Tag Archives: Anime

The Fire Hunter – Episode 4

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to the ominous, intriguing world of The Fire Hunter, a world where Prometheus’ gift has turned against us, and even proximity to an open flame will turn human beings into ashes. Stranded within isolated villages, the last embers of humanity eke out a desperate existence, each community an essential link in a chain bound by forest-traversing trains. And now even that existence seems threatened, as greater and more terrible Fire Fiends challenge the few vessels left to humanity, and curses spread through the cowering villagers.

And of course, all that’s only the trouble faced by one of our two protagonists; over on Koushi’s side, we’ve also learned that the current governmental order is on the brink of collapse, that violent separatists are preparing for a major attack, and that anyone who’s in the know is already stockpiling weapons for the coming chaos. The Fire Hunter has constructed a world as evocative as it is fragile, and I am profoundly curious as to how Touko will find her place within it (or even survive the next five minutes, for that matter). Let’s get to it!

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Yuri is My Job! – Episode 12

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we return once more to Cafe Liebe, with Blume elections settled and Schwesterns firmly solidified. It’s been a bumpy road to this point, as the navigation of personas inherent in our themed cafe has forced basically all of our “students” to reckon with the performances they already adopt in their own lives. Through the ornate rituals of Cafe Liebe, they have found new ways to express their own feelings, whether through embracing its time-honored artifice or realizing how their true intentions stray from its formula.

Cafe Liebe encourages intimacy up to a specific predetermined threshold; there is no love within its walls, only a performance of longing calibrated to the expectations of the crowd. And while you could rightfully argue that media of liberation becoming its own convention is a betrayal of those seeking genuine free expression, it is equally clear that these precise restrictions allowed characters like Kanoko and Mitsuki to feel safe within its walls, cushioned within a world of limits and language they could fully understand. Just like the formative dramas it is based on, Cafe Liebe is a sanctuary of adolescence, a cushioned world where they can play-act the feelings that frighten them, and thereby gain the confidence to embrace their true selves. Let’s see how their journey continues as we return to Yuri is My Job!

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Monogatari Off/Monster Season – Episode 6.5

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning back to Monogatari’s wandering supplementary stories, as Nadeko’s adventures in identity-forming give way to some kind of sprawling Shinobu saga. As a pair, the two arcs seem likely to illustrate the far poles of Monogatari’s fables. Though it involved a great number of magical doppelgangers, Nadeko’s story was ultimately all about her personal psychology, grappling with the fundamental question of how our evolving senses of self square with the ostensibly stable trajectory of a specific life goal. By embracing the legitimacy and lingering truth of her old personas, Nadeko committed herself to moving forward without rejecting the past, finding personal insight and even community in her past selves.

In contrast, Shinobu’s stories are often Monogatari’s most fanciful, leaning into alternate realities, supernatural threats, and generally external conflict in all its manifestations. It seems appropriate then that we are opening with what is billed as “A Cruel Fairy Tale,” the latest of Monogatari’s frequent story-in-story digressions, complete with its own studio, adaptation team, and presumably novel aesthetic. If there’s one thing Isin loves more than stories about people, it’s stories about stories. Let’s get to it!

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Blue Reflection Ray – Episode 11

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today is certain to be a moment of reckoning, as we return to Blue Reflection Ray with Mio’s promised reprieve just now coming to its end. Having vowed to rewrite the past and thus provide her doomed world with a future, Mio is prepared to do whatever it takes to protect her sister Hiori. Meanwhile, Shino waits hungrily in the shadows, plotting to turn that same sister into the despairing fuel for her ambitions, with Mio’s demise likely serving as the catalyst.

