If they cut out the Frill section, left the lore foggy and had the girls face their alternative selves who did go through with their suicide, then the show would have worked. Facing yourself to be the final goal into getting your friend back. Edit after 2 years: Yep. Giving it thought after finding this video again, the story's final theme should be you can't bring people back from the dead, no matter how hard you try. You have learn to live your own life and accept the deaths as a part of it.
I also wish that their friends also didn't come back as a way to show how permanent suicide can be, being a permanent solution to a temporary problem with no way to revert it
@@lettuce7835 same! even from a narrative standpoint, i think the friends coming back gave them even LESS closure than if they'd just been able to accept the fact that their friends were dead and not coming back, and move on together. like, look at ai -- she did all of that work for koito, and she didn't even recognize her! their friends not coming back could have been a good thing for their character growth, but them coming back really harmed the girls and their relationships.
Granted I am not using this as an excuse for the bad ending, however the Director of Wonder Egg got hospitalised twice during production and then a few hours later rushed straight back to the studio to work on Wonder Egg...
@@AD-lh3jk Automation makes the 4 hour work week almost inevitable eventually, all around the world. Either that or more and more people will have to settle for starvation level wages.
@@AD-lh3jk if they bring their 5 day work week down to a 9-5 that would be a huge move. and like a genuine 9-5, no expectation of overtime or anything like that. even on a "5 day work week" many companies expect employees to come on saturdays to do who the fuck knows cuz you gotta be a "good worker" i love japan, but id never work there.
Spoilers but I don't know how this show went from "what are we truly fighting for? Are we saving these people for the greater good or because they're a reflection of our guilt over those we have failed?" To "your pet is dead and we're explaining shit that didn't need to be explained"
Like, this show had a perfect trajectory to finish up after the part where the first dead girl that got brought back got turned into mist with like the idea of like "they're gone but their life lives on within you and the guilt will never subside completely but closure is still possible" but instead more trauma
You know why episode 8 was a recap? It's the show's way of telling you "Remember those good episodes one last time, because we're gonna throw them out the window".
I started both, very sure I'd love WEP and pretty convinced Sk8 was just gonna be some low quality girl bait anime 🤷♀️ ...then I found myself desperately waiting for the next Sk8 episode every single week 😅
Honestly, if they had just cut all the AI stuff and Frill plot line, I could’ve accepted the wonder egg system as an unexplained phenomena being used as a vehicle to explore stories about girls’ suicide. It didn’t need some sci-fi bs backstory that was way too complex to pull off in 12 episodes. (Maybe if they had simplified it like Madoka did, but honestly I think Madoka’s smooth handling of the world changing sci-fi magical girl system was lightning in a bottle.) I think episode 12 would’ve been a fine open ended finale if all that stuff had been cut.
My take was that they were trying way too hard to "earn" the comparisons to Madoka rather than just running with the good things they were doing already. Really, just playing the concept of the first few episodes straight, or else tossing in a very simple twist like "your friends aren't actually coming back but now you have each other", would have been plenty subversive enough. I don't really think it ever had the tremendous potential that Geoff claimed that it did in his Winter 2021 preview video, but I still think it had a lot of potential and just squandered most of it. And really the squandering started before the scifi BS backstory was introduced. I genuinely cannot see a route from the end of WEP ep7 to a cohesive ending that doesn't feel like it threw some of the ideas away. They were setting up for something sorta like what they did long in advance and they just weren't in any position to pull it off.
On your point about Madoka Magica, I would say that the fact that the scifi elements were somewhat indistinguishable from the "magic" elements made it work. While Homura did time travel shenanigans, it wasn't exactly based upon hard science.
Remember folks the real enemy of this show isn't the creepy teacher painting drawings of his female students alone in a classroom, but the overly emotional girl who's crazy and emotional because she's a 14 year old girl and that's how 14 year old girls are. The end. Also is no one going to mention how this show managed to strip the suicide victims of the small amount of autonomy they had because they didn't even commit suicide out of their own volition but because of an AI?
I was almost about to go watch the show after what he had said and just accept the ending wasn't going to be great and then he mentioned Frill, and the hard breaks went on that idea.
The opportunity for something great was there, but the moment it became a "the AI made the girls commit suicide" made me a bit upset, it completely took away from the personal experiences all these girls in the dream world had dealing with some pretty shitty situations. It felt like all the empathy I built up and anticipation to finally see into the minds of these girls who killed themselves was lost. So much potential and I generally feel sad that the ball was dropped But as a side note, this anime has definitely raised the bar for what is possible and I do hope that more anime of this nature is created with more well rounded endings
I feel like a lot of writers need to learn to separate their concepts in order to give them time to breathe Girls dealing with suicide in dream worlds 2 guys building a robot kid that turns out to be bad(which is strangely similar to the webcomic "if ai ruled the world) Someone using near death experiences to hop between realities Are all very cool concepts that deserve to be explored thoroughly and not brushed off as an episode's b plot It's very interesting seeing professional writers making mistakes that a couple of casual writers have already dealt with in their stories, like how matrix revolution had 2 of their 5 main characters have basically no dialogue because the director didn't cut out the unnecessary characters
What irks me the most is how Mr. Sawaki is first portrayed as a sketchy guy who undoubtedly has a hand in koitos suicide but in reality was a cool dude all along, and that koito was just framing him as a pedophile rapist for no reason, and then leaping off a fucking roof
Things like this actually happen, why would you rather be reassured about the red herring you had been tricked into initially instead of enjoying a good plot twist as it is? Narratives don't have to adhere to ideologies, they have to entertain.
Honestly the whole "AI causing teen suicide" reveal was possibly one of the biggest heel turn moments I've ever seen. I remember me and the friend I was watching it with honestly just laughing because of how bizarre it was. Like how are you even supposed to respond to that?
It's like they tried to backpedal from the whole "girl suicides are emotional and boy suicides are rational" moment, but had no clue was was wrong with that statement to begin with.
I think they did kinda sprinkle little hints of a sci-fi aspect beforehand but didn't really have time to go into that early on, so it was forced out in the end
SPOILERS: Don't get me started on how the reason Koito, the person Ai went on this entire journey for to begin with, killed herself was because she was mad the teacher wouldn't accept her advances so she started spreading false rape accusations about him on the roof where she accidentally lost her footing, slipped off and died.
Wait, seriously ? I didn't watch it, is it really it ? Just a stupid entitled lying girl dying from an vequally stupid death ? Not even a suicide, then the other girls thinking it was a suicide are misunderstanding the whole situation ? WTF
@@sazam1966 All we have to go on is the teacher's side of the story so he could be lying but it's not pressed any further and just seems to be accepted as the reason. It's really gross.
Gee, it almost seems like the problem isn’t that the creatives behind the series didn’t know what they were doing, and more that the current production workflow of the anime industry is inherently incompatible with the time and effort creativity takes to cultivate.
I respect what you're trying to say, but the story absolutely fucked itself and is really horrible in the end regardless of how incompatible the industry is with anime making.
