Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we return to the clusterfuck of emotional torment that is Scum’s Wish, as Hana returns from an alleged “heartbreak trip” designed to help her get over her feelings for her teacher, now that she finally mustered up the courage for her doomed confession. Of course, this is Hana we’re talking about, so that grieving process was here combined with a fresh set of entreaties towards her long-suffering friend Ecchan, who she refused to either let in completely or break cleanly away from. As such, both of them remain stuck in a painful limbo, with Hana promising to “wait until Ecchan is ready” to draw closer, ensuring neither of them can properly move on.

That’s how it tends to go in this lovelorn production. And frankly, speaking of “love” in the context of Scum’s Wish seems inappropriate; for if any of these characters are in love with anything, it is more likely their own egos than their various would-be paramours. Hana loves the feeling of being wanted and cared for, the feeling of possessing another, and the sweet anguish of lacking either; her feelings towards her peers are superficial, but her feelings about those feelings are rich and nourishing, enough to sustain an entire inner universe of imagined intimacy.

To this utterly misguided heroine, seemingly starved for love but in truth starved for perspective, our last episode offered an unexpected guide: her onetime rival Moka, who urged her to take a minute and smell the flowers (or savor the Danish, as the case may be). Hana’s feelings of romantic longing are all-consuming specifically because she has let them consume her, because there is nothing in her life but this desire to be wanted. Hana needs to learn who she actually is on her own, what Hana herself enjoys and cares about, beyond how such interests might affect her relationship with her various would-be soulmates. Let’s find out if Hana can Get A Life as we return to Scum’s Wish!

Continue reading →

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d check back in on the bedraggled stars of Scum’s Wish, who are presumably hard at work doing the most mutually destructive things they can do to each other. Though to be fair, they were actually on the right track going into our last episode, with both Mugi and Hana having resolved to announce their crushes and thereby move past them. Unfortunately, Akane would never turn down such a ripe opportunity for chaos, and thus answered Mugi’s confession by manipulating him into sleeping with her.

That’s all of a course with Scum’s Wish’s usual style, wherein youthful dreams are left to rot into festering obsessions, and every day stacks fresh sorrows upon the old. In the context of Mugi and Hana’s somber perspectives, I actually quite enjoy Akane’s proud “I am going to cause problems on purpose” attitude, a callousness and whimsical cruelty that positions her in a long and illustrious line of bodice-ripping baddies. Akane is a Dear Brother character in a world with no melodrama antibodies, offering a perpetual promise that things could always be worse. Let’s see how her latest crimes play out as we return to Scum’s Wish!

Continue reading →

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today it seemed like the perfect time to return to the tangled drama of Scum’s Wish, as I doubt even Hana’s storming emotions can dampen the glory of this fresh spring day. Though to be fair to our poor girl, it actually seems like she’s finally making some positive personal decisions. Her misguided quest to find satisfaction in the possessive, amoral cruelty of Akane has ended; just as Moca has begun to embrace her more mature instincts, so has Hana remembered that she is still innocent in many ways, still wishing on shooting stars and hoping for a fairy tale romance.

As a result of last episode’s awkward twin dates, both Hana and Mugi have come to a decision: before the summer is out, they will confess their crush to the actual object of their affections. Obviously there is no way those confessions can go well; Hana’s relationship with Kanai is more one of a surrogate little sister than an equal lover, while Akane seems too incapable of empathy to genuinely love anyone. But nonetheless, ripping off the bandaids of their lingering obsessions can only be good for their future relationships, so I can only hope summer doesn’t offer some fresh reason to conceal and marinate in their hopeless feelings. Let’s get to it!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we’d stop back in with Scum’s Wish, wherein Hana continues her death march of causing problems on purpose for basically everyone. “Inspired” by Akane’s gleeful selfishness, Hana has decided that she too will claim anything and everything she wants to, which so far has included Mugi (unfortunately), Ecchan (unwillingly and mostly by accident), and Some Random Dude Akane Fucked (a source of instant regret and immediate take-backs). And what does she have to show for this new venture? You guessed it, a whole bunch of sadness and self-loathing. Who could have guessed!?

