Tag Archives: Anime

The Demon Girl Next Door S2 – Episode 2

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d check back in on The Demon Girl Next Door, which at long last is demonstrating some genuine honesty in titling. With both Momo and Mikan taking up residence in Banda Terrace, Shamiko is now literally next-door neighbors with her local magical girls, a development that is sure to accelerate her and Momo’s blooming relationship. With a full summer break ahead of them, our leads are certain to at least enjoy a bounty of shared home meals, if not necessarily make any progress on their larger quest.

And to be honest, I’d be totally fine with that. Between the first season’s last episode and this season’s premiere, Demon Girl has stuffed in more plot development in two episodes than the rest of the first season combined. With both their larger goals (the hunt for Sakura Chiyoda) and personal shifts in circumstance having been sorted out, I’d be happy to see an episode or two spent exploring this new normal, now that Shamiko and Momo are only separated by a thin apartment wall. With a bright summer stretching before our heroes, let’s see what awaits in The Demon Girl Next Door!

Continue reading →

Spy x Family – Episode 10

Posted on by

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s currently a bleak and drizzly day outside, so I’m thinking we disperse these clouds with a sunny slice of Spy x Family. I have to admit I’ve been getting quite fond of the Forger clan over the course of these adventures. Spy x Family possesses just the right balance of deadpan comedy and character intimacy to appeal to me, with its initial hook of “look at these wacky characters in this outrageous scenario” swiftly making way for the firmer, lasting allure of people you know well doing their best by each other (while still screwing up plenty in the process). And with the last several episodes offering a closer perspective on Yor’s feelings, it’s finally starting to feel like all three of our Forgers are equal partners in this grand fabrication, collectively weaving a fantasy of the life that their circumstances have denied them. With Yor’s fears hopefully assuaged and the family closer than ever, let’s get back to Spy x Family!

Continue reading →

Rilakkuma and Kaoru – Episode 4

Posted on by

July debuts in Rilakkuma and Kaoru with an explosion of color, as cut-paper illustrations extol all of Kaoru’s summertime fantasies. Stop motion is such a laborious mode of animation that its aesthetic boundaries are even less fully explored than hand-drawn animation; in scenes like this parade of dreams, we are presented with new horizons of mixed media animation. Felt and clay characters stand atop layered cut-paper compositions, with thick pieces of painted wood or cardboard creating an illusion of depth, as if we’re watching an animated pop-up book. In Kaoru’s dreams, hunks prostrate themselves before her, offering both whirlwind romances and tasty snacks.

Continue reading →

Star Driver – Episode 11

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d step back into Star Driver, whose narrative has essentially been in Full Chaos Mode for two episodes now. With episode eight clearly serving as the ending of Star Driver’s first act, we’ve subsequently witnessed a full-scale invasion of the plot by sisters Mizuno and Marino. Both on the cheerful school adventure side (through Mizuno’s immediate crushing on Takuto) and the ominous Kiraboshi side (through Marino’s ascension as Manticore), the You sisters have been making their presence known with all possible haste. And personally, I’m all for it; Mizuno has already proven herself to be one of the show’s most charming characters, and Marino seems far more interesting than our dear departed Head.

Given the necessity of fully integrating these intruders into the ongoing drama, Star Driver has understandably been dedicating less time to the unveiling of its core mysteries. But even on that front, the reveal that Mizuno is one of the shrine maidens seems to imply that this burden can be abandoned, or perhaps gifted upon another. When Head tired of his caged maiden, he let her go, and she was able to escape the island. Does this mean simply rejecting the island’s doctrine is enough to dispel its hold, or is there something else that binds Wako and Mizuno to their duties? I’m eager to find out, so let’s dive right into the next episode of Star Driver!

Continue reading →

Fall 2022 – Week 9 in Review

Posted on by

Alright folks, gather in, gather in, we’ve got a pile of films to get through and not much time to do it. This week I’ve got a mixed selection of recent horror features and theatrical Naruto presentations, as we charged through not one, not two, but three Shippuden films over the last few days. After the relative disappointment of the first two Shippuden features, I’m happy to report that this batch was much stronger on the whole, with both films three and five standing among the strongest in the overall franchise. That plus the aforementioned horror features kept us pretty busy, though we’re also running distressingly close to Boruto’s most recent episodes. I’m gonna have to come up with a comfort anime replacement soon, but in the meantime, here’s the Week in Review!

Continue reading →

The Demon Girl Next Door S2 – Episode 1

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be embarking on a new leg in a familiar journey, as we check out the second season premiere of The Demon Girl Next Door. Though it was billed as an irreverent genre-savvy comedy, Demon Girl’s first season proved to be far more than that, exploring and critiquing the assumptions of its demon/magical girl dichotomy with uncommon acuity. Though they couldn’t be further apart tonally, Demon Girl actually ended up echoing many of Madoka Magica’s thoughts regarding how magical and demon girls map to society’s compartmentalization of women into either “spotlessly righteous” or “irredeemably fallen” categories, each a cage with its own attendant injustices.