@@kiwiequis4144 I mean, yeah, the story does seem pretty f-cked up, but the fact that the guy was apparently writing it *as it was airing* probably didn’t leave them with a lot of time to ask themselves if what they were writing was respectful and nuanced. That’s what happens when you’re under pressure to crank out work.
Hence the reason anime often latches on to very easy to replicate concepts with an established formula and does them to death. Thats why there are so many isekai anime now and so many ecchi haram and death battle anime in the 2000's. Easy to produce in the limited time frame they have.
I don't think I've ever in my life watched an anime and thought to myself while watching it "This is a 10/10" before. To then see it just devolve in the last few episodes was heartbreaking.
@@phoenixero8161 Its nowhere near as bad as Wonder Egg imo. In fact I didn't think it was bad at all and it remains one of my favorite anime to recommend to people who might want to watch a short mystery thriller type thing. A better example imo is Babylon. The direction after ep 7 was devastating lol. Similar to Wonder Egg it strayed away from the part of the story that made it great to another element that was better left in the background in its last few episodes.
I completely agree with everything you said but I just wanted to say that Neiru in my opinion is exetremely relatable to people on the austistic spectrum, as someone whose on the spectrum myself it was really comferting watching her have friends that just like to be around her and it was really upsetting for me when it turned out she was just a robot.
Exactly. I thought she was neat and interesting despite her being a copy of the "low empathy, high intelligence" side of the autism spectrum that we see the most. Part of that is that it's rarely seen on a girl character and thought it was nice to finally see a slightly different perspective. But naaahh, low empathy, highly intelligent autistic people aren't people, they're just robots or aliens, or something inhuman altogether. -_-
Yes!!!! I can't agree with you more. It hurt to watch her just be reduced to an "AI ghost" after all the character development Neiru and the friend group went through :(
I really think they should've erased the whole Frill plot and instead make the whole thing about Acca and Ura-acca wanting to know what drove their daughter/niece to suicide. Frill just kinda ruins the whole point?
You forgot to mention that they spent most of the show heavily queer-coding Ai and Koito's relationship. And also most of the show implying sexual assault/harassment by the creepy male teacher, or at least the very least some sort of weird unhealthy relationship, leading to Koito's suicide. Then in the final episode they reveal that Koito actually just slipped and feel off the roof while yelling false rape accusations about that male teacher after trying and failing to seduce him, which is apparently a Thing she has a history of doing. So apparently she's just a Bad Person(tm) and Ai can just be fine with her not being in her life anymore. All that potentially interesting character drama gets thrown out the window as pretty much the only story element the finale *does* wrap up
The only... kinda redeeming part of that, is that alt-reality AI's demon version of the teacher implies that maybe Koito was telling the truth and nobody listened? But also the show never questions him being like "yeah I love your mom with all my heart" so I really don't know what to make of it. It was about the shittiest possible way to wrap up Koito's character arc
I'm glad I saw this comment because I was 9 episodes in and was starting to feel the anime going in the opposite direction to what I was thinking it was going. I knew they were going to subvert expectations with the teacher plot but to see that they literally just when "UNO REVERSE CARD! It was the kid's fault(kinda) and not the teacher." It kinda sucks that a lot of people hate the ending so I'm just going to put what memory i have of this anime and put it in the memory vault. And I guess I'm not going to finish watching it and instead will be watching To Your Eternity because I just watched the first episode and it seems cool.
I am so glad you wrote this. I avoided this show past episode 2 because I was worried that the reasoning behind Koito's suicide would hit FAR too close to home...but realizing it was handled this poorly makes me glad I didn't watch it firsthand. I would have been several shades of furious.
I mean I think I could see what they were trying to say there are (a few) people out there that actually do that but I mean did they really think this wouldn't offend or at least feel distasteful to viewers who went through this type of stuff.
I’m still disappointed about Koito’s suicide. The show did a great job with Sawaki not actually being a bad person, more just Ai being angry at him for knowing things about Koito that she didn’t and Rika and Neiru making her doubt his intentions. Koito was being bullied for being close to Sawaki and they could have left it at that, but instead SHE was the bad guy. It makes those gentle scenes of her befriending Ai feel incredibly hard to watch because she may not have been genuine. The show was bold enough to NOT have the male teacher be bad, but then had Ai’s best friend use false rape accusations? Koito was already an enigma, but I wouldn’t have taken her as a liar.
> Sawaki not actually being a bad person Not too sure about that one chief, he has a habit of getting weirdly close to high school girls, which in every instance it happens it ends up torpedoing their mental health
@@LvLupXD Weirdly close to high school girls? He was only close with two students the whole show; Koito and Ai. We only saw him hugging Koito with zero context. He was only close to Ai because Koito was her only friend and had to check on her after she killed herself. He saw her as a muse for his art because while Ai thought her eyes were terrible, he saw them as beautiful and wanted her to feel the same and embrace that. Note that Neiru and Rika both have strained relationships with their parents/fathers. Of course they would call Sawaki trying to help his students as him being a creep. Momoe, his niece, calls BS on that. Ai’s fight in her dreamworld against Sawaki pretty much solidifies that he was never a bad dude. Were his actions weird? Yeah, but the show went out of its way to show the real, twisted shit other male characters did, like scummy executives molesting girls, kendo teachers misgendering and raping students and insane cult leaders. A teacher painting a student as a confident adult because said student could very well off themselves before they reached that age, while still odd, just doesn’t classify him as bad dude to me.
@@Rhaynebow he’s basically obsessed with Ai because of how good she’ll look when older. He even got with Ai’s mom who also happens to look slightly like her as well, he seems like a creep to me
@@minxxd That’s an understandable take. But I’m just finding it very weird and frustrating that when the show doesn’t show Sawaki doing anything illegal, when Ai, the MC, denies being in love with him and says outright that he’s not a bad guy, that so many viewers still got quite heated that he wasn’t a bad guy. I thought it was quite refreshing to see a male teacher NOT be the grooming perv, especially in a show where most of the villains were powerful men abusing the people who trusted them. Sawaki could have easily been one of them and I’m glad he wasn’t because that would have been such bad writing and a lame extra pile of suck to drop on Ai who just lost her best friend.
I also didn’t like how it glorified Rika’s cutting. Specifically when she said “I’ll keep hurting myself so that I’m going to live” and while I agree that cuts are nothing to be ashamed of, self harm is not a viable or a healthy coping mechanism. I may have misinterpreted the message, but this is a topic that should have no room for misinterpretation.
It triggered me a lot when she said that. I understand where she was coming from but having everyone around her ignoring the seriousness of her self-harming, it makes it look like no one cares when you self harm. How in episode 3 when Ai looks at Rika's cuts, it's completely ignored. It's like they added self-harming just to get the viewers relate to that character but then threw it all under a bus.
idt they really glorified it imo to me it just felt like she said that bc it was her only coping mechanism left and doing it to live is a lot better than giving up and dying idk
Honestly yeah. The message I got was "cutting is bad, but it's a better alternative than dying" which is really bad because it basically gives it the OK as a coping mechanism. Go ahead and cut to stop yourself from suiciding apparently, nothing wrong with that
I haven’t watched the show, but I have to get this off my chest. The main character looks like anime Coraline. Even her purse and hair clip have the same placement.
