Tag Archives: Anime

Thunderbolt Fantasy S3 – Episode 4

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to check back in on the explosive theatrics of Thunderbolt Fantasy, as our gallant hero Shang faces off with his former ally Wan Jun Po. Having been disillusioned with the selfish, chaotic orders of our murder princess, and with Shang refusing to use his sorceress sword index to interfere with the affairs of the mortal plane, Wan Jun Po made the most sensible choice he could think of: join forces with the Order of the Divine Swarm, that his evil master’s cleansing light might bring peace to this world.

Yes, it does indeed seem a little extreme, but I’m happy to see Wan Jun Po taking his place in the extensive pantheon of “I’ll take this evil upon me for the good of the world” Urobuchian heroes and anti-heroes. Season three had up until now been pretty light on Urobuchi’s usual moral quandaries, and if we can jumpstart the themey-wemey stuff while getting a duel between friends turned rivals in the process, all the better. Let’s jump right into the swordsmanship and sorcery of Thunderbolt Fantasy!

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Bocchi the Rock! – Episode 8

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. The day of Kessoku Band’s long-awaited second performance has dawned cold and gloomy, a torrential rain greeting our would-be rockers. To Bocchi, this is clearly a sign of a doomed performance to come, and it’s certainly undeniable that awful weather makes folks less likely to get out and about. But Starry is a niche club with a reliable clientele, and a little rain never hurt anyone; they may not get as much foot traffic, but those tickets they sold will surely earn them some spectators.

Regardless, the big question here is not whether anyone will show up, but rather if Bocchi and company are truly ready to perform for them. The band was frankly a wreck the last time they performed, and though Nijika’s sister is accommodating, she’s not going to torpedo her club for the sake of her sister’s idle ambitions. As such, this performance will serve as a referendum on exactly how far our protagonists have grown. Are Ryo and Nijika at the point where they can trust their bandmates, and not just play in their own little world? Has Kita mastered the guitar sufficiently that she can both play and sing at once? And most of all, will Bocchi be able to look up from her guitar while playing with confidence, and experience that incomparable rush of communicating your heart’s voice to a crowd, and being met with love in return?

This concert being a disaster seems like it’d be a bit mean-spirited even for Bocchi, so I’m excited to see how all our rockers conduct themselves. The great trick of music dramas is that they can harness the power of musical performance as narrative, character-reflective statements, resulting in expressions of selfhood as powerful as the impromptu jam sessions of Kids on the Slope, or the rambling performances of On-Gaku, or the transcendent climax of Liz and the Blue Bird. All of those moments count among my favorites in animation, and I’m eager to see what Bocchi can pull off. Let’s get to it!

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Summer 2023 – Week 1 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m doing my best to beat this grotesque summer humidity, while also recovering from the fatigue of running my first D&D session in a month. Scheduling hiccups resulted in an unfortunately extended gap between sessions, which then led directly into me running the party through the action-packed finale of my campaign’s second act. This oversized return to form had me so tired that when I collapsed into bed, I experienced a succession of two dreams that were each also focused on me collapsing into bed, something I didn’t think was actually possible. How can you have a dream about being asleep? Well, regardless of the specifics, my decaying frame was fortunately still able to conjure some reflections on the week’s film adventures. Let’s break down a fresh collection of features in the Week in Review!

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Hugtto! Precure – Episode 37

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am delighted to be returning to Hugtto! Pretty Cure, for an episode that by all accounts is going to be almost incomprehensible to me. Our last episode involved the main Hugtto party linking up with about half a dozen previous Cure generations, some of whom they were already acquainted with, all of whom were essentially new to me. Having rallied these supplementary ranks, we then saw half a dozen other Cure parties get frozen in time, trapped in the re-unveiling of Dr. Traum’s totally bullshit time control robot.

For long-time Cure aficionados, I imagine these meetups are a familiar element of the Precure package. For me, this has been a somewhat overwhelming but altogether charming journey through decades of design sensibilities, with each new team demonstrating the diversity of what Pretty Cure can be. The franchise appears to possess a gratifyingly straightforward “if it’ll make for a fun crossover, do it” approach to worldbuilding, while the appearance of all these classic Cures likely gives the current animation team a chance to bring characters they grew up with to life, much like how One Piece’s current staff is stacked with lifelong One Piece fans. When you’re given a chance like that, magic frequently results, so I’m eager to see what wonders await in this pan-Precure bash. Let’s get to it!

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The Demon Girl Next Door S2 – Episode 10

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to be returning to The Demon Girl Next Door, following up on one of the series’ warmest and fuzziest entries so far. Though Momo and Shamiko’s zoo date ended up sabotaged by their so-called friends, the ensuing trip to Sakura’s shrine proved just the romantic excursion they were hoping for, with Momo embracing greater honesty in expressing her feelings and Shamiko embracing more horniness all around. Plus she won her first demonic battle! A tremendous victory for Shamiko.

On a metaphorical level, Momo’s issues purifying and regulating her magic serve as a fine echo of her personal difficulty in opening up to Shamiko, and figuring out how to orient and define herself as someone within Shamiko’s life. Momo’s life of isolation has taught her to be self-sufficient, and she was comfortable enough doting on Shamiko as a helpless project, but learning how to exist as equals, with all the emotional vulnerability that implies, has been a difficult process. “Who am I when I’m with you” can be a difficult question for young lovers to answer, and for Momo, that question is lent further urgency via the harsh consequences of melding magic. Let’s see how our young couple is faring!

