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 us to 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