In spite of dabbling in such pointed social commentary, Demon Girl has maintained an irrepressibly positive tone throughout, echoing the indefatigable spirit of its anti-heroine Shamiko. Condemned as a demon girl to be perpetually vilified and defeated, Shamiko has turned lemons into lemonade at every turn, and ultimately become close friends with her “nemesis” Momo. The lessons of a lifetime of vilification – learning to forgive and find pride in yourself, accepting failure as a necessary precursor to success, and so on – have actually equipped her with the ideal tools to mentor her self-hating counterpart, whose own upbringing taught her that if she is less than perfect, she is nothing. Together, the two of them seek a future where magical and demon girls can coexist happily, if only to lessen the complications of their own eventual marriage. Let’s see what madness they get up to in season two!

Continue reading →

Bodacious Space Pirates – Episode 24

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today our crew stand on the brink of a conflict unlike any in recent history, as the disparate pirate community unites in defense of their way of life. Vessels which have for decades been dedicated to entertainment and smuggling will now prep for war, that they might forestall the end of legal piracy. With Marika standing as the young champion of this grand tradition, they will face down a terrifyingly advanced enemy ship, and attest in one voice to the enduring freedom of the stars!

Well, at least, I imagine that’s how things would go if this were a conventional scifi anime. Cathartic faceoffs and decisive battles indeed make for great television spectacle, but this is Bodacious Space Pirates, where history is measured in eras, not inches. It is not just one specific foe that threatens the space pirates; it is the continuous march of capitalism and empire, steadily colonizing the spots where freedom once flourished. Simply defeating this enemy vessel is not enough; if Marika and her compatriots are to survive, they will likely have to reach some accord with the Galactic Empire, to ensure piracy’s continued prosperity. Let’s see how our alliance is shaping up, as we return for another episode of Bodacious Space Pirates!

Continue reading →

Spy x Family – Episode 9

Posted on by

Hello everyone, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. You folks ready for some Spy x Family? I’ve personally been eager to get back the Forgers’ preposterous family drama, and doubly excited given we’re squaring off with a fresh Studio WIT episode. That’s not to say that Cloverworks’ episodes have been bad in any way, but merely that WIT seem regularly determined to overachieve relative to their assignments, pulling off wildly ambitious feats of staging and anime-original sequences like that castle raid just because they can. Even for a more mundane episode like Anya’s entrance at school, dynamic layouts and choice flourishes of animation have helped to elevate Spy x Family’s already-excellent base material.

As for our narrative trajectory, we finished the last episode on one of the show’s first genuine cliffhangers, with Yuri demanding our newlyweds prove just how in love they are. Loid and Yor’s mutual discomfort with lovey-dovey stuff is more than a little improbable, but as long as it keeps facilitating hilarious moments of mutual awkwardness and strained gestures of affection, I’m happy to accept they possess the romantic chops of a pair of middle schoolers. Without further ado, let’s get back to Spy x Family!

Continue reading →

Anne of Green Gables – Episode 13

Posted on by

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today seems like a perfect day to fetch the wagon and set a course for Green Gables, checking in on the continuing misadventures of Anne and her unique family. In the wake of last episode’s brooch fiasco, I expect Anne and her adoptive parents to be closer than ever; having been forced to admit her own error, it appears that Marilla has perhaps embraced just a touch of humility, while also recognizing that her initial suspicions about Anne were entirely unfounded. Anne is not, as claimed, the wickedest girl Marilla has ever met – she is honest and kind and irrepressibly imaginative, and though Marilla may not understand that last virtue, she is just maybe beginning to appreciate it.

As for the production team, this episode will be reuniting us with the storyboards of Seiji Okuda, a regular Takahata/Miyazaki collaborator who also contributed a number of boards to Heidi, Sherlock Hound, and Lupin III, with a script by Anne regular Seijiro Koyama. Koyama traded off scripting duties with Takahata for a number of these early episodes, and with such reliable key staff in attendance, I expect this episode to hew closely to Takahata’s overall vision of the show. Let’s see what awaits us in Anne of Green Gables!

Continue reading →

Ganso Tensai Bakabon – Episode 4

Posted on by

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. You all doing alright today? I’m personally feeling quite fine, as I’ve got the weekend right in front of me and a fresh episode of Ganso Tensai Bakabon on the plate. Charming in its comedy and absolutely jaw dropping in its art design, Bakabon is one of the strangest artifacts of ‘70s anime I’ve come across, overflowing with a level of main staff talent that basically any anime would kill for.

Thirty-odd episodes plus an opening directing by Osamu Dezaki. Art direction by the incomparable Shichiro Kobayashi. Countless other positions filled by key, lasting associates of Oshii, Dezaki, and Studio Ghibli. The more you dig into the show’s staff listing, the more you come across figures like, say, Kazuo Oga, an art designer who’s contributed background art to basically every Ghibli film. Bakabon’s credentials are preposterously impressive, boasting luminaries who’ve elevated decades of the medium’s best productions, and all of them here dedicated to the rambling adventures of a little goblin man and his accommodating family. It’s basically ‘70s Nichijou, making it almost impossible not to love. Let’s see what our gremlin father gets up to next!

Continue reading →