords. The prize for victory? You get to keep singing, keep dancing, and keep competing for the adoration of a heartless crowd. The cost of failure? Well, I think you can guess.

The series’ first episode did a fine job of laying out the terms of this reality, as well as offering a sprinkling of vignettes illustrating the close bond between its two unfortunate contestants. A story illustrated in such brief snippets must necessarily gesture rather than fully articulate; through odd details of their shared history and the fragmentary explanation of their world at large, Alien Stage has articulated a world where artists must bow and scrape for fundamentally hostile overseers, competing for scraps rather than helping each other shine.

Given the art-hostile progression of global capitalism and increasing integration of artist-displacing artificial intelligence, as well as the parasocial, possessive dynamics of modern indie production, it’s certainly not hard to draw parallels between this contest and the struggles faced by artists in our own world. And until capitalism fits its own collars around our necks, the best we can do is support each other, practicing solidarity in the face of a world whose every institution demands we embody the selfishness of our billionaire butchers. Let’s get to it!

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