Tag Archives: Anime

Yuki Yuna is a Hero – Episode 10

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to an adventure that I’m frankly not sure I even want to continue, as we check back in on the beleaguered magical girls of Yuki Yuna is a Hero. Not because the show has gotten less interesting or anything; with the Taisha’s true nature revealed, the show’s reflections on genre convention and fundamental character drama have never been stronger. But all of that strength is now being put to work torturing our young hero club, and I simply will not have it! Leave our heroes alone, you stupid evil tree!

Anyway, personal feelings aside, we are now well and fully past the point of ignorance regarding this system’s true intent. The vertexes are essentially bait for hopeful young heroes; expending their energy to protect their homes, they are converted into food for their ever-ravenous homeland. Rather than saving this world for the next generation, magical girls are consumed to maintain a static order, venerated as martyrs for a cause they would never willingly have supported. It’s a sturdy metaphor for an increasingly aging Japan, wherein blind patriotism and a renewed fervor for militarization are apparently supposed to make up for a lack of genuine opportunities. What can our young handful of heroes do in the face of such structural malevolence? Let’s find out!

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Skip and Loafer – Episode 7

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Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to stop back in with Mitsumi and the gang from Skip and Loafer, and see what those crazy kids are getting up to now. After half a season of largely warm and fuzzy adventures, last episode saw Mitsumi and Shima experiencing their first genuine fight, which was ultimately a healthy exercise for both of them. I don’t expect massive changes in the wake of this personal reorientation, but I am looking forward to seeing them navigate this new level of comfort in expressing their feelings.

If you never fight with someone, it generally means not that you agree on everything, but that you simply don’t care enough about changing their opinion or behavior to challenge them on it. It is easy to be indifferent to the opinions of a stranger or acquaintance (well, unless you’re Larry David), but if you genuinely care about someone, there will undoubtedly be times when you question their wisdom. It is only because Shima has grown to value Mitsumi’s feelings that he was hurt by her challenging him – a key shift for the boy who responded to premature fame by retreating from investment in the world altogether. And with Shima’s confession of concern stoking some of those dangerously fuzzy feelings in Mitsumi, I’m looking forward to the shoe being on the other foot, and Shima poking Mitsumi in some particularly ticklish emotions. Let’s get to it!

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Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – Episode 2

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to continue traveling beyond the journey’s end, catching up with Frieren and maybe learning something about human nature or nostalgia in the process. Frieren’s first episode demonstrated a refreshingly meditative approach to fantasy drama, focusing not on some big arbitrary external threat, but on the simple, inescapable melancholy of growing older, watching things you love pass into memory, and finding some peace with what you have left.

While defeating a demon king might not be easy, I’d imagine finding purpose and satisfaction in such an objective certainly is. But for the rest of us, the process of identifying and appreciating what is most important to us is not quite so obvious. We are driven by dreams that are frequently unfulfilled, beset by anxieties that are often as not unresolvable; life is riddled with such disappointments, and the great task of living is not “defeating” these challenges, but learning to find joy in the imperfect messes we make of ourselves. Frieren blinked, and the man who loved her was nearing his death – how might she go forward and live such that future happiness will not similarly pass her by? Let’s find out!

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Neon Genesis Evangelion – Episode 19

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We begin shortly after the last episode’s grotesque conclusion, with Shinji still in the pilot seat. Not because he’s been forced to, not because he can’t escape, but instead because he refuses to leave. Having witnessed what his father is capable of, having been made complicit in this violence upon his friend Toji, Shinji has at last reached his moral limit. A grim irony there; if Shinji had a more compassionate father, one who actually wanted to see his son succeed, this would likely be a moment of pride. His anxious son, who has so often simply gone with the flow and accepted the directions of others, is at last making a stand for something he believes in. But Gendo does not want his son to be a young man of firm convictions and unerring moral character; he wants Shinji to be a tool, and Shinji is now proving himself a defective one

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Big Windup! – Episode 10

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to announce we’re returning to Big Windup!, and checking in with the increasingly reliable battery of the anxious pitcher Mihashi and cynical catcher Abe. Big Windup!’s first stretch was largely preoccupied with Mihashi unlearning the bad instincts prompted by his traumatic middle school experience, and gaining the confidence to form a genuine partnership with Abe. With Mihashi having achieved at least a degree of trust in his curmudgeonly catcher, we then turned to Abe’s own history, as he described the frustration of the self-absorbed Haruna sinking his own middle school team’s aspirations.

