Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’d like to return to a story I’ve left hanging for far too long, as we continue our exploration of the harrowing and transcendent Wonder Egg Priority. I frankly would have returned much sooner, but the discussions surrounding the show turned pretty toxic by the end of its original run, migrating into that frustrating realm of condemning people for the stories they enjoy. Discussions like that were what prompted me to limit my engagement with online arguments in the first place, so I promptly removed my hand from the stove, waiting for the heat to dissipate.

Well, no one talks about Wonder Egg Priority these days, so I’m happy to finally be returning. When last we left off, Momoe’s anxieties about her gender presentation had just been assuaged by her fast friendship with Kaoru, her latest wonder egg project. Unfortunately, her victory was cut short by the appearance of a mysterious butterfly-headed girl, who promptly killed Momoe’s familiar Panic. With Momoe’s latest victory having also released the girl she’d long been fighting for, and the machinations of Acca and Ura-Acca coming into focus, it seems like the time for episodic adventures has ended, and the time of painful revelation is at hand. Let’s see what awaits in our next Wonder Egg Priority!

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At last, the curtain has been pulled back, and the man behind it is a face we’ve seen before. Wonder Egg Priority has finally put its fantasy chips on the table, drawing a direct connection between Neiru’s Plati research and the wonder egg system itself. Acca and Ura-Acca have been revealed as the manipulators they always seemed to be, tormentors dangling salvation in front of these girls in order to either claim their power, or simply gather more research. Parallel worlds not only exist, but can be accessed through dreams – and by harnessing the powers of these dreams, Plati seems intent on mastering reality itself.

But all of that is ultimately secondary to what last episode was actually about. Confronted with the imminent death of her sister, Neiru turned to her friends for help, and at last shared the difficult personal circumstances that have made her who she is. Though she framed Kotobuki’s death in clinical terms, their last meeting proved just how much Neiru cared about her friend, and how difficult it was for her to let go. And as always, Ai was there to support her, sharing the guilt of freeing Kotobuki from her imprisonment, and reaffirming her kindness and emotional strength. Though Ai still grapples with self-hatred and a general feeling of disconnection with the world, her acts of kindness towards Neiru, Rika, and Momoe demonstrate a profound empathy and strength of character.

Of course, this is not your usual magical girl world. This is our world, where virtues like empathy are frequently reframed as weakness, and girls are abused and commodified by a nepotistic structure that assumes male superiority. It’s no surprise that Ai thinks she has no value; society has told her, and all of her friends, that the things which make them great have no purpose in this world. The only virtue they’re asked to perform is submission – but with Rika and Momoe having overheard the scheming of their enemies, I’m thinking the time for politely completing egg trials has passed. Can these four girls band together and fight for their right to happiness? I’m really hoping so; I’m not sure my heart could take it otherwise.

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m frankly a little hesitant to return to Wonder Egg Priority, as the show’s last episode came pretty close to emotionally destroying me. Rika’s experience of self-hatred and depression felt uncomfortably close to home; the cheerful outward affectation, the flashes of uncontrollable frustration, and most crucially, that sinking, ever-present feeling of weight on top of you, weight that you cannot simply exist under, weight that you must fight and fight every day, without any real hope of relieving it. When Rika at last submitted to her fatigue, and asked if it truly can be easier, I felt that exhaustion in my bones. If life is this painful, surely nothingness must be a relief?

Fortunately, Rika had just enough of a support system to dampen those thoughts, and fight once more for a better tomorrow. Just as her submission to her demons felt poignantly true to life, so too did her defiant declaration at the end. “I’ll leave you one day, but not today” – to those suffering from depression, suicidal tendencies, and mental illness more broadly, that rallying cry feels like the most we can earnestly hope for. There’s no guarantee things will get easier, and no guarantee we’ll be able to fight forever – but at least this day, I am declaring that the darkness will not win, and that I will see tomorrow.

It’s a genuine victory, and should be celebrated as such; in a show covering topics as charged as Wonder Egg, to simply declare that Rika is “solved” would be a betrayal of her substance as a character, and of Wonder Egg’s general ability to evoke the genuine, felt experience of depression. I tend to like the shows that rip into my chest, grab hold of something utterly true to my experience, and explore it in all its beauty, ugliness, and undeniable humanity. Wonder Egg has the lived experience of depression in its clasp, and however this story turns, I’ll remain profoundly grateful to it for illustrating such a difficult experience with such frankness and compassion. This show can hurt me, but it’s a good hurt, a hurt that reminds me I’m not alone in the struggle. Among art’s many goals, that sense of connection and common humanity feels like one of the most noble of all. I’m ready, Wonder Egg. Let’s return to the fight.

