WEP: Death and Re-Egg

Jumping into the beginning of 2021, Wonder Egg Priority was one of the winter season’s darlings. Starting with the name of the show itself, there was something mysterious about the title “Wonder Egg Priority” that captured one’s imagination. Not even having the trailer for the show even helped provided any answers, so there was an even bigger air of mystery to it that drew a lot of people towards it. I have to say without reproach at all, the marketing behind Wonder Egg Priority was fantastic because it did so much by keeping us all ready for something to happen. What was WEP? We didn’t know yet and that mystery was just intoxicating. That first episode answered some questions and yet aasked more for the show to answer.

So yes, Wonder Egg Priority was eventually discovered to be a show about teenage girls who didn’t fit into society dealing with their difference, suicidal feelings, and other attributes through fighting for girl’s lives in their dreams in wonderful action sequences against human beings given the form of a monster. Every episode, either our protagonist, Ai, or one of her friends will use some eggs they got from two strange people, The Accas, and those are who they are meant to protect. In the beginning, the show was good at this and encountered so many important topics in surprisingly very sensitive ways. It really was a show dealing heavy themes in good ways for a while.

So, what happened later on? Was the special that came out recently truly the cause for all of these bad feelings towards it? Well, no. I feel like the show suffered a lot of issues before it. Once you hear words about how people behind the show’s production at Clover Works went to the hospital multiple times and episodes starting to appear late due to them being finished later then expected, then there is something going on here. What was worse is that the studio tried to hide the fact that their production was behind by making a recap episode be an official episode. Anime fans will always be able to sniff out something like that. Regardless, covid-19 hasn’t helped the production behind this show either because that’s not a strain this production crew needed.

Of course, production issues weren’t the only thing that happened. It really did feel like Wonder Egg Priority got the one two punch in bad. The story behind Wonder Egg Priority tried to do too much near the end of it’s one cour run. How? Putting in too much lore. The lore behind The Accas built that one girl named Frill they created and her causing havok after being mistreated, a hero of Xanatos, and so many other things. It’s pretty much “why did you throw this at us now?”. Yeah, the Accas are bad people who judge girls wrongly just like the figures the girls in Wonder Egg Priority had to fight every week. Why couldn’t the show just be about that and Ai’s problems? A one cour story can only do so many things because it’s a very much a go in and go out sort of deal. All I am saying is that there is a lot of WTF things.

So that leads into what this special was and why I named this post “Death and Re-Egg”. You guys know about Evangelion, right? Is there a single anime fan in this universe who doesn’t know about Evangelion? The reason why I mention EVA is this special reminds me of this one movie called Death and Rebirth. Evangelion was under all sorts of time crunches too and the finale had ideas and such, but was unfinished in a lot of ways. In a different way, but its still comparable. The first movie that came out after EVA was Death and Rebirth that is half recap and then half new material that was in End of Evangelion. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Maybe this Wonder Egg Priority special thing?

In the end, Wonder Egg Priorities special was never going to be the thing people wanted it to be. A good ending to a story that felt all over the place. Even at 45 minutes long, it would never have given everyone the answer or conclusion that they wanted. I feel like I ended up watching the special to see how they would cobble this all together and to see if 45 minutes even enough for that. Well, the first half of the special being a recap was certainly a thing that happened and must have been due to the continued strained production of the show itself. That lead to the second have being new material that gave us a response in a way we didn’t expect it to. After all of the friends Ai gathered on her way, none of them wanted to face the trauma of the egg again. Ai was alone and her deciding to chase after someone who left her anyway with a new resolve was good. It’s a good sentiment to leave the show on because Wonder Egg was always about Ai.

I feel like Wonder Egg Priority faced a lot of challenges. It faced covid, it faced production staff being over worked, and it faced adding in nonsense that didn’t have to be there. Ai has faced a lot of things too on her own journey. She made friends, but in the end the one she saved didn’t remember her and the others were not so hard core into helping her that they joined her cause to save Neiru. Neiru, the girl we just learned is a clone and not even a human being. I feel like Ai changing from being broken to finding a strength and resolve was a good thing and she will fight for Neiru in her imaginations now and hopefully destroy the Accas too. I am happy that the show ended up on that note even if there are so many things left open in a way that’s annoying. After giving it some thought for a while, I decided that I didn’t hate it after all, it’s just mediocre. Not the answer people wanted, but sometimes life doesn’t give us the answers we wanted.