nightshadekait

This review mentions sexual assault, self-harm, and suicide. I have rewatched Wonder Egg Priority multiple times in an effort to organize my conflicting feelings towards it. On one hand, it has beautiful visuals, an intriguing aura, and a great first couple episodes. On the other hand, it has shallow concepts, a messy narrative, a lack in direction, problematic messages, poor character development, exploitation of sensitive themes, and a failed execution of ideas. Yeah, the cons definitely outweigh the pros with this one. Wonder Egg markets itself as an odd yet beautiful dream of self-acceptance full of imagery and symbolism. The first scene of the anime introduces usto our protagonist, Ai, in the middle of the street when a strange voice taking form of a firefly brings her to an underground arcade and gives her an egg. Breaking the egg transports Ai to a surreal world that slowly reveals itself as a danger zone where she is tasked to protect a person called a “Wonder” from a creature called a “Wonder Killer”, a representation of the person’s struggles or trauma. Ai then meets friends who also take part on their own journeys to defeat Wonder Killers. Every character has their own backstory and a set of convictions that affect how they act and fight against trauma. It’s a very original and mysterious Ikuhara-esque concept that aims to tackle how we overcome our issues. But with each episode, the anime gets more and more problematic until it completely falls apart. One of Wonder Egg’s main fallbacks is its use of imagery. Ironically, imagery is the whole appeal of the show and the reason why I admittedly had high hopes for it. But over time, it got repetitive, and I realized that it was due to the constricted nature by which imagery in Wonder Egg is presented. The wonder killers (victim’s trauma) are always actual beings. There’s the abusive teacher, the abusive teacher #2, the abusive coach, and so on. Not only is this the same thing over and over again, but I find this pattern problematic because when we talk about sensitive topics like self-harm and suicide in real life, trauma doesn’t always take form of one specific event or attacker. We can see how this issue affects the story in one of the episodes that focuses on Momoe, a tomboyish girl learning to deal with society’s ideas of gender and appearance. Fitting with the theme, the person Momoe was tasked to save in that episode was a non-conforming girl who identified as a boy. This is great. Having Momoe pair up with someone who is also subjected to society’s standards is a very thematic plot choice that allows the opportunity for Momoe to maybe learn something about herself from their encounter. I thought, “Cool, so this whole dream sequence is going to focus on how they accept themselves despite societal pressures.” Perhaps the wonder killer would be a representation of society that they could beat together. But no. Instead, the Wonder Killer was a rapist… which I found completely random. Yes, rape is an issue. But is it a good issue to poorly tie into the topic of gender norms for no deep reason? Absolutely not. Why suddenly insert a rapist when the topic isn’t about dealing with rape? Doing this just feels like the show is forcibly inserting rapists everywhere. It also feels a lot like the show is just digressing from the initial topic at hand. If Wonder Egg wants to tackle challenging societal norms, then the issue should be society itself. But this anime consistently uses one specific attacker to encompass the whole issue. In doing this, it only focuses on face-value encounters and makes it seem like the entire problem lies within just one superficial enemy or trauma. It is a wasted opportunity that hinders Wonder Egg from using imagery in a broader way. Had they used the dream sequence in order to symbolize society and its issues as a whole, the anime would have better succeeded in connecting to the bigger picture. Instead, Wonder Egg’s imagery is too narrow, relying on a single person to put the blame on. Object symbolism in this anime doesn't come with much meaning either. The firefly from the first episode is seen every once and while but doesn’t represent anything. It could’ve been any other bug or small object, and everything would’ve remained the same. Ai has heterochromia which is supposed to show how different she is and tie into the fact that she was made fun of in school. But then the anime contradicts this symbolism by introducing another character with heterochromia who was considered smart and beautiful rather than someone who was made fun of. All of the main girls have different weapons when they enter the dream world, and the show even draws attention to this when Ai first fights a wonder killer with one of her friends. But the weapons barely catered to their backgrounds OR only referenced one small part about their personality. It would be easy to assume that the creators just randomly gave them something cool that would look good with their character design. For the most part, this isn’t a huge issue. But it’s disappointing because the anime sets itself up to be something deeper and because most of these ideas take place in a dream world that’s supposed to be some representation of reality. I love analyzing and reading between the lines, and I thought that Wonder Egg would make me do that