Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We’re finally hitting the warm weather at this point, so I’m happy to be sitting with my windows open and a pile of Evangelion writeups in front of me, all eagerly awaiting their final revisions. It may in retrospect have been psychologically unwise to leave half a dozen deep dives into the mindset of depression and self-hatred all stacked up at the end of my funded projects, but honestly, it’s actually been an absolute pleasure returning to these episodes that still loom so dramatically in my own media development. As it turns out, Evangelion ..read more

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am both eager and apprehensive to return to Wonder Egg Priority, after an episode that at last revealed the original crimes of Acca and Ura-Acca. Like all of Wonder Egg’s malevolent adult villains, the pair saw young women merely as objects built for their entertainment, toys to be roughly handled and discarded when the interest had passed. However, they took this idle fascination a horrifying step further, actually designing the young Frill “just for fun.” The audacity of their crime echoed across their lives, though the two remain ..read more

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am delighted to return to Anne of Green Gables, after far too long away from our precocious young heroine and her fanciful adventures. In the time since our last visit I’ve continued to enjoy as much Takahata as possible, screening both later Ghibli films and Toei Doga classics like Horus, but there’s nothing quite like his beautiful, meditative television work. The World Masterpiece Theater productions remain a singular high point in anime history, and Takahata will likely always be one of my very favorite directors. Anyway, it is del ..read more

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today it is with a heavy heart that I announce we have reached the finale of BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!, and will soon be asked to leave the venue and shuffle our way home. It’s been a poignant, frequently transcendent, and ever-engaging journey with the lost girls, and I’m sad to see our time together drawing to a close. But at least we’ve still got the memories: Anon’s delightfully mercenary recruitment of Tomori, that devastating elaboration of Tomori’s life story, the desperate machinations of our girl Soyo, and the thunderous performances ..read more

Twenty Years Later is the story of João Pedro Teixeira, a leader of Brazil’s rural Peasant Leagues who achieved some notoriety in the early 1960s. Teixeira was vying for more equitable conditions for his town of Sabe’s workers, who were being heinously exploited by the local landowners. Forced to produce cash crops for export instead of self-sustaining food, and constrained within a situation where both their jobs and homes were owned by local barons, Teixeira’s neighbors had no recourse but to come together, using the title of “Peasant League” to avoid the fraught term “union.” This semantic ..read more

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive back into Star Driver, as we dispense with school festival theatrics and surge onwards towards our grand finale. As expected, our last episode featured the cast’s long-awaited festival performance, which turned out to also serve as the vehicle for conveying the Southern Cross legend which set this whole Cybody situation in motion. There were tragic betrayals, heartfelt declarations of love, and even a brief appearance by what seemed to be an actual alien, here briefly controlling Sarina in order to ask Takuto the essent ..read more

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 m ..read more

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been another productive week on my end, as I’ve reduced my outstanding Current Projects to less than a dozen essays and other features, with my article buffer now encompassing more than a month’s worth of drafts. I’ve matched that productivity with a fair portion of off-the-books anime viewing, as we munched through more of Gundam’s supplementary Universal Century projects, as well as anime films both venerable and vestigial. Having watched so many of the early Toei films, I’m now looking to round out my ‘80s animation education, while al ..read more

We begin on an ominous cold open, as Unit 03 is transported from the remains of the US base to Japan, a grim specter lurking within the clouds. The Eva units have never felt exactly comforting; in fact, our very first image of Unit 01 comes as a terrible shock, a monster that our young Shinji is somehow supposed to bend to his will. The arrival of a giant robot, particularly one with a young human pilot, has traditionally been a moment imbued with optimism and excitement, the moment our proud technology rises to rally against the chaotic forces of the universe. But while the angels are certain ..read more

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d take a stroll back to the land of 100 Girlfriends, and see what fresh shenanigans are brewing with Rentaro and his swiftly expanding harem. Our last offered an efficient romance and a preposterously adorable new heroine, as the quiet librarian Shizuka found herself bowled over by Rentaro’s manifold charms. And why not? The dude has clearly got plenty more love to give, as demonstrated through his gallant efforts to allay Shizuka’s troubles with communication. Rentaro’s commitment to aiding Shizuka seems to point towards a ..read more