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[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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Hello all, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive back into Wonder Egg Priority, and at last catch up on the ongoing discussions. Wonder Egg Priority is such an aesthetically compelling, intellectually intriguing production that it’s essentially brought anime blogging back to life. kVin has already written multiple essential posts regarding its production, Emily’s consistently illuminating the nuances of its flower language, Steve’s putting in overtime work over at ANN, and even my friends at Isn’t It Electrifying? have been throwing their hats in the ring.

The reasons for this are fairly obvious: Wonder Egg Priority is a critic’s delight, combining Naoko Yamada’s cinematic approach to visual storytelling with a surrealist, thematically driven narrative that juggles sharp-edged topics with ease. It is equally confident conveying the precise emotional tenor of witnessing a classmate being bullied, and also the fantastical disorientation of falling into another world. For those who see anime as a uniquely compelling vehicle for conveying intimate human feelings, Wonder Egg Priority feels like an avatar of our faith in practice.

Just as Flip Flappers illustrated the wild discord of our dreamscapes as a path to knowing ourselves, just as The Eccentric Family used a dash of magical realism to evoke the jubilant freedom of young adulthood, so does Wonder Egg Priority use its fantasy flourishes to convey the overbearing weight of social stigma, self-hatred, and alienation. Its heroines are playing a game they are presumably designed to lose; meanwhile, the steady procession of victims and villains illustrates how all young women are set up for failure, where abusers frequently benefit from institutional support, and victims are taught to blame themselves. Even if the eggs weren’t purchased from a gacha machine, it’d be clear this is a rigged game. All Ai and her friends have is solidarity, but as a group who’ve been selected precisely because they feel they drove others to suicide, can they really learn to trust each other, and love themselves?

Let’s find out.

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Hello all, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are absolutely continuing our journey through Wonder Egg Priority, as this show kicks all the kinds of ass, and I’m frankly tired of being behind on its weekly discussion. I know, Nick Creamer caring about ongoing anime discussions in the year twenty twenty-one? It’s a shock to me as well, but Wonder Egg Priority is just that kind of show; a story that feels instantly essential, and which provokes the long-slumbering dragons of anime blogging to once more raise their feathered quills, and rise together in praise for a show that’s Genuinely Really Good.

Wonder Egg’s second episode held relatively closely to the model of the first, introducing a new egg girl for Ai to save, and establishing the beginnings of a friendship with fellow egg savior Neiru. We also received a bit more context regarding Ai’s relationship with Koito, as well as the parameters of her egg-saving missions. Given all that, I’m expecting the show to soon disrupt its episodic model, but we might be in for another episode or two of monster-of-the-week missions, if only to integrate the other girls from the show’s OP. Alright, that’s enough speculation from me; let’s dive right back into Wonder Egg Priority!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back. Today we’re exploring the second episode of Wonder Egg Priority, 2021’s most intriguing production so far, as Ai Ohto works to save her friend Koito. Of course, it’s questionable whether Koito can truly be “saved” at all; Ai watched her die, and though the mysterious overseer of her current task claims that salvation is possible, we have no reason to trust their words.

But while Ai’s narrative destination is still far from clear, Wonder Egg Priority has been proceeding with absolute confidence so far, making me feel confident in turn about its eventual structure. I’m not a fan of mystery for its own sake, as I feel that generally, mysteries tend to exist apart from what a show is “trying to say,” as a purely narrative hook. On the other hand, when a show’s “mysteries” are baked into the ambiguity of its themes and imagery, I’m a huge fan. Rather than distracting from a show’s thematic and emotional content, mysteries like this actually spur investment into the show’s ideas, while simultaneously aligning the audience with the protagonist’s perspective. This is the grand trick of shows like Madoka or Utena, and I’m delighted to see Wonder Egg Priority pulling it off so well. Without further ado, let’s dive into the second episode!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll once again be embarking on an unusually timely journey, and exploring the first episode of the now-airing Wonder Egg Priority. Not too much was actually known about Wonder Egg Priority prior to its broadcast, given its anime-original nature and unusually limited marketing materials. With no big trailers or source material to go by, it’s mostly just animation enthusiasts who’ve been hyping the show, due to its remarkably talented key staff.

What we know so far is that the character acting will be nuanced and plentiful, and that judging by his 22/7 web shorts, director Shin Wakabayashi is a clear student of the Naoko Yamada school of direction. Wonder Egg Priority has all the right qualifications to be exactly my sort of thing, but with so little information to go on, this premiere could really go just about anywhere. Without further ado, let’s explore the first episode of Wonder Egg Priority!

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