From the outside, it is excruciatingly clear that Hana’s current project was misguided from the start. Akane is some kind of sociopathic joy-vulture, finding happiness only in the denial of happiness to others, whereas Hana is simply a mixed-up teenager who doesn’t like herself very much, and thus feels desperate for validation from external sources. Acting like Akane was never going to offer Hana the satisfaction it provides her monstrous instructor, but Hana simply lacks the experience to know that. From her perspective, the only relevant data points are “Akane succeeded in gaining what I desired” and “I believe I am a monster, so I might as well act like one.” She’s conflating the natural insecurity of growing beyond your childhood with whatever unholy motivation fuels Akane, and making some seriously misguided conclusions as a result.

What has become abundantly clear so far is that Hana is unlikely to simply reason her way out of this emotional malaise. She needs a friend who’s not just willing to comfort her, but to actually challenge her; but with all of this show’s other characters wrapped up in their own drama, it’s hard to see any of them playing that role. And in that case, perhaps the right enemy will do in a pinch – so let’s get Moca out here, and maybe have her smack some sense into our poor foolish protagonist. It’s time for Scum’s Wish!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to slink back to the tangled drama of Scum’s Wish, wherein Akane most recently consummated her relationship with Kanai. Of course, that wasn’t the satisfying bit for Akane – she actually finds Kanai profoundly dull, a stuttering mess whose perception of romance doesn’t seem to have changed since he was ten years old. But while Kanai may be a boring person and unfulfilling lover, he is nonetheless Hana’s unerring object of affection, and that makes him worth claiming. Akane isn’t really in a relationship with Kanai at all – she’s in a hate-lationship with Hana, and revealing she had sex with Hana’s crush is about as savory of a payoff as she could hope for.

But hey, at least Akane knows what she wants. As for our original leads, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that their variable baggage precludes any sort of healthy romantic partnership. Hana’s childhood abandonment by her father has left her with an inability to exist comfortably alone, meaning she perpetually seeks validation through physical relationships. In contrast, Mugi’s exploitative middle school relationship means he’s never really comfortable with others, his past girlfriend Mei having taught him to see intimacy as uncomfortable and transactional. It’s just a total mess on all fronts, and while the best solution remains “y’all need therapy,” I imagine Scum’s Wish has something very different in mind. Let’s get to it!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d take a fresh look at Scum’s Wish, wherein Hana most recently consummated her relationship with Ecchan. Of course, Hana doesn’t actually feel anything romantically towards Ecchan – she’s just lonely and horny and confused, driven by the taunting of Akane into whichever arms will hold her. It’s bad business all around, and Hana well understands that this new twist will undoubtedly harm basically all of her personal relations.

And to be honest, I’m perfectly fine with that. Hana is living in a daydream of romantic longing, idolizing her childish fantasy of romance over anything approaching reality. All the mental ink spilled over her feelings for Kanai and Mugi will fade from her consciousness with the end of high school; though she genuinely feels she is wallowing in unending misery, it is merely the broadness of her aperture preventing her from seeing how limited her perspective truly is. That’s part of why I so appreciate the introduction of characters like Akane or Moca, who proudly declare “I am going to cause problems on purpose” and then proceed to do exactly that. Hana doesn’t need Mugi, Ecchan, or Kanai – she needs to get out of her own head and find a hobby or something, and if it takes Akane’s meddling to achieve that, then I guess it’s time for some bad medicine. Let’s get to it!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to the torturous drama of Scum’s Wish, wherein basically everyone is having a lousy time not being with the one they want. Our misguided leads started unhappy and have only gotten worse, with their preposterous hopes for a “relationship of surrogates” predictably falling apart the moment it began.

Though they are united under the vague umbrella of each wanting someone they can’t have, it’s already clear that what Hana and Mugi want from each other is quite different. It seems Hana is beginning to realize the impossibility of getting together with Kanai; having observed Ecchan’s own hopeless crush, she now sees the emotional burden her desires are placing on others. If not for Akane’s presumed infidelity driving her forward, she’d likely be happy to honestly date Mugi in a totally healthy, non-displaced-affection sort of way.