I had the same exact thinking when I first saw her! I even thought it was a direct reference to Coraline being that the show revolves around dreamworlds and working through your problems in there
After hearing about the ending reveals, it seems to me that someone felt it was too icky and sad to let the issues plaguing young girls to be shown so directly. We don’t want to talk about changing society for the better, so we just explain the poor weak little girls suicides away as an evil AI influence. Okay.
Exactly! Im getting strong suss feelings of censorship of its main premise in regards to its suicidal themes being thwarted by higher yup men in suits, who didn't look too kindly at the message the story was conveying and stepped in to detract from it (because if there was a rewrite, having a recap makes total sense, not to mention that after said recap is when we get the out of left field story change into sci-fi clusterfuckery) .... Im really giving those who own and manage Cloverworks (Aniplex, the entertainment anime arm of Sony, no less) the side eye from now on....😑
@Teofilus Setia Wahyudi just because there's anime thats been able to tell a story that is against the grain and controversial, doesn't automatically prove that other works are bestowed free reign to make any content at the discretion of the staff. And it's quite well known that in both the anime and manga industry, depending on the particular producers/publishers who bought rights to the story from creators, that they have stepped in to make certain decisions on whether or not, something needs to be changed within the story. Happens a lot. That's what the role of a 'production committee' of an anime is for.
Dear anime writers, You do not need Si-Fi robots and clones and aliens and secret societies and things like that to complete a story. Sincerely, everyone Cc. Franxx writer and WEP writer
Yeah, but we like all those things! And completing stories is hard! Plus the deadline was yesterday, so better to just throw a bunch of crap that seems profound together and hope nobody notices we just started writing a totally different show at the end of things. I mean, it's better than nothing, right? ... right? - Most anime writers, probably
Wonder Egg Priority really feels like a 24-episode storyline was made, then COVID hit, and rather than split the story over 2 cours, the production committee decided it would be better to shove the ending into the 12 episode run. The change from the first arc to the second is so drastic I believe they simply deleted the content that would fill say, episodes 10-15, which would bring the two arcs together in a meaningful way before diving into the scifi stuff that would be the conclusion. The result is the jump cut to a time-squeezed ending we got. There should be (needs to be) a director's cut (or something of that nature) so we can properly experience the story as it was intended, and not the pandemic chaos we got. (Still giving it a 10/10 on MAL though, the ending can't hurt the perfection of those first 10 episodes)
I agree those first eps were so good! And I gave the show a 9. Now I'm scared to watch the special. And also the more I think about it the more I'm like "is this a 9? They skipped so much and the ending was unsatisfying". So now I'm questioning my love of this show
However that was also the problem with the Episode 13 special because it was marketed as that Directors cut special that would tie everything together and give either a conclusion or jumping off point, but just ended with a whimper imo. This is from someone who waited until the special ending to watch everything.
I feel more like it was a 8 or 9 episode storyline that, rather than just going with it, they felt the need to stretch to hit 12, but then flubbed it hard.
This seems like another great example as to why pushing a project out before it’s done is a bad idea. We need to fix our game industry here in the states as well but damn Japan, help yourself & give people time to create their art so they can make you max profit.
@@dafire9634 That may be true but it’s not what I would expect from the Japanese culture. They’re all about hard work but they also take pride in what they do. So if the product is failing, they aren’t proud of it.
I wonder if this director really thinks "girls are more emotionally impulsive then boys" and other such unproven social stereotypes. Along with the whole second half of the series it made me question his ideas. If this is his idea of how humans work I don't think I'll ever be a fan no matter how experienced he gets.
I was so confused when the show said this because they literally had an episode about being trans… and how the hell does that figure into any of this being a ‘girls thing’? It completely negated the point being made.
@@wheediesmanchild5229 it’s kinda funny that it gets worse the more you think about it. The director by having that said trans character implies that because they still suicided (pushed by Frill as we know now) and their whole appearance in that afterlife straight up means the director’s opinion is: “yeah trans doesn’t matter, they still had a ‘girl’ brain and go to ‘girl’ afterlife. Literally worse the more you think about the implications lol
When the episode originally aired, I believed that Acca and Uracca were creatures imitating the human body, it made sense for them to just be so out of touch with human behavior, they just couldn't think like a human, but now it feels weird.
I also hated how the one girl that was portrayed lacking emotion was just written off as some genius clone AI or whatever it was in the end rather than delving deeper into the implications of potential trauma that could have caused such closed off emotions and logical ideologies.
I do like the thought of the discussion of oversexualized teen girls through media and anime, yet the way they executed it was very disrespectful and took all weight away from the suicide that the girls commited. Because if it was influenced by AI, their mentality wasn't bad enough to evoke such a drastic response. It makes them seem like victims of murder, not their own demons. It narrows the discussion on the mental health of teen girls and the experiences they go through in their loss of innocence. The robot girl thing could have been such an amazing and dynamic character if handled correctly.
Some of the problems with this show are understandable when you learn the writer never met with the director and other animation staff, as was revealed in a writer interview translated on reddit. At the time of the interview, the writer had seen the pilot episode but hadn't shared some *THEMES* of upcoming episodes, let alone scripts or detailed outlines.
Words cannot express, describe, nor elaborate upon how relieved I am to see this video. I watched the last episode of the season in a confused rage, and no less than 3 minutes later did this video pop up. I feel so validated.
i feel like that wep is the prime example of being to ambitious and ultimately failing. imo, the show started going downhill when they constantly added more and more; yeah, the concepts were all fun and interesting, but they only made more questions than answers, and continued to not explain anything. it really sucks too. it had so much potential
Fro what I’ve seen, being ambitious and to be seen as deep seems to be the main driving point behind its writing. No wonder it sucks by the end. They tried to paint a house, where the fundament wasn’t done yet.
if i’m being honest with you i kinda stopped watching at episode 7 for this reason. it started off really good and while it was confusing i assumed my questions would be answered, but they never were and i think that’s what made me drift away from the show
God, this show and its characters were butchered so thoroughly in just a span of a few episodes, it could've only been pulled off by the same studio that did Promised Neverland SS2.
Why couldn’t they have just said something along the lines of “the accas are full of shit and trying to justify their obsession with frill”? Like make it so that frill doesn’t actually make people kill themselves and the accas were just misguided or something. That could not only lead to interesting plot development but also somewhat preserves the tasteful handling of the topic of suicide. It really sucks it got this bad, if the finale made the weird elements work out into something good this could’ve been a classic.
