[CW: Discussions of self-harm. Big Rika episode ahead!]

What did Ai mean by her flight out of home, and her announcement that she’d be going back to school? I frankly wish that was a rhetorical question, and that I was about to unload some insightful musing on her psychology at this particular moment. Unfortunately, I’m as stumped as anyone – while it was tonally clear that the conclusion of episode six helped Ai reach some personal epiphany, the actual nature of that epiphany is unclear.

After an episode that was unabashedly constructed as an exploration of gaslighting’s debilitating power, it seems unlikely that Ai’s takeaway would be “actually, what everyone else tells me I’m supposed to feel is correct.” Her entire support network is telling her to doubt her suspicions of Sawaki – so has she decided to take those suspicions underground, and investigate Sawaki herself?

That might actually make sense, in more than just a strictly narrative sense. One of my major misgivings about the whole egg saving process is that by the time they “save” these girls, they’ve already been terribly abused – and what’s more, these trials only defeat the girls’ mental images of their harassers. In the real world, their abusers are still out there, still making life miserable for new victims. To truly change the world, these abusers must be confronted in reality, before they drive their victims to suicide. So is Ai simply taking her mission to the next level, and attempting to become a real-world egg savior?

Let’s find out.

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It would seem that Wonder Egg Priority’s shell is on the verge of cracking. After two episodes that held close to a traditional “monster of the week” model, each subsequent episode has driven new fissures through the show’s structure, as fantasy trials are fused together (like with Rika), contrasted against each other (Momo), or stretched like taffy into a kind of episode-fringing garnish (Neiru). This is no accidental process – though saving the egg girls is Ai’s ostensible quest, it’s been clear for quite some time that Wonder Egg’s “villain” encompasses more than just a few abusive caretakers. The burdens Ai and her fellow victims suffer from are systemic, and Wonder Egg understands that. Individual acts of bravery and solidarity cannot overcome a rigged game.

In light of that, Wonder Egg Priority has been gradually turning the lens away from the fantasy creatures Ai and her friends must face, towards the structures and guardians that gave rise to this system in the first place. So far, everything in this show has worked on the level of both narrative and metaphor, so I expect Acca and Ura-Acca to be the same – not just “bad guys,” but perhaps some irreducible reflection of society’s callousness towards the young. With the team assembled and the shell nearly broken, Wonder Egg Priority stands on a precipice. Let’s find out what’s waiting below.

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Hello everyone, and happy to have you here at Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to Wonder Egg Priority, as the veil begins to lift on the true nature of this egg-saving operation. It’s been pretty obvious from the start that we can’t trust Acca and Ura-Acca. Even if we set aside their mocking tone and the clear genre precedents for characters like this (Madoka’s Kyubey, Penguindrum’s Sanetoshi, etc), they’ve been consistently withholding key information from our leads, luring them into situations they’re unprepared for, and ridiculing them for their various traumas. They might be managing these egg trials, but it’s clearly not because they’re sympathetic to the girls involved.

Last episode made their antagonism even more explicit, as they essentially reiterated the reductive, misogynistic attitudes that informed these girls’ initial trauma. You could easily imagine one of the nightmare abusers from the egg worlds echoing Acca’s thoughts on how “women are easily led astray by their emotions.” This obviously isn’t the show’s own perspective; though the director stepping in was a nice gesture, every episode of Wonder Egg Priority has been consistently screaming “adolescents are driven to suicide by societal forces that breed alienation, and by society’s willingness to overlook abusers who play within the rules of its system.” That Acca and Ura-Acca don’t understand this, and in fact agree with the system oppressing these girls, is now clear. But what can you do, when even your theoretical saviors are complicit in your abuse?

Let’s find out.

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