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Yuki Yuna is a Hero – Episode 1

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m pleased to announce we’ll be embarking on a brand new adventure, as we check out the first episode of Yuki Yuna is a Hero. To be honest, I don’t know all that much about this series, save its place within the industry’s overall development of genre trends.

Yuki Yuna was one of a number of “dark magical girl” dramas that followed the breakout success of Madoka Magica, typified by shows like Day Break Illusion and Magical Girl Raising Project. Most of these shows landed with little impact, in a heartening rebuke of their producers’ assumption that talent and passion are less important than following genre trends, but Yuki Yuna has flowered into a broad and successful franchise. There’ve been Yuki Yuna light novels, manga, visual novels, and even smartphone games, and I get the feeling that if its American release hadn’t been produced by the hideously overpriced and utterly shelf-averse PonyCan imprint, it might have been a commercial hit here as well.

So yeah, I actually know a fair amount about Yuki Yuna’s commercial circumstances, but almost nothing about its narrative. And as anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the magical girl genre knows, darkness and grief have always stood alongside its aspirational themes, making the optimism its heroes struggle to embody all the more meaningful. Revolutionary Girl Utena, Princess Tutu, Ojamajo Doremi, Pretty Cure – I’ve bawled my eyes out to a variety of magical girl dramas, and hope to find many more with the power to yank at my heart. Let’s see how Yuki Yuna fares!

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Spring 2023 – Week 12 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It is currently a muggy, clouded, altogether inhospitable day out, but I refuse to let nature’s frankly childish behavior ruin my afternoon. This has been a week marked by a variety of gratifying personal milestones: I released my last writeup of the excellent Simoun, caught up on both my Witch Hat Atelier and Chainsaw Man articles (currently in my drafts), and finished Mitsuo Iso’s fascinating Dennou Coil, while also plotting out much of the remainder of my house’s D&D campaign. I suppose it’s no great secret that accomplishing things makes you feel accomplished, but it’s nonetheless been a great source of pride and energy to see my “Current Outstanding Projects” pile diminish so significantly over the past half year. I’ve got more fun stuff coming, but for now, let’s explore some fresh films and Mitsuo Iso’s acclaimed production as we burn through the Week in Review!

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Simoun – Episode 26

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And so it ends. Having long held the future of Simulacrum on their shoulders, the era of the Simoun Sybillae concludes in acrimony and hope, Neviril and Aaeru soaring off in pursuit of the Emerald Ri Majoon and whatever realms await the eternal maidens. No longer is Neviril seeking to undo the past, or Aaeru to prove her worthiness; they believe in themselves and each other utterly, and this final act is an expression of that belief. Simulacrum’s faith may well have been an arbitrary set of strictures draped over a fundamentally value-neutral phenomenon, but the course of Simoun has proven that faith has a power of its own, regardless of its genesis. Even as Neviril’s companions accept their transition beyond this stage, they are still inspired by her actions – and in that faith, a point of commonality is found between them and their new priestly order.

It has been a poignant and rewarding journey riding alongside Chor Tempest, and though I’m sad we’ve arrived at the end, I’m happy it’s ending with such conclusive, elegant finality. Simoun has always possessed a grace of execution that belies its absurd thematic complexity, and thus it seems appropriate that the story ends where it begins: Neviril and her pair in flight, seeking the infinite in the fulfillment of their love.

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Spy x Family – Episode 20

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to get back into Spy x Family, and see what ridiculous nonsense the Forgers have been up to in our absence. Our last episode proved an intriguingly frictious experience, pushing against the presumed boundaries of Tatsuya Endo’s spy drama sandbox. Spy x Family is a situational comedy first, a found family drama second, and a war drama a distant third, and though it can usually juggle those aspects with relative grace, there are inherent tensions in its premise that will undoubtedly surface again. I’m particularly intrigued to see how Endo handles the characterization of Desmond’s father, whose narrative position naturally draws together all of Spy x Family’s contradictory instincts.

But for now, I assume we’re in for some more immediately gratifying shenanigans, and I’m absolutely ready for them. Genre tensions aside, Spy x Family remains immensely entertaining, Endo having proven himself a master of slapstick, deadpan, and anticlimax. Let’s see what lunacy awaits as we return to Spy x Family!

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The Necessity of Shingo Natsume

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“My style is to have no fixed style. Other people would accuse me of having a style, though. It may be that I understand myself the least.” – Shingo Natsume

I’ll admit, I got off on the wrong foot with Shingo Natsume. My formal introduction to his work was One Punch Man, a show that seemed to me an embodiment of anime’s increasing artlessness and lack of narrative ambition, the growing divide between animated aesthetic form and meaningful narrative, emotional, or thematic content. It was simply “man punches hard” animated as beautifully as possible, and “man punches hard” is a story anime has told countless times, a story perhaps only outnumbered in its evocations by “me horny.” And as the years have gone by, it seems this divide between form and content has only widened, with modern animator troves like Jobless Reincarnation offering nothing of substance, while sequels and indistinguishable light novel adaptations dominate the wider landscape.

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