You know, I think frill could’ve worked…. As a red hearing. Parents don’t like admitting when they do wrong by a child, and considering the fact they abandoned thier humanity and burried the AI child they made without questions kinda makes it’s likely that they weren’t the best people. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had some loofty expectations of her, and constantly compared to her mother. That sorta thing brews doubt and self loathing, even if the person is unaware of it. So instead of thinking whether it’s something they done, they pinned the blame on Frill, the new and fancy ai that they don’t understand. It even explains the whole egg thing. They’re desperate for confirmation that there is something that causes girls to kill themselves . Something that can be fought and they can protect girls from. I feel like the show saying that there is no one thing that causes suicide, instead it is the environment and interactions with individuals that lead them to commit such a thing. Also I would have the girls friends thier trying to bring back to be unable. I mean the show does this but… I think it would be another nice metaphor, that no matter what , the dead will stay dead, and to try and fight the fact is meaningless. Instead, you need to deal with those emotions, accept them and move on But that’s just my thoughts
wonderfully said, i think i like this frill more than some other suggestions i've seen of her being a manifestation of all of their fears so it would still be a big-bad. instead in this version, all of their problems still exist as individual antagonists
I guess you can say that Cloverworks need to Clover-work on their endings? But to be serious, the production value was really high, and it carried some interesting ideas, but man, it didn't really carry those ideas well. Maybe given more time and money, it would have been one of the classics
I think they had the budget. Heck Im sure many of the people who worked on this would have done it out of passion. But yeesh time is the one thing industrys dont seem to understand. To them money grows on trees but they dont seem to understand that a forest doesnt grow overnight.
The trajectory of this show made me so sad. Stunning animation and such a strong start gave it potential to be a top anime but they just ruined it so much with the last couple episodes.
as someone who struggled with suicidal thoughts when i was around 13-14, i connected with this show way more than i thought i would going into it. then to be told that teen suicide is because spooky robot made them jump, it was a giant slap on the face-
Wonder Egg Priority’s ending upset me more than it had any right to. I loved the show so much, it was cathartic and intimate, and I was just so attached to these characters and their journeys. That’s why the ending that robbed all of the characters of closure, minimized the central conflict by attributing it to a super powered AI, and generally cheapening the entire narrative by trying to make it something completely different than what made people fall in love with it.
The beginning of the show really spoke to me in a visceral way. I connected with it and was touched by it. I thought that if it could keep up the storytelling and character development, it would easily be on my list of "anime that changed my perspective." Unfortunately, Wonder Egg Priority eschewed the metaphysical psyche delving at the start and devolved into a mediocre sci-fi... thing. I'll still have the wonderful connection I felt at the start, but sadly it won't have a ending that suits it.
Wonder Egg Priority was a fantastic show, it just never ended. The final episode wasn't bad as an episode, it was bad as an ending. All the series needs is a proper conclusion.
I agree. I think the 2nd half of the special would have been an *amazing* last episode of season 1, but only if you decide to continue it in a 2nd season.
This definitely sums up what I thought of the show. There are some more things I'd like to add to this tho. Like if you're writing any kind of story ending you only use pieces that you have rather than add new ones. That's why it felt like we ended in the middle of things, because reveals typically reserved for midway points in the story structure come up at the very end making it feel unfinished. Because structurally speaking we did finish at the middle.
I disagree. The show does need a proper conclusion, but it also needs a proper lead-in to it. In my opinion, it started declining in quality about halfway through, when it abandoned the dripfeed of small hints. The second half of the season felt underdeveloped and rushed, not just the finale. I think it would have been a much better show if it had been spread out over twice as many episodes or two seasons. This was never going to happen, though, considering how rushed anime production is and how overworked the employees are.
I was feeling pretty hopeful when I watched the penultimate episode. The special was fucking terrible. It not only looked terrible, even by other series' standards, but it through out so much character development in favour of prolonging the nonsensical AI plot. Points for the least convincing character with albinism in existence, by the way.
@@cacophony7941 That is what he said: the last episodes are not bad by themselfs, they are just bad as an conclusion. If wonder egg was going to have a second season, it could be a great cliffhanger for a second season.
The moment the red hair girl was introduced, the series went rotten for me. As someone who tried to k1ll myself , as someone who hurted himself, as someone who was bullied, as someone who felt the most profound loneliness, this serie was beautiful, I thought that the girls were trying to save the girls so they could reencarnate, meanwhile they were running from their own problems. With the friend they for they found the force to battle their inner demons. But the fact that all was because of a butterfly saying "Jump", it makes no sense. I'm angry.
As a guy who's struggled with a lot of suicidal ideation, especially around that age, the way they simultaneously infantilized girls and dismissed the problems of boys really uh. It sure was something. There were a few mentions of it early on, but I sort of dismissed it b/c the themes were still speaking to me; the moment they got to Frill, though, and it became clear what the 'real reason' was, I just. Couldn't, anymore. lmao
@@Oops-All-Ghosts yeah guys i feel you, I'm disappointed too, the beginning was sooooo strong. I hope you guys gets better now and don't have this negative feelings anymore, my english is too bad to say how much i hope it's getting up/better for you both! But i have a good recommendation for you, if you wanna read something about the same topic (more or less). The Manga is called "Goodnight Punpun" it's amazing. It's really really deep and can hurt but the story is so good written. I swear i cryed a lot thanks it.
When you said the series went rotten when they introduced the red girl I thought "Wait, what did Momo do to turn this guy off the show?" Then I realized you probably meant Frill.
@@Oops-All-Ghosts I'm just coming to this from the video, but did they seriously do a mid season plot twist in a mature show about teen suicide that says both "girls are inherently way too influenced by their emotions, not like sensible boys" and "boys are too clever to commit suicide (so if you're a boy thinking about it you must be some sort of weird freak(1))"? Because hoooooooooo boy that's... frankly kind of impressive. That'd be unexpectedly terrible in a mediocre show, never mind one that up til then was actually doing a sensitive examination of the subject. Guess writers really can't write well when they're being worked to the bone, who knew. (1) *cough cough* leading cause of death for men under 45, *cough cough* incredibly important that we can have an honest and open discussion about the problems we're facing, *cough cough* you're not alone.
@@Dracinard It wasn't a plot twist, just... kind of a throwaway line to explain why all the main characters and Egg girls are... well, girls. Acca and Ura-Acca claim that girls' suicides are driven by emotion, and boys' suicides are driven by... some sort of logic, or something? It's ridiculous and insulting to everyone. Bonus points for the "well you're not a REAL boy" of having one of the "Egg girls" later on be a trans boy...
I personally though the story or Ura Acca and Acca creating Frill was incredibly interesting but within the context of the story, it was too much too late. It was a story I would have liked to hear more of but not as a part of the Wonder Egg Priority narrative.
Hearing all these criticisms about how the show sidelines it's emotional coming of age story about deeply broken teenagers half way through to focus on high concept, sometimes convoluted ideas while also being somewhat sloppy with how it handles its themes reminds me a *lot* of, uh... Well it reminds me of Homestuck.