It’s all a satisfying muddle of desperate hopes and brewing betrayals, lent some welcome emotional weight through the clear merit of Mio’s challenge to the Blue Reflectors. “Embrace your trauma in order to overcome it” is not a universally applicable solution, particularly for someone like Nina, who has not only suffered more acutely than any of our heroic leads, but who also lacks the support network that cushioned characters like Miyako through their recovery. And beyond this, for all we’ve learned about the reflectors, they still appear to be appendages of a system we do not understand, designed for purposes that remain wholly unclear. Thus our heroes enter the day of reckoning with no plan, no coherent philosophy, and no understanding of their own purpose. Let’s get to it!

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Shoushimin Series – Episode 4

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to Shoushimin Series, as our two mysterious youngsters attempt to crack the mystery of Osanai’s stolen bike. Having tracked Sakagami to a driving school on the outskirts of town, Jogoro feels certain the case can be solved with only a few crucial leaps in logic. Of course, accomplishing such a feat would require returning to his old self, and abandoning the pursuit of normalcy that has defined his bond with Osanai.

That in turn brings us to my own subject of fascination: the sharp-edged true selves underlying our leads’ humble, mild-mannered facades. Jogoro’s explosion at Kengo offered our expected and extremely welcome articulation of his anxieties, as he reflected bitterly on how his curiosity and intelligence had only isolated him from his peers, who disliked being examined and “solved” like experimental subjects. And Osanai seems similarly uncomfortable with the ambiguous, ephemeral “human element,” seeing in the impositions of her peers an unresolvable equation, a debt that can only be cleared through retribution.

Both of them are too pure and intense for the thoughtless niceties of high school; both of them have clearly seen in the eyes of their peers a recognition of the remorseless scientific instruments they see in themselves, and have retreated from this negative mutual understanding towards the fuzzy, frictionless malaise of self-conscious normalcy. But the masks slip with their every step forward, and with even Kengo now demanding Jogoro embrace his asshole self, their maintenance of this charade seems at its end. While Hyouka championed sincerity and proud self-expression, Shoushimin Series asks “what if our sincere, earnest self is a creature the world would hate?” Let’s see how they fare!

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Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – Episode 13

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to announce we’re returning to the rambling adventures of Frieren and her companions, as they continue north towards the land of the dead. I admit, I may have kinda-sorta written ahead of my commissioned episodes previously, meaning it’s been a couple months in real time since I last checked in with Frieren. But that actually seems perfectly aligned with the show’s own timetable – for just as I was bunkering in for winter during the last couple episodes, so too am I now anticipating the first days of spring, staring out at the melting snow just as Frieren and company tramp through the same.

Frieren’s mastery of atmosphere and sense of tangible place have always been its strongest features, but our last episode complimented them with some poignant Stark-centric reflections, using the legends of both Himmel and Stark’s brother Stoltz to interrogate the measure of great deeds and worth of a life. The actual reality of Himmel facing the sword in the stone was immaterial; he chose not to define himself as the hero who failed, and his successful commitment to his own values led history to remember him as such. Similarly, while Stoltz was renowned as a warrior so gallant he slew foes without tarnishing his white cloak, what Stark remembers are the moments he willingly knelt in the mud, ensuring his brother felt safe and loved in his presence. Conducting yourself so as to theoretically impress future generations is a fool’s game; history will reveal or conceal as it will, and what truly matters is how you are remembered by those you cared about, by the people who walked beside you and knew the truth of your heart.

With Stark newly assured that those he journeys with care about him just as his brother did, we continue onward into the vast unknown. To the north!

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Summer 2025 – Week 9 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. With The Owl House nearly completed, my house has been casting about for some reliable replacement binging, and ultimately settled on another attempt at Jujutsu Kaisen. This has sadly been as disappointing as the first; Jujutsu Kaisen is a hodgepodge of ideas stolen from Naruto, Bleach, and Hunter x Hunter, with no understanding of what made any of those ideas work in the first place. The characters are one-note, the world has no substance, and the fights are preposterous Calvinball nonsense, with combatants inventing new aspects of their abilities constantly, meaning there is never anything resembling tension or a coherent contrast of powers. Gojo is likely the worst offender – his power is basically “I can do anything so long as I use the word ‘infinite’ while describing it,” and I’m thus frankly relieved that he’s found himself stuck in a box for our current arc. Anyway, we’ve fortunately had better luck with our recent film selections, so let’s break that shit down in the Week in Review!