The symmetry of these experiences points towards Big Windup!’s general understanding of personal psychology, its emphasis on the fact that we are all products of our prior experiences, carrying baggage and preconceptions through which we filter and contextualize any new information. Mihashi’s servile affectation is simply the “solution” to conflict he carried over from middle school, while Abe’s bitterness and need for control are clearly an overcorrection from his time with Haruna. Of course, there’s more to it than that, because humans are complicated: Abe would always be less of a people person given his fiercely analytical mind, while Mihashi’s inherent sensitivity to emotions is part of the reason why he felt the frustration of his prior teammates so deeply. And on top of all that, we’ve got the crunchy mechanical structure of baseball itself, a sport that through its distinct, repeated confrontations of batters and pitchers is uniquely well-suited to tactical feints and mind games.

It’s a rich and nourishing stew of variables, and it’s been far too long since we dug in. Let’s return to the pitch for a fresh episode of Big Windup!

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The Big O – Episode 19

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am delighted to at last be returning to The Big O, after an outrageously overlong stay of absence. Big O’s mixture of noir drama, robot action, and philosophical interrogation of identity has made for a show unlike any I’ve seen, one of those unique genre blends at which animation uniquely excels. The show is expertly woven with internal mysteries, but they’re frankly unnecessary to maintain its allure; not when every episode offers something so novel and compelling, whether it’s Dastun’s lost movie love or last episode’s Beck insanity.

With our last escapade serving as perhaps the most irreverent of the series so far, I’m guessing things will settle a bit this time, as we presumably return to the question of Roger defining himself outside of Rosewater’s shadow. Roger has always seen the Big O as his method of enacting change in this world, his will to protect and redeem Paradigm made manifest – but if his identity as a pilot is also Rosewater’s design, can he truly hope to change his destiny through the very means that destiny was provided? Regardless, I imagine we’ve got plenty of sumptuous imagery and charming Roger-Dorothy moments ahead of us, so let’s get right to it!

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Wonder Egg Priority – Episode 11

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am both eager and apprehensive to return to Wonder Egg Priority, after an episode that at last revealed the original crimes of Acca and Ura-Acca. Like all of Wonder Egg’s malevolent adult villains, the pair saw young women merely as objects built for their entertainment, toys to be roughly handled and discarded when the interest had passed. However, they took this idle fascination a horrifying step further, actually designing the young Frill “just for fun.”

The audacity of their crime echoed across their lives, though the two remained untouched themselves, and clearly indifferent to the moral wretchedness of their choices. When Azusa and her pregnancy took command of their attention, they discarded Frill without a care, seeing her as a trifle whose purpose had passed. Fabricated nature aside, Frill was treated little differently from this series’ abused protagonists – and like them, she ultimately struck back against her jailers, stealing their new happiness by killing first Azusa, then her daughter Himari.

It is tragic but not surprising that other women paid the debt of Acca and Ura-Acca’s crimes. Even after all they had done to betray her, she still hoped to regain her fathers’ love, or at the very least to be acknowledged as a person. “Don’t pretend not to see me,” she begged. “I was born from the two of you.” But rather than acknowledge their daughter and their crimes, they chose to define her as a malignant, unreachable “other” – a detested symbol of female agency, now hunted by whatever other girls they can con into their service. Though they have saved their own precious friends, Frill remains trapped within the system Acca and Ura-Acca created, lashing out in defense of the only humanity she was ever afforded. Let’s see if our heroes can save her!

