Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We’ve been keeping busy this week, as we continued to munch through Aura Battler Dunbine, and also screened the entirety of the live-action One Piece’s second season. I think we’re all a little understandably hesitant about live-action anime adaptations, but god damnit, they’ve actually nailed this one. The tone, the energy, the costumes, the characters; this feels less like a pale imitation than a loving revision, drawing on thirty years of One Piece history to make a concise, cohesive version of the story that still hits and often even expands on the pleasures of the original. The casting remains superb, the Straw Hats have largely settled into their personalities, and the emotional gut-punches of the early Grand Line have been preserved in full. I’m frankly astonished by the production’s combination of trust in its base material and willingness to boldly reorganize; this is a real “whoa, two cakes” situation, and I am savoring the flavor.
One Piece aside, we of course munched through our usual assortment of cinematic spectacles. So let’s get right on that, as we run down the latest Week in Review!