with its unusual concepts. But it’s mostly just pseudo-symbolic repetition without thought. Despite this shallow repetition and narrow imagery, the girls-fighting-against-wonder-killers formula was still a solid one that produced decent results in the beginning of the anime. We got to see girls be badass and overcome their trauma. Everything was running smoothly, and there weren’t any big plot issues. But that’s exactly why when Wonder Egg abandoned this formula, the narrative completely collapsed. For some reason, the creators of the anime couldn’t stick to one idea. So before we even hit halfway through the series, they started playing around with the messages of the anime. One line that shifted the tone of the narrative was “Boys’ and girls’ suicides mean different things. Men are goal-oriented, and women are emotion-oriented. Women are impulsive and easily influenced by others’ voices.” Suddenly, Wonder Egg was no longer a show that focused on girls simply to show their growth and strength. It became a show that focused on girls because apparently ‘they’re emotional and easily manipulated’. Tying those stereotypical ideas into suicide was a horrible choice. The show tries to make sense of it later on in the anime, but it just ends up being rushed. So the lines came off like something that the writers genuinely believed in. A lot of the smaller dialogue started relying on similar gender stereotypes as well. For example, some quotes from the anime are “Men who ask women for money are all fake” and “A beautiful woman never needs a wallet.” Both of these lines come from Rika, one of Ai’s friends who is involved in acts of self-harm and lives in a single-parent-household with an alcoholic mother. Knowing this, I assume that the dialogue was meant to show the mindset of a child from a troubled home with absent parental figures. However, I don’t understand why they had to be so stereotypical. There are multiple other ways to display a person’s mindset without having to rely on problematic dialogue. The fact that these messages are repeated throughout the show makes it feel like the anime is exploiting Rika’s background and using these lines more as shock factor rather than to show her growth. This is even more evident when Rika implies that she hasn’t gained a sense of self-acceptance. After one of her Wonder Killer battles, Rika says “Even if it means hurting myself, I’m going to live.” Anyone who knows how dangerous self-harm can be should understand why this line is a big issue. Not only did the anime actively promote self-harm, but it also marketed it as growth. Now I like to give shows the benefit of the doubt, so I thought that the line might have just been a part of the story. Maybe the anime is self-aware of how incorrect it is and is only using it to build bigger themes. I tried to think of it as a means for Rika’s characterization to maybe emphasize her troubled background. But I recently rewatched that episode and saw no indication of that line having a deeper connection to Rika’s family life. In fact, that line was part of the last episode of the series that fully focused on Rika, so the anime never clears up the way it poorly handled self-harm. Though I’ve tried to think positively, I cannot find anything to justify that piece of scriptwriting. It blatantly views self-harm in a positive light to the point that I can no longer call this an anime about self-acceptance. The creators also began flooding the show with too many ideas and cheap plot twists, most of which were crammed towards the end of the anime where the writers didn’t have enough time to cover them all. New antagonists and backstories were introduced in the last few episodes of the series, unnecessary changes to the storyline happened at every corner, and random events were inserted just for the sake of shock value rather than actual relevance to the overarching plot. Wonder Egg even introduces inter-relational conflicts that never get fully explored. One example of this is with Neiru, one of Ai’s friends. Neiru has a tense relationship with her sister, and when she tells Ai about this, we learn about the sequence of events that led to their complex sisterhood. But the details were incomplete. The anime set it up as a mystery to unfold as the story went along. What really happened? Why did her sister act the way that she did? Even after watching all twelve episodes of the anime, I still don’t know. The show just brings up the issue but never resolves it. When I expressed these concerns, fans argued that there would be more episodes or at least more content to close things up properly. Though a special broadcast in June has been announced, I highly doubt that the franchise will be able to tackle all of the issues found in the anime and tie all the loose strings together in a twenty-minute episode. The storyline is already a mess and there would be too many relationships to cover. This is a clear production, time management, and story building mistake on the studio’s part. And the need for a special broadcast only emphasizes their shortcomings. Amidst all of these flaws, I admit that there are still some things Wonder Egg does well. For example, the directing really stands out in some of the quieter scenes of the anime. From the moment we’re introduced to Ai and the world of Wonder Egg Priority, there’s this