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Anne of Green Gables – Episode 14

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am delighted to return to Anne of Green Gables, after far too long away from our precocious young heroine and her fanciful adventures. In the time since our last visit I’ve continued to enjoy as much Takahata as possible, screening both later Ghibli films and Toei Doga classics like Horus, but there’s nothing quite like his beautiful, meditative television work. The World Masterpiece Theater productions remain a singular high point in anime history, and Takahata will likely always be one of my very favorite directors.

Anyway, it is delightful to be back, and it looks like we’re in for another sturdy episode production-wise. World Masterpiece Theater and Miyazaki/Takahata mainstay Seiji Okuda is back on storyboarding duty, with the lack of a distinct assigned director again leading me to assume this’ll be an episode hewing closely to Takahata’s vision of the story. And though scriptwriter Kaizo Kamiyama is relatively untested, I’m not particularly concerned; Anne’s dialogue sings because so much of it was taken directly from L.M. Montgomery’s novel, a trend I expect to continue with fantastic results. Who knew that closely adapting classic novels would result in superior anime dramas? But let’s not get snippy about The General State Of Things, for we’ve got a show to watch. Onward to Green Gables!

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BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!! – Episode 13

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today it is with a heavy heart that I announce we have reached the finale of BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!, and will soon be asked to leave the venue and shuffle our way home. It’s been a poignant, frequently transcendent, and ever-engaging journey with the lost girls, and I’m sad to see our time together drawing to a close. But at least we’ve still got the memories: Anon’s delightfully mercenary recruitment of Tomori, that devastating elaboration of Tomori’s life story, the desperate machinations of our girl Soyo, and the thunderous performances that first rent and then reunited our stars, aligning them in their collective need for a little warmth and understanding, a place that might make a pillbug like Tomori reach for the sun.

It’s been profoundly rewarding watching this crew grow into an ever-frictious but nonetheless supportive whole, and I’d frankly be perfectly content if this episode was just a full-length encore performance for MyGO!!!!! But of course, our story possesses one last lingering question: what the fuck is going on with Sakiko, and why is she assembling a cabal of musical supervillains. Her initial formation of CRYCHIC seemed almost as Tomori-focused as our dear Taki’s motives, and it’s clear that seeing Tomori move on and find a new community hit her like a punch in the gut. Will we at last learn why she was moved to disband her own precious community, and what she hopes will emerge from the ashes? Let’s get to it!

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Star Driver – Episode 23

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive back into Star Driver, as we dispense with school festival theatrics and surge onwards towards our grand finale. As expected, our last episode featured the cast’s long-awaited festival performance, which turned out to also serve as the vehicle for conveying the Southern Cross legend which set this whole Cybody situation in motion. There were tragic betrayals, heartfelt declarations of love, and even a brief appearance by what seemed to be an actual alien, here briefly controlling Sarina in order to ask Takuto the essential question: will he use the power of the Cybodies for selfish, destructive means, or only for love?

These revelations were certainly dramatic, but frankly, they also fell perfectly in line with the story as articulated so far. There was always going to be some spark of the supernatural that gave Southern Cross this power, and even across the stories of Toshio and Sugata, we’ve already seen how the tale of the Cybodies is an eternal, circular conflict, each generation weighing the responsibilities of tradition against their personal desires for power or freedom. This is also far from the first time Enokido has tethered thematic or contextual revelation to the theater; frankly, after his work on Utena and FLCL, I’d have been surprised if this play didn’t offer some kind of narrative bombshell. As fellow long-time collaborators with Kunihiko Ikuhara, Igarashi and Enokido both understand how theater and anime are adjacent art forms, each serving as ideal vectors for heightened emotions and imaginative aesthetic pageantry, each asking us to find the human and universal in the fantastical and melodramatic. With the stage now set for Takuto to craft his own legend, let’s see where this story goes!

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