@@sarafontanini7051 Gonna have to hard disagree, as much as Act 7 is beautifully animated it leaves several critical plot threads unresolved, many characters had their devolopment unfinished, and the credits attempt to show a 'happily every after' scenario with the characters that feels entirely unearned (the main god damned villian wasn't actually dealt with as far as readers were aware). This wouldn't be as bad if the official follow ups to Homestuck were... well, if they weren't *like that.*
@@DaedricPrinceofDoom Yeah for me, Homestuck reached its peak at the end of Act 5 and then just continued to roll downhill from there. And if I could ever say that Act 7 was a "good" ending, it's only because literally everything that came after was uh... *like that*. Ugh.
@@sarafontanini7051 Homestucks ending was very rushed and terrible. Many fans had an issue with it. Especially the lack of actual dialouge in critical moments where it would have mattered the most to know what the characters frame of mind were at or anything at all. There series ended with many plot holes and character questions that should have been addressed but didn't. The series had many implied answers but nothing concrete which makes me loathe it even more because I used to be such a big fan of it in my teens. Homestuck wasn't a bad series but the ending to it was far from great.
SPOILERS The moment to moment pacing of this show was beautiful. The use of digital animation techniques like tweening, digital filters, the CG... it made stuff I usually complain about seem like the new hotness. Then it had a weird misogynist computer clone murder baby, and I was like, "this doesn't handle themes of suicide in the ways that I hoped." And my brain kinda clocked out for the rest of the show. For a freshman work, though, it's breathtaking. I hope they get another crack at a new IP.
As someone who's had to deal with almost losing some of my closest friends to suicide, I was really happy when I saw this show. Most shows only want to graze over the topic but this one faced it head-on and they did it really well too so I was really disappointed when it started straying away from the important topics it had at first and started to become some randomly put together sci-fi story... eh whatever I still love the show
Honestly, it hurts to see a show like this fail to stick the landing so hard. This show and Attack on Titan brought me back to anime in a time where I thought I was over it, and I honestly don’t even want to watch the series finale because I don’t want to be let down
@@dinolover yeah I know, just a show that talks about serious subject matter like mental health being remembered as another show with a terrible ending kinda sucks
You hit the nail on the head! I was expected a deeper in look on the physiological aspect of teens struggled, not the robots... This was such a let down for so many of us. It had all of the ingredients to make an incredible, decadent show. To see it fall flat was crushing. Another example of the fact that the industry loves to rush things. If they gave this a little more time, let it marinate and mature, it would have been perfection. I can only hope this is a lesson to others going forward.
My question to you would be why the hell would you expect a show with this premise , the whole egg + dreamworld thing, being a deep look into the physiological aspect of teens in the 1st place? It's like watching a story expecting some deep, realistic physiological aspect, to be explored in a story that flashes it's fictional side all the time. The true lesson to be had here, which many probably won't learn either way, is for the audience regarding their expectations for such shows.
@@MgMast3r This is a bad take. Fantasy and science fiction are used to tackle hard truths. The show was set up to discus psychological issues because those were the themes the writers introduced: suicide, guilt, trauma. It would be foolish to *not* think that those issues would be handled smartly given how the series started.
@@ClintEPereira Missing the point. You can make a fantasy or sci-setting for that matter , and tackle such issues there. You can even use combine a realistic setting with a bit of fantasy elements and do this, just don't rely on those to fix the issues the show wants to touch on. But WEP is the type of show that exists in a real world setting, and tries USING ( key, word, using) fantasy elements to tackle it's real world issues for it's characters. So it's basically trying to solve something that exists in reality through something that doesn't exist , from the very beginning. And the OP said "I was expecting a deeper look into the psychological aspect of teens" ~ and I'm sitting here thinking like "wrong show chief." Foolish? Who's are the foolish ones considering how the show turned out? Because I dont' see y'all laughing & praising the show you were stanning so hard now. Should just accept that you got hooked over a pretentious illusion, and that's how a lesson will be learned from this regarding expectations. I'll take something like Tomozaki over this any day, which starts small, non-pretentious & delivers a steady build-up towards a solid conclusion. That one tackles real issues too, it just succeeds at it, unlike WEP.
@@MgMast3r Ep 1 started with showing the main character’s motivations stem form struggles with suicide, so it’s not unreasonable to expect the story to deeply explore that topic. Probably not a one to one example, but what you said is like questioning how people could ever think Animal Farm would have deep examination of oppression and the Soviet Union after reading the first few chapters, just because the characters are intelligent and human like animals that talk, but still live on a farm under the ownership of a human.
@@ddchrw I'm not questioning someone's like or dislike towards WEP. Rather, I find it a bit silly how the complaints come for something that was still present from early on, it just went further. Of course it's not unreasonable for someone that may be say, relatively new to anime to expect this. My comment towards the OP was more in the sense that expectations should be kept in check, particularly regarding pretentious shows. As for the Animal Farm sample, if I'd have seen that movie, then I'd respond to the point you brought up, otherwise I'm in the dark on how it executes itself. But it's a bad sample either way as context-is all mighty & what you described about it doesn't exactly match the one of WEP.
I just finished, tonight, watching this show. It was cute, emotional, funny in places and had some heart warming moments. It really felt like these were people dealing with their issues (spoilers) Being lonely and rejected by others, guilt over someone's death, self-centered freedoms and identity, the loss of a loved one, jealousy. It was excellent to watch and I kept with it, but at a certain point it felt like.. instead of, like MB said 'sticking the landing' they screwed up somewhere. Someone throw something out there and it wasn't reviewed properly and made it through to production. In my opinion, here's how to fix the 'ending'. -Show Kotobuki in the life support pod, as it sets up the alternate world used later. -Instead of Frill being a crazy, jealousy fueled mother-murderer, she instead commits suicide for the attention of her Fathers. This sets them up later as well to continue with the research to discover why 14-yo Girls were committing suicide in higher numbers.Mother dies in childbirth, the baby grows up and continues as is until suicide. -Momoe discovers herself in the egg first and subsequently runs out the clock on that egg. She doesn't free Haruka, but is still traumatized that she met herself that committed suicide because she was so oftenly miss-identified. She doesn't tell the others, but starts to drift away a little and goes quiet. -Rika then finds herself in an egg as well. An accidental suicide from where she accidentally cut herself too deep and bled out before help could arrive. The current Rika saves her by telling her how she's come to terms with her Mother, Chiemi is saved but she's still upset that at any point in time, she was one accident away from dying. One wrong cut, one wrong emotion and she's gone forever. She uses her anger to cover up her fear, as she did. -Ai Ohto finds herself in the egg. No changes needed except for the whole.. Bug face person thing. She accepts that she loves and supports her Mother's Relationship, moves on from her doubts over Sawaki and saves her friend, then tells the others what happened. Rika and Momoe confess that they had the same experience but they didn't have the strength to overcome their fears and are now afraid of death. -Neiru then finds herself in an egg as well. Her alternate self tells her that she was lonely and so over-burdened with responsibility and expectations that she took her own life. She never got to live for herself, so she decided she wouldn't live for others either. Our Neiru decides to take some of that selfishness and begins to live for her own happiness, freeing herself from feeling LIKE a machine all the time and allows herself to life selfishly, taking time from responsibilities to be with her friends, hang out, do things she wants to do. Her sister comes back to life and they have an incredibly rocky relationship for years, things like that don't mend over night. -The hour long special shouldn't be a recap. It didn't even have to be an hour long, just say that Neiru was leaving, Momo was terrified of going back in, Rika was angry at herself for losing her life in another world by her own habits. And finally, feeling that her friends were drifting apart, Ai destroys her phone when Neiru calls, feeling betrayed that she left, but in the end, she goes with Momo and Rika to confront their fears and failures, coming to terms with their current lives. They all share a dream and wake up to a text message from Neiru saying that she misses them a lot and she doesn't know when she'll be back, but she will. In the mean time, Ai keeps going after eggs as a Warrior of Eros to help the scientists while Rika and Momoe make their decisions later. End on the closing shot of her saying "Ai Ohto is back!" with the double peace signs. Super cute ending that one. there, I did my best.