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The Summer Hikaru Died – Episode 2

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are returning to the secluded foothills of Japan, to a town where shared history is etched on every tree and stone, and where a veneer of peaceful coexistence hides a rot so deep the stench is unbearable. Yes, we are returning to The Summer Hikaru Died, Ryohei Takeshita’s skillful adaptation of Mokumokuren’s intriguing manga, wherein our protagonist Yoshiki is grappling not just with the death of his best friend, but also with the continued presence of a creature directing his friend’s corpse, offering a pantomime of Hikaru’s old personality that every so often reveals the ravenous, bestial presence beneath.

So yeah, that’s quite a heavy load for a teenager, and so far this production is skillfully juggling a variety of threads – Yoshiki’s complex feelings towards both his absent friend and that friend’s replacement, the languorous atmosphere of rural Japan in the summer, the sense of perpetual surveillance intrinsic to small towns, and the occult/animalistic nature of Hikaru’s new pilot, a creature that seems to emphasize how we are all ultimately beasts, meant to consume and be consumed in turn. That the production is managing to successfully evoke all of these themes and feelings is a credit to Takeshita’s economic direction; Hikaru’s animation resources are clearly limited, but so much is being evoked through sound design, staging, and lighting choices that the lack of fluidity feels natural, one more echo of this town’s sleepy, stagnant atmosphere. Good horror is a precious rarity in anime, and Hikaru is so far proving an exemplary new addition to the canon. Let us return to the mountains!

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Please Put Them On, Takamine-san – Episode 1

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re embarking on a new adventure, as we check out the first episode of the spring season’s Please Put Them On, Takamine-san. I’m frankly not sure what we’re in for here; by all accounts the production appears to be your garden variety adolescent romcom, with the overtly horny twist of a heroine who can rewrite reality by changing her underwear.

Presumably this device will initially be used to enforce a kind of unwilling intimacy on our leads, the classic “only you know my secret” tension that inspires the initial bonds of stories ranging from Bakemonogatari to My Monster Secret. And of course, as a general device, this sort of Groundhog’s Day time reversal almost inevitably facilitates themes of learning to live in the moment, to see mistakes as happy accidents, and no longer fret about seeking the “perfect path” through life. But what’s the point in speculating when we can find out for ourselves? Let’s get to it!

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Apocalypse Hotel – Episode 1

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re checking out a fresh spring production that earned a pile of positive buzz, as we explore the first episode of Apocalypse Hotel. The show is an anime-original production (always a good sign) set in a post-apocalyptic world, where humanity has disappeared and only robots tend to our crumbling monuments, including our protagonist and current hotel manager.

It’s really no surprise we’ve been receiving a glut of apocalyptic media lately. Even a cursory glance at global politics will demonstrate that our present world order is in its endgame, and that if humanity survives both this reactionary social moment and our climate crisis, our societies will look significantly different than their current late-capitalist formation. Popular art reflects the psychological consequences of this understanding; some choose exodus from an intolerable reality (isekai), some cling to nostalgia (endless franchises and remakes), and some seek peace with a future that might not include humanity at all, as foretold in apocalyptic travelogues like Girls’ Last Tour and Kemurikusa.

The third of these perspectives seems the most clear-headed to me personally, and I’m thus happy to be embarking on another journey that accepts humanity might not be here much longer. As for our staff, director Kana Shundo appears to be taking a leap from primarily key animation-focused roles, while series composer Shigeru Murakoshi has written extensively for shows ranging from GARO to Zombie Land Saga. The team in general seems well-tuned for a character acting-heavy slice of life/comedy, and the show’s reputation seems to have borne that out. Let’s get to it!

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