On the other hand, Mugi probably shouldn’t be dating anyone right now. It’s clear that his relationship with Mei messed him up pretty badly, with her push for sexual contact leaving him uncomfortable with any sort of physical relationship. What Mugi actually needs is a therapist, but this is anime, and so presumably those feelings will be synthesized into chaos by the trauma-to-drama pipeline. That’s the shit we’re here for, so let’s batten down the hatches and get ready for a storm as we return to the world of Scum’s Wish!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re diving back into the thorny drama of Scum’s Wish, a show whose second episode was kind enough to answer basically all my complaints about its premiere. After the show’s first episode presented the world as conceived by Hana’s melodramatic mindscape, the second was quick to puncture her bubble, complicating the situation with the introduction of Moca and Ecchan. With a strong social irritant like Moca in the mix, Hana and Mugi are both revealing new facets of their personalities, becoming more convincingly realized with their every argument.

Meanwhile, Ecchan seems like an emotional disaster area in her own right, and is blitzkrieging her way into the drama lips-first. Hana hasn’t demonstrated romantic feelings for anyone but Kanai, but given her feelings for Kanai are a childish sort of puppy-love in the first place, it’s hard to say where her story will turn. Both Hana and Mugi are reveling in adolescent fantasies of idealized, “destined” romances, and both of them are in for some hard lessons as they develop into their young adult selves.

When we’re young, we treat every romantic event and feeling as iconic and significant, because we benefit from the rush of novelty and the absence of experience. Currently, each of our leads believe their crushes are the only choices for them, because they have been the only choices up until now. But with other suitors intruding on both of them, the insubstantiality of “destiny” will make itself known soon enough. The question then becomes, with so much of their identity wrapped up in their infatuations, who are Hana and Mugi when you set those feelings aside? I’m eager to see our leads grapple with these questions, so let’s get right to the action!

Continue reading →

Alright Hachiman, how are we doing this? With Yukino and Iroha’s prom under assault by Yukimom, Hachiman has decided the best course of action is to make a second prom, thereby shifting the active question from “should a prom exist” to “which prom should we choose.” Then, by ensuring his own prom is an inferior possibility, he can surreptitiously ensure Yukino’s prom goes forward as planned.

It’s an extremely Hachiman plan, in a variety of ways. Hachiman is accustomed to circumventing the arguments presented by his opponents, or even his allies. Where they see problems with one clear trajectory of resolution, he looks more broadly, and spies ways that a problem can be resolved without even confronting its central variable. So it went with the resolution of Tobe’s crush, as well as Rumi’s social problems – but of course, both of those solutions were stop-gaps, rather than lasting resolutions. And beyond this familiar vein of tactics, Hachiman is also banking on his most reliable solution: making himself (or his prom, in this case) the monster, thereby drawing all the fire from whoever he’s attempting to save.

Basically all of Hachiman’s friends have expressed their frustration with this approach, whether it’s Hayato’s “why is this the only way you know how to do things,” Yukino’s “I hate your methods,” or Yui’s tearful “you can’t keep hurting yourself for others.” It’s an approach reflective of his self-hatred, his inability to value himself even for the sake of those who love him. But Hachiman has grown a great deal since the last time he employed these methods, and this time, there’s a key distinction: it is not Hachiman himself, but this prom-avatar he’s creating, that will become the target of derision. If Hachiman can maintain the effectiveness of his methods while removing the martyrdom element, he’ll have taken a huge step forward into adulthood, maturing while retaining his fundamental self. Let’s see what he’s up to!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be diving back into Scum’s Wish, the Masaomi Andou-directed adaptation of Mengo Yokoyari’s thorny adolescent drama. So far, the show has offered plenty of Andou and plenty of drama, as high schoolers Hana and Mugi pine after the crushes of their childhood, while consoling themselves with the bodies of each other. It’s a deeply unhealthy state of affairs, a fragile disaster waiting to happen, and I’m eager to see it all come tumbling down.

More immediately, though, I’m mostly looking for this episode to add some distinctive human texture to our four leads. So far they’ve largely been defined by their romantic feelings, which doesn’t really tell us much about them specifically; we know Hana and Kanai clung to each other as a result of their missing parents, but that’s about it as far as character motivation is concerned. What we might need is some general group activity or event, something for each character to react to in their own way, and thus establish their personalities outside of the context of their romantic feelings. That’s my main narrative hope, but either way, I’m looking forward to munching on more of Andou’s delicious compositions. Let’s get to it!

Continue reading →