Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It seems we’ve arrived at the year’s penultimate Week in Review, and I’m still hard at work catching up on the year’s top shows. I’m only a couple episodes back on Chainsaw Man, and have finally started Orbital Children, but I’m probably gonna have to schedule some sort of all-day marathon for catching up on Mob Psycho 100. Oh dear me, three straight hours of inventive art design and gorgeous animation, what a burden. My own good problems aside, we also munched through a respectable pile of films this week, with our choices ranging from noir classics to some of the most unintentionally hilarious slices of propaganda I’ve ever witnessed. Let’s dive right into the Week in Review!
Tag Archives: Film
Fall 2022 – Week 11 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’m currently in the midst of cataloging all the anime I watched this year for my end-of-year article, and in the process realizing that hey, I actually watched a lot of anime this year! I’ve kept current on One Piece, munched through most of Boruto, checked out some old classics, and even watched a few seasonal productions. And crucially, I haven’t really been watching with any sort of system in mind – like in my early years of anime enthusiasm, I’ve just been grabbing what seems interesting and taking a look. With the preview guide long behind me, I no longer need to care what percentage of a season appears watchable to me; I can just watch the cream of the crop, and leave the demarcation of seasonal cruft to less fortunate souls. You all can look forward to that post coming in a couple weeks, but in the meantime, this week offered its own set of cinematic attractions. Let’s break ‘em down!
Fall 2022 – Week 10 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Surveying the takeaways of this last week in films, I am forced to admit that this is indeed something of a Garbage Week, boasting three separate films that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. That’s alright, though; the release of all those Sight & Sound polls also led me to one of the best films I’ve seen this year, so hopefully that will somewhat balance the selection. I’ve also been rushing to catch up on all the key anime I’ve missed – I’ve raced through both Chainsaw Man and My Hero Academia, and am having a great time with each of them. The work never ends, so I’ll leave off here for now, and let you all enjoy my latest assorted movie gripes. Let’s get to it!
Fall 2022 – Week 9 in Review
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!
Fall 2022 – Week 6 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It seems we’ve reached the halfway point of the fall season, though to be honest, most of the anime I’ve watched this season has just been more Boruto. What can I say, the Naruto world is actually pretty compelling when Kishimoto isn’t writing it, and Boruto hits with a special combination of slice of life shenanigans, grounded family drama, and occasional action flourishes that make it easy to munch through ten or twenty episodes. Of course, I’m also keeping up with One Piece and The Witch From Mercury, so I’m not entirely out of the airing anime loop, but seriously: if you liked Naruto conceptually but were disappointed by its actual storytelling, I would urge you to try out his son’s adventures. That aside, this has also been a fertile week in non-anime media, so let’s break down some fresh stories in the Week in Review!
Fall 2022 – Week 5 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I come to you equipped with ghouls, goblins, and tales of rapturous fantasy, as is only fitting for this most Halloweeny of weeks. Yes, I know Halloween was on Monday, but that’s still closer to this Week in Review than the previous one, so that’s what I’m conceptually going with here. Regardless, this has been a relatively fruitful week of film screenings, including classics of both horror and romance, as well our continuing adventures through the Naruto film canon. Back on the home front, I’ve also been gearing up for the climax to act one of my house’s D&D campaign, where I’m thinking their last opponent might turn out to be an In The Hills, The Cities-style colossus of melded human flesh. Too much? Maybe too much. Still tinkering with that one, I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, let’s break down some films!
Fall 2022 – Week 4 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’ve got a somewhat lopsided collection of thoughts for you all, with plenty of the requisite horror findings, but also an impressively terrible fantasy film, as well as the final must-watch production of this exceedingly generous fall season. That’s right, I did indeed check out Bocchi the Rock, and must admit you were all correct in saying I really ought to do so. Turns out when you team up a dynamite production team with some genuinely witty source material, great things are likely to happen. We’ll get to Bocchi soon enough, but let’s first start off with some gleefully sleazy horror sequels, before we wind our way back to animation. It’s time to burn down the latest Week in Review!
Fall 2022 – Week 2 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Look, I know last time that I mentioned I’d be watching some seasonal anime, and that is still absolutely going to happen, but today I nonetheless must admit I only bear gifts of movie reviews. But hey, some of those movies are anime! That still counts, right? We’ve got some Takahata, we’ve got some apocryphal Naruto adventures, and we’ve got the usual scattering of live-action productions, this time including a double feature of “what if fate was kind of an asshole” films. I’ll demand my housemates screen the requisite quantities of chainsaw men and mercurian witches shortly, but in the meantime, please enjoy this peace offering of random film thoughts. Let’s get to it!
Fall 2022 – Week 1 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. The fall season has officially begun, and we’re already being treated to a deluge of genuinely intriguing seasonal contenders. The Witch from Mercury was already on my radar, but hearing that Hiroshi Kobayashi is going full Kiznaiver and Ichiro Okouchi is going full Utena has me even more excited to check it out. Without a feature film draining resources, My Hero Academia is looking more visually impressive than it has in quite some time, while I can’t even guess just how impressive Mob and One Punch Man’s debuts will be. It’s an exciting time in seasonal anime, and I’m frankly tempted to emerge from my slumber and embrace the weekly grind once more. Not right now, of course; I still haven’t seen anything at the moment, but I imagine I’ll have some debut thoughts ready for next week. For now, let’s explore a fresh set of feature films, as we burn down the latest Week in Review!
Saiyuki
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’d like to once again take a look back at the classic Toei Doga film catalog, this time exploring their third film feature Saiyuki (or “Alakazam the Great!” in international releases). As with Hakujaden, the animation of Yasuji Mori will undoubtedly serve as one of the highlights of this film; Mori handled all of the animal animation in Hakujaden, and in Saiyuki, I’m told his sequence of one character collapsing in the snow stands as a highlight of the overarching Toei Doga catalog. Mori also serves as animation director on this film, a testament to his utter cruciality in defining Toei Doga’s style. And of course, Hakujaden’s other key animator Akira Daikubara will also be making key contributions, presumably once again focusing on the film’s human characters.
Alongside Mori and Daikubara, this film features animation from a young upstart at Toei Doga, a man whose vivid contributions to their previous film (his first work as key animator) led to an increased role in Saiyuki. That man is Yasuo Otsuka, an incomparable animator who’d go on to become a key mentor for Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, and who here is already demonstrating his singular approach to larger-than-life animation through Saiyuki’s impressive action sequences.
Like Hakujaden, Saiyuki is an adaptation of a classic Chinese story, illustrating the familiar Journey to the West. I’m guessing you already know the tale well, but as a brief summary, Journey to the West centers on a powerful yet mischievous monkey named Son Goku (yes, you’ve probably seen one or two riffs on this narrative), who as punishment for abusing his powers is tasked with accompanying a monk as guardian on the titular journey. The two gather more allies along the way, and eventually Goku grows into a genuine hero – it’s a brief narrative and accommodating template, allowing for any number of twists or embellishments depending on the teller’s whims. I’m eager to see how these legends of anime handle the tale, so let’s not waste another moment, and get started on Saiyuki!