‘Wonder Egg Priority’ Ends Up as a Trainwreck, but Before Becoming So, It Was an Awesome Ride

Wonder Egg Priority was an original anime that debuted last Winter 2021.  I didn’t initially pick it up, but I eventually did, for it seemed like it was going to be the best new anime of the season, based on the buzz it was generating.  Catching up with it, I came to agree that it deserved the hype.  It was that good.  If I had given it a review after the season ended (March), I would have raved about it.  However, I didn’t review it then, since it wasn’t technically finished yet, as the finale was put off until June – a move that’s atypical for a seasonal anime.  And, sadly, the finale disappointingly failed to nail the landing.

The show starts off following a socially withdrawn 14-year-old girl named Ai Ohto.  While she had experienced bullying because of having heterochromia, what really messed her up was the suicide of her best friend, Koito Nagase, which caused her to stop attending school.  One day, she encounters a talking bug that leads her to an abandoned arcade that has a secret entrance to an underground garden.  There, she finds a gachapon machine that allows her to buy a mysterious egg.  That night, in her sleep, she enters a dream world where the egg hatches, revealing a girl inside.  Apparently, this girl is someone who has committed suicide in the real world.  Ai also learns that, while in this dream world, she must protect the girl from a horde of impish creatures called Seeno Evils as well as this girl’s Wonder Killer, a monster embodiment of the trauma that pushed her to suicide.  After accomplishing this task, it’s revealed to her that if she accomplishes a number of other such missions, Koito may be brought back to life.  Thus, Ai becomes motivated to buy more Wonder Eggs and save more girls from their Wonder Killers in the dream world.

At first, you aren’t really sure what’s going on with Wonder Egg Priority.  The psychological premise, zany and metaphorical visuals, and surreal happenings in the narrative, paired with the trippy feeling produced by the way it’s directed and edited, make everything seem ambiguous – whether what we see is actual or just something occurring in Ai’s head.  Still, any confusion that you experience at this point will only pique your interest for more rather than turn you off.

Besides, it doesn’t even take a long time before it becomes clearer that it’s meant to be taken literally – all the weird stuff we’ve been seeing are actually happening.

Soon after the first episode, Ai subsequently meets three other 14-year-old girls who are also doing Wonder Egg missions to save someone dear to them – Neiru Aonuma, a reserved and quiet genius who is already the president of her own company; Rika Kawai, a loud and impulsive junior idol; and Momoe Sawaki, whose looks are usually mistaken for that of a handsome boy, that other girls even fall for her.  Quickly turning to a close-knit quartet, they draw from their friendship the strength to overcome the challenges they respectively face and heal from the emotional wounds that they respectively carry.

So, yeah, as it turns out, Wonder Egg Priority is a magical girl anime all along.

However, even if such a genre isn’t your usual jam, this anime will still likely win you over.  It just has an appeal that transcends genres.  Besides, it’s really nothing like your typical magical girl shows.  Imaginative and unconventional, the narrative mixes splendidly stimulating high-concept ideas and moving human drama, while tackling dark and touchy themes through both cleverly symbolic imageries and thought-provoking plot points.

Yet the ambitious, intriguing storytelling isn’t even its most evident and greatest hook.  That would be its aesthetics.  Its animation is one of the best, if not the best, I’ve seen so far in an anime this year.  It’s one of those “every frame is a painting” kind of animation.  Every visual aspect – character designs, backgrounds, action sequences, compositing, etc. – is utterly stunning.  On top of that, it also has a fantastic soundtrack, which yields many compelling “breathtaking sakuga + engaging music” set pieces.  In relation to this, there is also legit charm from the juxtaposition of the plot’s dark topics with the vibrant, colorful animation.

But, alas, it stumbles with the finish, to the detriment of its overall impression.  The show’s failure only becomes definite in the finale, but in retrospect, it actually starts showing red flags when it’s about to enter its final quarter.  First, episode 8 turned out being a recap episode.  Now, recaps episodes are made by a production to buy time.  When a seasonal anime does it, it usually (but not always) signify trouble.  However, everyone was thoroughly won over by the show that nobody really suspected that it was on its way to becoming a trainwreck.  The show was overflowing with goodwill that everyone just believed that episode 8 serving as a recap episode was the plan all along.  Then, by episode 9, it took a turn to Darling in the Franxx territory (if you’ve seen that anime, you would know what I mean).  As a result, it overcomplicated the plot in areas that didn’t need more complexity, and it oversimplified the plot in areas that needed more elaboration.  Again, all these were only truly realized in retrospect, as at that moment in time, the show had earned so much goodwill that fans trusted that the finale special in June would be capable of tying up all these sizable amount of plot threads in a completely satisfying manner.  When it was announced that this finale special was going to be have a double-sized runtime, everyone interpreted that that’s enough time to explain and resolve everything.

Well, as it turned out, the advertised length of the special was pretty deceptive.  While it did have double the usual runtime of an anime episode, half of it was spent on recapping the season.  And with the remaining time it had, the total number of lingering loose ends that it gave a satisfying resolution to was zero.  Its way of trying to get away with it is having a sort of a cliff hanger ending, in which the door is kept open for either a hypothetical or potential sequel.  Sure, it’s possible that a season 2 can still redeem this anime, but if this is to be the case, the actuality of a season 2 should have been established much earlier.  While it was ongoing, the impression it gave – especially with the way it scheduled and hyped that finale special – was that it was meant to be a limited series.  Thus, opting for that kind of finish only leaves a bitter taste in the fan’s mouth.

Overall, Wonder Egg Priority felt like an anime that was made on the fly – a production that started strong, had an excellent middle, but lost its way in the end.  And by ending on a sour note, the excellence – and, oh, how excellent indeed was this show during its best! – that it displayed during the course of the series is almost erased.

Still, personally, rather than how it ultimately ended up being a massive letdown, I would like to remember this show when it was at its most glorious.  In fact, come to think of it, despite of how it wrapped up, I will still recommend this show, as it definitely offered something different from any other anime we’ve seen before.

Wonder Egg Priority may be a dumpster fire.  But while on its way to becoming one, the blaze was gorgeous and mesmerizing.