Fall 2026 – Week 3 in Review - Ai Animes 🤖

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. My march through the year’s anime highlights continued this week, as I ran through the charming throwback Goodbye, Lara. I’m thinking my next investigations will concern either Sparks of Tomorrow or the spring season’s Nippon Sangoku, but I’m certainly open to other pitches regarding this year’s bountiful productions. Perhaps A Hundred Scenes of Awajima? I initially overlooked that one, but learning it came from the author of Wandering Son has definitely piqued my interest. Anyway, I’ve clearly got plenty of work ahead of me, but there are far worse problems than having too much good anime to sort through. And rest assured, I have not let this deluge of animation prevent me from watching altogether too many goddamn movies. Let’s get to it!

First up this week was The Burrowers, an ‘08 western-horror mashup centered around the mysterious disappearance of an entire family of Dakota Territory homesteaders. Suspecting they were abducted by Native Americans, a rescue party sets out to save them, only to swiftly erupt into acrimony and division regarding their tactics and trajectory. Eventually, the dwindling party realizes there are worse things in the darkness than their fellow men; things that slither and burrow in the soil, hungry for unwary would-be heroes.

My assumption going into The Burrowers was that it would essentially be “cowboys versus graboids,” offering similar sundry pleasures to your average creature feature. To my surprise and delight, the film turned out to be far more of a classic revisionist western, employing its talented cast to interrogate various ideals of western masculinity, and relishing in the psychological breakdown of its leads as the assumptions of civilization and mankind’s domination over the wilderness are steadily stripped away.

There’s still plenty of traditional horror pleasures to be found here, with the titular terrors’ unique methods of paralyzing and “preparing” their meals echoing the don’t-wanna-think-about-it brutality of a spider’s web, and sturdy effects work by Roger Corman acolyte Robert Hall. But in its cynicism, cinematic sweep, and pointed character studies, The Burrowers offers something more bleak and unsettling than creatures that go bump in the night, offering a punchline that reaffirms mankind will forever be the greatest of monsters.

We then checked out Demon House, a 2018 faux-documentary by writer/director/star Zak Bagans, the host of the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures. The film concerns Bagans’ investigation of the history and nature of the “Ammons haunting” house, which had received some degree of media attention four years prior. Bagans interviews everyone he can get his hands on, offers some cheesy reenactments of particularly savory haunting details, and ultimately spends a night in the house himself, eager to make contact with whatever demon roommates deign to show up.

There’s not a whole lot of meat on this bone, and Bagans himself is frankly ridiculous; his credulity and somber delivery of each new coincidence calls to mind an unholy fusion of Criss Angel and Garth Marenghi, which doesn’t do much to sell the alleged malevolence of our demon house. Nonetheless, I appreciate the breadth of his investigative pursuits here, and there’s definitely some fun to be found in the feature’s breathless hyping of each spooky noise and weird shadow they encounter. Noroi this is obviously not, but if you’re acclimated to the mild, inconclusive implications of this wider genre, you’ll likely be neither surprised nor disappointed.

We then checked out Lily C.A.T., a concise horror feature written and directed by Hisayuki Toriumi, with monster designs by goddamn Yoshitaka Amano and human designs by Yasuomi Umetsu. The film centers on a crew sent on a twenty-year cold sleep mission to survey a new planet for mining, who discover upon arrival that their craft possesses two mysterious stowaways, alongside a bacterial force that threatens the lives of all on board.

Look, there’s no avoiding the elephant in the airlock: Toriumi clearly set out to make Alien as an anime, and that is precisely what he did. From the alternately clinical and industrial aesthetic of the ship to the progression of threats to the inclusion of a Jones-alike and even the style, purpose, and very name of the crew’s guiding AI, this is very much Ridley Scott’s Alien, with perhaps a dash of Carpenter’s The Thing in terms of monster design.

Fortunately, both Alien and The Thing are unimpeachable classics, and Lily C.A.T. offers a fine interpretation of their greatest hits. I was particularly impressed with how gracefully the film balanced three separate conspiracies, artfully dancing between questions regarding the crew’s impostors, the AI guiding them, and the alien hitchhiker. There are far worse sins than a lack of originality, and Toriumi’s tribute to Alien is a compelling riff on a perfect feature. 

Alongside my film viewings, I also caught up on last season’s Goodbye, Lara, the anime-original fifteenth anniversary project for studio Kinema Citrus. Directed by Takushi Koide, the series offers a modern retelling/revision of The Little Mermaid, centered on the mermaid princess Lara. After turning to foam at the conclusion of the original tale, Lara awakens two hundred years later, where she is tasked with finding “true love” in the modern world and restoring the light to her people.

Goodbye, Lara dazzles from the start with its effectively nostalgic art design, calling back to the distinct pleasures of painted cels with bold colors, flat shading, and charmingly ‘90s-reminiscent character designs. It’s quite a neat trick; beyond the striking, self-evident beauty of the show’s aesthetic holism, it also serves to make the show feel like something of a time capsule, the animated equivalent of cracking open a classic tome of beloved fairy tales.

Of course, the production isn’t content merely to recreate the dubious thematic implications of its source material – in fact, the show is most fundamentally an interrogation of the idea of “true love,” consistently demonstrating both the intangible superficiality of such an idea, as well as the many forms of love that actually make for a rich, active personal life. The show is at its best when it’s celebrating such feelings, and taking advantage of its subtle, well-observed approach to character writing.

On the other hand, the production is far shakier when leaning more directly into its source material, and attempting to explicate the various mechanics and histories of its aquatic worldbuilding. I don’t know if this is necessarily an issue of having just twelve episodes; frankly, it felt like several were wasted even at this length, as Lara traveled in familiar circles while the show busied itself furnishing the backgrounds. Either way, most of the drama related to Lara’s own family felt less considered or tangible than its surface world struggles, making for an unfocused second half that only just swerved into a reasonably appropriate conclusion.

But complaints aside, Goodbye Lara on the whole proved consistently charming, often quite thoughtful, and uniquely beautiful throughout. I’ve been greatly enjoying this recent trend towards cel-aping art design, and Lara offers another fine example, demonstrating all the distinct aesthetic pleasures we’ve surrendered to the primacy of digital production. Most importantly, its cast felt alive enough for me to already miss them, full of tiny private hopes and defined by their imperfect ability to express those feelings. Love is truly a many-faceted thing.

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