Don't forget they also managed to entirely ruin all of the buildup and mystery behind Koito's death by just revealing in a quick voiceover that she actually had a history of hitting on and ruining the life of a teacher at her previous school, was trying to seduce her teacher again this time and her death was just an accident when she was being a drama queen on the roof trying to ruin his life too and tripped and fell.
Yes, maybe in a parallele universe, Wonder egg priority became a classics alongside TPN (seriously, they both had the potential to be ones); unfornately, they've failed in this world. But still , Thank you to the Wep team; even if the ending was disappointing, it was a great journey!
How to fix some part of the ending. Instead of making frill “tHE rEasON” the girls commit suicide make her more like Monika from Ddlc. Monika takes issues that are already there from the rest of her club members and dials them up to extreme (Sayori, Yuri) causing them to commit suicide. So I wished Frill did the same. This could send 2 messages, that when you ignore major issues in young girls (bullying Ect) it results in bad consequences and other people can have big impacts on whether you overcome or succumb to your personal problems.
also maybe not make the big bad some evil robot, make her a demon or something, I dunno it just feels like Sci-Fi isn't exactly what this show should be
My problem was that they made it seem like it was going to be an hour long special to expand on certain plot points, but they wasted half that time with more fucking recap. Like we already had an unplanned recap episode why do we need another. My heart has already been broken with Promised Neverland season 2 and Record of Ragnarock. And now this too? brb gonna go retreat back to Odd Taxi 🥲
i always thought that frill was meant to be and represent the scapegoats that people who don't understand teenage problems talk about, as i thought the acca's very misinformed ideas of boys vs girls suicide was also meant to show how messed up their viewpoint really was, though that's just my interpretation
That's a generous watching, since there is absolutely nothing said or done or shown to tease that. It would make a lot more SENSE and be much more compelling that way. Could be that's what they wanted and time and budget screwed them.
I actually liked the part with Frill, though that was because I was anticipating the revelation that she was merely exacerbating a trend that was already there instead of directly causing the wave of mass suicides herself. I saw her as a super Psyop agent, someone who tips the scales the direction they were already leaning. In a good story, dealing with her would've meant dealing with the misogynistic culture that gave birth to her as well. What could've been...😞
Thanks for putting so much detail into this review, especially about the writing and production. From the first few episodes, I could clearly see how engaging and talented the writing was, so I was so confused in the ending, it made me doubt my initial intention that these were good writers. Im so relieved to find out it was a case of too many chefs in the kitchen and not enough resources (ngl even with how crazy the story got, could have even worked if they were given 26 episodes) and not a case of them not caring/giving up/changing writers etc. Also to reaffirm that Naoko Yamada (one of my favourite directors ever) had a hand in the directing, I think Episode 1 is where her directing style really shines, and it's really wonderful. It's a shame it didn't completely work out, but makes me excited to know passionate writers/directors are working hard behind the scenes, giving us new ideas! I just hope more trust and resources are given to new people with talent to prove just as much as it is given to other establish anime writers/directors.
I feel like a rarely touched upon topic of WEP is how they treated Momoe specifically. she is the near textbook definition of that awful trope where tomboys/butches secretly hate looking masculine and actually want to be more girly. it sucks how that's like, the only interpretation of tomboys there can be in media. they don't even get the societal discrimination parts right with Momoe, as someone who is butch, lol. feels bad that people who have clearly never spoken to a butch in their life have control of our narrative
Yeah, I'm still trying to work out if Momoe was meant to be read as a trans character rather than a tomboy. There was that ridiculous scene with the Adam's Apple early on, but also, in the episode with Kaoru in it, Momoe ends up wearing a jacket with the trans flag's colours, along with a sport's bra (I think?) in the same colours, and, like... Many of her problems this season revolve around dysphoria and gender presentation, it seems like? I mean I'm not going to give them credit for that either way; if she really is meant to be read that way, then the fact that they didn't confirm that within the show itself is cowardice, esp. since they had a character whose entire identity is basically just "I'm trans look at how trans I am," but. Aughhhh. (Also ending that on Kaoru kissing her as if the only way to be validated in your gender-identity as a woman is to be perceived as sexually desirable as one by men sucks; again, I'm not sure if that's what they intended to say, but whether it was or not, they said it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
I'm still confused about her. I think she's cis, I mean, she goes to an all girls school in modern day Japan after all, but then if she IS cis her story is just... tall girl suffers because people assume tall = gay? Because tall girls... aren't ALLOWED to be femme????????? Like, what??????????????????? She seems uncomfortable with presenting so masc, but if she's cis, why not just... dress differently??? Her character is a mess.
Those last three episodes, man, as an anime-only, I could tell that it took a turn for the worse the moment they went original. *Spoiler* Between Edward getting away scot-free for *kidnapping* someone and John saving Kate/Emilico through basically the *power of friendship and love* from those *adult* shadows that ending really felt rushed. Just what happened to Cloverworks? -Shadows House -Wonder Egg -TPN And those are just the ones I can remember on the spot.
Man, I just need a season 2 because that "finale" was NOT a ending. Like... at all. These characters are so likable, they deserve better than what they got.
Many modern anime have kind of forgotten that not everything needs to be grounded in reality or needs an explanation. It could be fine to just have it be supernatural.
I feel like giving that the attention it deserves, as well as some of the other major issues with how the show handles its subject matter, would have taken the video well over 20 minutes.
@@Oops-All-Ghosts I mean that’s true but he does brink of the themes of the show, and I think that scene does far more damage than AI girl all things considered.