calming aura of quiet eeriness that pulls you in. The atmosphere is immersive and will keep you hooked to find out what happens next in the series. Wonder Egg also has stunning visuals. The animation looks like it came straight out of KyoAni with consistent and fluid drawings. The color palette is unique with bold colors that grab your attention, and the artists use this with a good understanding of contrast and tone. Flexible and eye-catching, Wonder Egg’s art is one of the few parts of the anime that remained consistent throughout its twelve-episode-run. Paired with the messy plotline, some may call Wonder Egg an anime that chooses style over substance. And they aren’t wrong. Looking at it as a whole, Wonder Egg was an imperfect but cool idea that ended up being too ambitious for its own good. It introduced too many plot points without properly bringing them together which affected the messaging and made the show feel less cohesive. While watching this anime, I often found myself wondering whether the creators even knew what they were doing. It seemed like they couldn’t decide the direction that they wanted to go, so they just let the story jump around until they found something that evoked some sort of emotion from the audience. It’s messy writing that falls short in multiple aspects of story building and fails to connect to the initial topic of self-acceptance. Putting aside the solid beginning and fun visuals, I can’t find much to recommend about this show. And though I’m frustrated that we’ll never see how this anime could’ve gone with proper execution, I’ll probably just remember it as another one of CloverWorks’ cringeworthy letdowns this season. 4/10

SingleH

Wonder Egg Priority is baby’s first anti-suicide propaganda. It’s just the next, trendiest puberty anime on the block, and the egg symbolizes bad writing. It’s a teen drama filled to the brim with metaphorical imagery and action which screams their exact meaning so loudly and with so little nuance, they’re nearly literal, and as a result of this, anyone with even the slightest modicum of emotional maturity or life experience will find themselves knowing everything this show is going to say as soon as its subject matter is made so clumsily clear. Minor spoilers ahead. I once said about Nijigahara Holograph, a great thing about crushingyour story under the weight of its own symbolism is that it becomes so interpretive, critics can’t even parse through enough to say it made no sense. However, unless you, the author, actually dare to explain yourself and your imagery, you yourself can’t say it did in fact make any sense either. This is why abstract art isn’t typically respected by critics, and that’s a problem for Wonder Egg Priority, because ultimately, it’s just an artsy student film. It’s abstract art which portrays teenagers fighting personifications of suicidal tendencies in an effort to overcome them in this weird egg limbo to empower the audience who presumably finds their problems relatable, but the degree to which the show actually grasps what it seeks to comment on wavers greatly throughout the show to the point it almost makes these very legitimate adolescent anxiety issues seem laughable as a consequence of how over-the-top the imagery is. Ugly little CG goblin bullies called “Seeno Evils,” other ugly CG abominations called “Haters,” a heterochromic main heroine named “Ohto Ai” who’s name is enunciated “Odd Eye.” I mean, come on people! Explaining this kind of shit to an eleven year old would be patronizing, yet when these kinds of symbols appear in the same show as a very realistic portrayal of someone cutting themselves and a very poignant analysis of why people generally do so, it really begs the question how serious the authors were about tackling either issue. One episode it’s dangerously suggesting all chūnibyōs are medically schizophrenic, another episode it’s outrageously claiming boys never commit suicide for emotional reasons, and another episode it places a transgender boy, a biological girl, in the egg limbo after having established no boys are allowed in the egg limbo…so I guess it’s based and redpilled? My point is it’s extremely hit or miss, but when a show is hit or miss while touching on delicate topics, especially a show like this which is always soapboxing and using its cast as a moral mouthpiece, it just comes across as ignorant and disingenuous. For a show about dissecting people’s problems and helping them fight their mental hangups, the characters are, ironically, by far the weakest link. In the first episode, Ai completely rejects to the point of physically running away from the cordial and friendly advances of the most calm, collected, and kind girl on the planet, but then immediately afterwards in episode two, she’s suddenly trying her hardest to shamelessly insert herself into the life of the most stuck-up and thoroughly unapproachable character in the show, Neiru, as if we didn’t just watch an entire episode of her being portrayed as unmanageably shy. Momoe is a masculine looking girl who's self-conscious about her appearance and wants to look more feminine. Her problem is even though she's straight, she only attracts girls she has to constantly turn down who thinks she looks handsome and dashing. Men don't approach her because she looks too boyish, and she doesn't approach men