Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d check back in on the drama of Blue Reflection Ray, on the precipice of our first formal magical girl battle. With Miyako’s life hanging in the balance, blue and red Reflectors are squaring off in a kaleidoscopic nightmare realm, intent on either saving Miyako from her self-hatred or conditioning her into a pure avatar of suffering. Can Hiori handle these foes, and will Ruka rise to the challenge and join her!?

Well, probably, though I imagine we’ll be in for some bitter struggles on the road. Personally, I’m intrigued both to see how this show handles a full-on battle, and also just eager to get back to the banter between our leads, particularly if Miyako’s about to join them. Her bitter snark seems like the perfect counterpoint to Ruka’s timidity and Hiori’s false cheer, and I’d love for her to encourage Hiori to really feel mad about her unhappy family life. The show appears to be establishing a binary of positive and negative emotional powers that seems ripe for immediate deconstruction, and with our leads’ circumstances largely established, I’m eager to see more of the show’s actual hand. Let’s get to it!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d check back in on Blue Reflection Ray, after a first episode that offered us a bounty of fantastical inventions and an impressive spread of new characters. Fortunately, both the show’s worldbuilding and character beats so far have proven familiar enough to make for an easy on-boarding; we’ve got our core contrast of the somber Ruka and energetic Hiori, we’ve got a second layer of magical girl mayhem seemingly linked to these gemstone rings, and we’ve got some ambiguous antagonists with a similar interest in these would-be magical girls, seemingly intent on claiming their energy before they can “bloom” into their true powers.

Alongside all of that relatively conventional worldbuilding, we’ve also got some mysteries to resolve regarding the prior generation of magical girls, and what their fates imply for our current heroines. It seems clear that Hiori’s sister was a Reflector in the past, and that her absence still hangs heavily over Hiori. Additionally, the final moments of the first episode seemed to imply an obvious path of development for Ruka as well: learning from Hiori’s gallant example, and becoming a Reflector strong enough to protect her in turn, thereby filling the role of emotional pillar that her sister used to provide. With our loose predictions set, let’s see what actually awaits us!

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Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re embarking on a brand new adventure, as we check out the first episode of the recent magical girl drama Blue Reflection Ray. The show is apparently a spin-off of the 2017 RPG Blue Reflection, which I recall a fair number of my friends enjoyed back on release, as well as a precursor to the franchise’s second game, Blue Reflection: Second Light. Aside from that, I confess I know next to nothing about either the games or show’s actual content; my general impression is “magical girls and intimate drama in a modern urban setting,” but that’s about all I’ve got.

As for the show’s production team, director Risako Yoshida has risen through the key animation grind to arrive at consistent directorial positions within the last five years or so, meaning we’ll hopefully be appreciating their animator’s eye for staging drama. Meanwhile, this is actually series composer Akiko Waba’s first full composition, having previously written scattered episodic scripts for a variety of productions (not too many notables, though A Lull in the Sea was probably effective training for this sort of story). Though it technically possesses the “source material” of the first game, as an anime-original narrative, I’m hoping the series will embrace the unique opportunities of shows that aren’t beholden to source expectations. Anime-originals are preposterously over-represented among the best anime for a variety of reasons most people are too polite to go into, so with any luck that’ll hold true for Blue Reflection Ray. With this admittedly limited context to go on, let’s check out the first episode!

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