I think it’s a shame that they didn’t do more duo wonder egg battles, I think Momoe and Ai Ohto could have battled together to overcome her suspicions on Shuichiro. And I feel like Riku and Neiru could have learned a lot from each other considering there lifestyles and economic backgrounds are very different and they seem to process emotions very differently. I think they rushed the Genetic children thing to quickly, they introduced Frill who ( in my opinion) was introduced as a antagonist and made it seem like there was going to be an epic battle were all four girls work together and learned to defeat her. Personally would have made this a longer series considering we had one episode that was a total recap and a second recap on the last episode. It’s a shame cause I really like this psychology wonderland anime series I do wish they’d made the monsters drawn a little more differently like the first one. Still liked the anime a very different pattern then most magical girls.
One thing that I find interesting that the show brought up was the idea of a human being locked at a maturity level. Frill is still locked at the maturity of a young teenager but has the knowledge or maybe even better than some adults which is why I found the killing scene of the Acca’s partner so interesting. Because it is childlike jealousy but when a child has the knowledge of how to kill someone and even make it look like an accident it just shows how they kind of created a monster.
What really struck me about the early episodes was how truly viscerally angry the writers seemed about not only the social ills that led to the girls committing suicide and the people who just stood around and said nothing while it happened. The beginning of the show felt like someone grabbing you by the shoulders and shouting "do something." So when they took a hard left into "actually the real villain is an evil android" it kind of hurt, up until then it had been a very cathartic watch.
I feel very compelled to comment that the director in an interview did state that when Acca discussed boys and girls' differences, Neiru's reaction (an unimpressed glare) was meant to convey disagreement from a directorial standpoint- Apparently, they'd thought that would be obvious enough and didn't need to convey it with words. I would say I don't think they strongly communicated enough the fact that Acca was conveying his own opinion as fact, and didn't present a strong enough form of in-show disagreement to indicate the audience /is/ supposed to disagree with him, but it is something, and I personally think keeping that in mind makes the show feel much less biologically essentialist in it's take on boys v girls suicidal impulses than the way in which Geoff phrased it here. To speak to my own experience with the show, I found Wonder Egg Priority sincerely fascinating from start to finish, with only episode 8 and 13 being actually "bad" in the standard sense. Though the sci-fi elements and stuff with Frill did come out of left field, I personally didn't take issue with it being included, because I found the surreality of it to still be in-keeping with show's overall tone. I've only watched the episode once, up to this point, so I haven't been able to rewatch and thoroughly analyze and digest it- But personally, I do really feel like the backstory episode was hitting on something really interesting about the fetishized and idealized versions of girls and women that are so often the subjects of stories written by men. Frill's entire plotline did come out of left field, but I generally found the tone and dynamic of Wonder Egg to be surreal enough that I didn't really feel a need to question the inclusion of the sci-fi elements. In general, actually, I don't feel the sci-fi part of the show was out of place, so much as poorly interwoven given the more emotional, dreamlike and character-driven focus of the first 6ish episodes. The weird revelation of Neiru actually being an AI wouldn't necessarily feel so jarring to me if they'd done more to establish her stoicism and aloofness coming not from her being a genetically engineered super genius who'd been raised apart outside the experiences most teenagers would go through, but as a fundamental detachment from the human condition. But that Neiru and Airu (also, Neiru is referred to as the older sister, and Airu as the younger one) are "sisters" in a literal manner is treated as a given, and no one who would know the truth as to Neiru's identity ever treats her as though she isn't human, or does anything to imply as much. If they'd just planted some greater idea of it before, I could have personally accepted it, but as is I'm just left wondering what the point was besides "Well, we need Neiru to go with Frill for some reason so the group drifts apart." Anyways, this all said, I do hope for a season two or a general piece of sequel media- I'd really like to see the series actually wrap up on it's ideas and give both the audience and the cast members proper closure. I found the really human character writing truly compelling and endearing- I find WEP's girls to be some of the most enjoyable cast of characters I've seen from anime. And I still sincerely think Frill has potential to be a great end-game antagonist that can interestingly parralel both Ai and Neiru, as a real human girl and as an AI that wishes to obtain her own humanity, both of whom have the ability to empathize and understand other girls better than the so-called "perfect daughter" of Frill. That's my feeling of it, anyways, and regardless, I'm still really glad I watched Wonder Egg Priority. Even if it never gets to pay off, I imagine this one is going to hang around in my top 10 on the strength of 11/13 episodes for a good long while.
ThatOneRetroKid I'm also scare for chainsawman. I mean the trailer was dope, but the trailer from AOT season 4 was also dope so.... Oh and I recently read that some of the animators from that trailer where paid with, no shit, 2 dollars . 2 DOLLARS!
If I had to sum up this video in one sentence, it's "sometimes less is more." Good concept held back by the need to make it more complex and convoluted than it needed to be
The thing that bums me out the most at the end of it all is that the prominent male characters of the series, who have always been portrayed as morally questionable at best and absolute monsters at worst, get a free pass. Sawaki's explanation of why Koito died is taken as fact with no rebuttal from any of the many witnesses who should have been there, least of all Koito, which is strange since half the show's runtime is dedicated to making him look like the slimiest person on the cast. The Accas continue to have Ai in their service, even though she knows what they did to Frill, an (albeit constructed) thinking being and, according to the show's lore, are complicit in the death of one friend and the disappearance of another. The Ikuhara fan in me wants to write this off as "patriarchy allows corrupt and dangerous men to keep their positions of power over women and minorities, regardless of the violence they enact," but that also doesn't feel like the intended message. Or, if it is, it's a poorly relayed message. WEP's ending is going to be one of those slow-burning disappointments that stick with you and slowly reveal all of its layers of terribleness in new, soul-killing ways.
One of my biggest concerns post-ending is that Sawaki being slimy might not have been the intended reading. Like I'm genuinely concerned that we might have been meant to look back at some of the past events and think, "oh, actually, that was a perfectly innocent interaction, where an adult teacher made a painting of one of his students as a grown-up a major part of his exhibition."
Like the show took such a hard left walking back some of the earlier themes that it makes me wonder if someone higher up got pissy about the story saying "rape is bad and seniority doesn't excuse being a monster"
Like I understand they didn't want to make him a rapist but they didn't need to make the friend a Donkey of a human being like from what I've heard they don't really question the teacher which means that the friend was definitely evil and we really shouldn't care about her.
@@rebeccakoenig9098 thats what i was thinking, like did someone just walk into the studio and hold everyone at gunpoint until they changed the main points of the show?? like,,,
All things considered, I feel genuinely awful for every studio that's had tho adapt to working in this version of the new normal and I want to say that the rush to get people to work from home, coordinating getting those people the equipment necessary to do their job and growing into that new day to day has definitely affected the quality of the final products we've gotten over the last couple years (except for Marin, she's perfect) Despite how devastated I was that this show didn't stick its landing, I wanted to still say thank you to everyone at CloverWorks for what they still were able to achieve despite the overwhelming odds & made things that have moved me to tears of joy and heartache over people who aren't even real. Thank you so much.