because she lacks the self-esteem. One day, a man approaches her and asks her to go on a date, but when she shows up for the date, this time wearing a dress that accentuates her femininity, the man reveals he was gay and mistook her for a guy, and dumps her. The problem is this established Momoe—a character with short, straight hair who for some reason wears a collared shirt under a slim-fit sweater and khaki slacks—can, indeed, look like a girl if she puts even the slightest bit of effort into doing so, therefore invalidating her entire internal crisis. Ai’s school counselor who the show insistently implies is a creep who grooms his students, and who Ai saw after school being intimate with her friend who committed suicide soon thereafter, is suddenly turned into a contrived love interest/father figure when he hooks up with Ai's mom. Even character development that sticks the landing like that of Rika, the final of the four main characters, feels fruitless because it doesn’t change the group dynamic at all, and unfortunately, the plot turns out to be way more important than you thought, and the plot is nothing short of boring. The writers seem to be under this weird impression that by introducing supernatural elements into their story, you’re not allowed to criticize its internal consistency in any way. The whole egg limbo with all the crazy egg fights and bizarre monster designs never have any thematic weight, and despite the fact what little emotional weight is there usually misses the mark entirely, the big autistic shounen battle speeches they give usually leaves you feeling as if their emotions are all that really matters in this world and not to really mind the details of the allegory since it’s probably shallow anyway. However, given everything I discussed in the last paragraph, trying to dissect the characters typically falls apart, so all that’s eventually left to chew on is those visuals, which the show seems to want to sell you on without actually offering you any understanding of, kind of like how a magician will let you watch their trick a thousand times but never let you touch any of their mechanisms. Now, don’t get me wrong. I'm all for interpretive media, but said media has to actually suggest interesting interpretations. The egg monster representing a rapist has a big dick nose on his face with an unruly mustache around its base, the egg monster representing a coach who body shames their students has giant rolls of fat and absurdly large and saggy tits...okay, cool, so is that it? The issues the show wants to portray are always deeper than the symbolism—let alone its thin characterization—gives them credit for, and when the plot finally rears its ugly head, it tries to lazily wrap everything up by explaining away all the supernatural nonsense with a ridiculous pseudo science fiction plot which takes the time to imply all women who take their own lives only do so impulsively, and if it wasn’t for that fleeting moment of weakness, our villain who we just introduced five seconds ago who can poison people’s minds never would’ve been able to lead them to suicide. Meanwhile, I still can’t decide which is more offensive. That shit, or the aforementioned suggestion that boys don’t kill themselves for emotional reasons. Unfortunately for the ideologues in charge of writing Wonder Egg Priority, their little snowflake here isn’t special, and the same rules of storytelling which apply to everything else also apply to it. The show always comes down to pacing, but since everything gets shoved towards the tail-end of the story, elements of the narrative which probably wouldn't have been as egregiously melodramatic with proper set-up end up piling up at the end and making the whole thing a total slog, because the empty-headed artsy student film it was at the beginning ultimately didn’t have any legs, and the misguided Flip Flappers/Magical Girl Madoka★Magica/last two episodes of Evangelion/Kara no Kyoukai: Fuukan Fukei rip-off it was at the end did little but make an internal mess of its already externally messy symbols and expose this show for exactly what it is: a largely incongruous anime inspired by those far more genuine and artful than itself. I have an inherent respect for a commentary on how modern Japanese society handles mental illness and suicide, but as entertainment, it’s mediocre far longer than it is interesting. One may argue the show concerned itself more with visualizing its themes than it actually did with being mysterious about what they were, but that would imply any of these images were deeply meaningful, and more to the point, part of a plot which explored them appropriately at all. I’m only now realizing I haven’t said a single positive thing about this show yet, so I guess, if only in keeping with how back-heavy the show itself is, I’ll flip the script and admit this isn’t actually a horribly bad show as much as it is a confused one. Despite a hellish production crunch which resulted in a recap episode and some inconsistent quality throughout the latter half of the show, Wonder Egg Priority is gorgeous, and this obvious passion behind the animation proves the show isn't as much of a grifter as I made it out to be. It’s just an amateur therapist who needs to work though their own problems before trying to help others overcome theirs. Thank you for reading.