Wonder Egg Priority

Following the suicide of her best and only friend, Koito Nagase, Ai Ooto is left grappling with her new reality. With nothing left to live for, she follows the instructions of a mysterious entity and gets roped into purchasing an egg, or specifically, a Wonder Egg.

Upon breaking the egg in a world that materializes during her sleep, Ai is tasked with saving people from the adversities that come their way. In doing so, she believes that she has moved one step closer to saving her best friend. With this dangerous yet tempting opportunity in the palms of her hands, Ai enters a place where she must recognize the relationship between other people's demons and her own.

As past trauma, unforgettable regrets, and innate fears hatch in the bizarre world of Wonder Egg Priority, a young girl discovers the different inner struggles tormenting humankind and rescues them from their worst fears.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Uchida, Yuuya
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Wakabayashi, Shin

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Fujita, Akiko

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Ushijima, Shinichirou

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Yamazaki, Yuuta

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Opening Theme

"Sudachi no Uta (巣立ちの歌)" by Anemoneria (アネモネリア)

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Ending Theme

"Life is Cider (Life is サイダー)" by Anemoneria (アネモネリア)

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Mar 30, 2021

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 4

RebelPanda (All reviews)

1113 people found this review helpful

*This review contains spoilers*

I had such high hopes for Wonder Egg Priority. I praised its first few episodes like it would be the best anime of the year. If only I could go back in time and prepare myself for a massive disappointment.

Before someone tells me, "You didn't understand the symbolism and metaphors." I understood it, but I don't think it's as deep as people say. The symbolism is either so blatant you barely need to do any thinking or so vague that it becomes pretentious. It's like watching a movie while the director is breathing down your neck, telling you what every symbol, line read more

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Mar 30, 2021

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 4

nightshadekait (All reviews)

447 people found this review helpful

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 us read more

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Mar 30, 2021

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 5

SingleH (All reviews)

395 people found this review helpful

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 crushing your 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.

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Mar 30, 2021

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 9

ACasualViewer (All reviews)

393 people found this review helpful

It has been a long time since an original anime truly pushed the bounds of the medium and really diverged from standard cookie cutter series. Wonder Egg Priority is not only original in that it has no source material, its original in that its concept has rarely been done before in any other anime series. If you have long been awaiting an anime with a dark magical girl atmosphere similar to that of Madoka or Flip Flappers, along with Mawaru Penguindrum style character designs and color pallets, with all the symbolism included of course, then this is a must check anime from the 2021 winter read more

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