The main problem was the series started to focus solely on the sci-fi aspect of the series and left the character aspects behind. And like, SOMETHING could have been done with what we had. I think the juxtaposition of Frill being two men's "idea" of what a teenage girl is like vs what actual teenage girls are like could have made for such a fascinating concept. But then they focused on Frill being a death drive and it's just....oh man you were /so/ close to an actual point. Another bit that urked me was like, the whole thing with Koito. Mainly, the "resolution" we got in the special episode. While yes, it would be fascinating to explore the relationship of a teenage girl using her gender and age as a chip to target older men and blackmail them, there are two problems with that. 1: We should have learned more about Koito there. Like, why was she like that? Why did she lie about Mr. Sawaki while on the roof? Why did she seemingly do the same at her previous school? Because those kinds of problems have underlying reasons that need to be helped. But it doesn't. And 2, which is more importantly: THE SERIES SPENT HALF IT'S RUNTIME TELLING US MR.SAWAKI WAS A CREEP. Like, going back to older episodes, he is spesifically framed as a predator, going after Ai and trying to get close to her. Hell! The alternate Ai's egg killer was literally Mr. Sawaki. So building up all of that and then in the last episode go "oh no he isn't actually a predator it was the girl who killed herself's fault" like???? Way to mix your messages??? In the worst way possible??? As a girl I love how this series explored it's themes of femininity and how sometimes just being a girl in a society that doesn't value us can be traumatizing. If more Wonder Egg content is created, I will happily watch it because I think there's still value in the series. Even the bafflingly stupid parts. But I will also happily criticize it when it fucks up.
Honestly the narrative the girls stories and the brother's story would have worked better if they were separated, like a prequel/sequel kinda thing, having a 1 hour special that was the brother's story framed as a horror/thriller and either another 1 hour or half hour special for the girls to wrap up so it didn't feel like someone was trying to jingle 2 sets of keys in your face. 🥺
YES!! If they had focused on the 4 girls' stories in the main season and made a movie about the past of Acca and Ura Acca, just how No game no life did, it wouldn't have ended up being such a big problem.
Also, it would've been better if the brothers' stories were more about how Acca's wife and daughter committed suicide so now they've made WEP to prevent any other suicide.
Once again, nobody talking about the ONLY good job of CloverWorks this season (and maybe this year): Shadows House. Even if the season finale arc was mainly anime-made, it’s sooo good. And the manga is a beautiful hidden gem.
I greatly appreciate the audio directors names on-screen with clips from their associated works. It really helps me attach art to the artists and remember them.
I feel so strongly about Wonder Egg Priority, it affected me so heavily, and I'm just not going to watch this finale. Makes me feel incredibly empty. It's sad.
What makes this experience memorable is just how good the original concepts are, the potential of the show. With something like SAO a lot of people were mad because it had one of the best pitches for a show ever (which MMO isekai has since then expanded upon, not necessarily in a good way), but then SAO just was meh or even bad at times, it did nothing with its pitch. WEP not only had a fantastic pitch, it started the execution perfectly, it was beautiful, touching, memorable and still oozed potential for greater things to come. TLDR: the higher they fly, the harder the fall will be.
"Can I have Madoka Magica?" "We have Madoka Magica at home." Madoka Magica at home: dont get me wrong I enjoyed some of WEP and its not a Madoka clone, but between the two it is clear which one I prefer.
The "Teen Girls being too emotional" thing works specifically in Madoka because it is unambiguously based off of the magical girl genre and it's tropes, while the character (Kyubey) in the story reinforcing those twisted views is clearly shown to be a villain over time who targets adolescent's desires away from the sight of adults and actually seeks to isolate (or encourage a chain reaction) and destroy them in the end. Here, the two idiots who try to bring up the old "girls are different than boys" line are cast in a sympathetic light because the narrative doesn't give us time to question them. Acca and Ura-Acca are actively encouraging these girls to go on these near suicidal missions, and promise to bring their friends back, and then having them face the mistakes they cannot themselves,,, for some reason. They do half the same things as Kyubey, but instead of being interested in harming the girls, they're stuck in a mindset of superiority that makes them feel superior to them and alienates them. But, we never have the time to approach that. It felt like they could have been going somewhere with all that discourse on gender that could have been subverted meaningfully, like "they are actually at fault because of how they alienate the feelings of women/girls and will have to face those consequences," but instead at the end things are suddenly answered in ways that either feel unnecessary or actively just come off wrong. WEP feels like, by episode 7, realizing they needed a conclusion, beelined it for something that could come off as logical and in doing so completely forgot the magic that made it work, and instead made a more confusing mess. Where as Madoka, by its ending, clearly wraps upon its opening, and throughout the show is consistently building upon its narrative and atmosphere.
@@Iridescent_Astraea yes MM feels more complete and gets better and better the longer it goes, as more stuff gets unveiled. WEP on the other hand, as you correctly said, suddenly realized that it needs some kind of ending and fails to establish a connection from that ending to the rest of the plot.
Comparing Madoka Magica to Wonder Shit Priority is an insult to Madoka. PMMM series along with the Rebellion movie are what I consider one of the best psychological thrillers in anime. Wonder Shit Priority is pseudo-intellectual pretentious bullshit. They tried so hard to make WEP look like its something smart and it ended up falling flat.
I'm really disappointed that I don't get to experience this story in its full potential. I feel like the story was a solid premise with a lot of possibilities. It was supposed to be the anime we all needed right now. Sadly the over ambitious story, coupled with a studio on the rocks, ruined the experience for us and imo didn't give enough respect to its well written core characters.
I hear people saying,"it was the writers first time and the studio crunched them so hard so it's not their fault." Like sure, crunch can make you seriously miss some implications in your story, but you don't actively pen some seriously egregious stuff by accident.
It pains me so much Wonder Egg ended up like this...Everyone participated in the project is really admirable, they gave their all to this passion project...Respect+++...
I absolutely love these characters as much as I love the girls from K-On, no cap. The character design is on the level of Yoshitoshi ABe and I DO NOT lightly make comparisons to the God Emperor of Character Design. And for character development I just wanted all of the best things for them, especially Ai and Rika. The ending that the series deserved, and the one that the writer doesn't seem to realize that he set up, was as follows: Ai realizes that Sawaki is actually a creep and he probably had a hand in Koito's suicide somewhere, but doesn't have the ammunition to accuse him to her mother, so she either has to get her mom to trust her without proof (a really great theme of adults believing teens when they say there are problems) or moving to view the other girls as found family (which would tie into Rika's arc well). Rika comes to realize that there is nothing to be gained by maintaining her relationship with her alcoholic mother or seeking her absent biological father and forms found family with the girls. Momoe comes to realize that her identity as a woman is valid despite her being seen as a handsome boy and realizing by meeting Kaoru that gender identity, gender expression, and sex need not exist in this heteronormative lens and maybe finding out that her rejection of women's advances are a combination of compulsory heterosexuality and a complex about how "handsome" she looks despite being 100% woman (and maybe finding herself a *living* trans masculine boyfriend for extra squee factor from me, because I definitely squeed when she kissed Kaoru a little too hard). And finally Neiru discovering that smart people are aloud to have a personality.
i agree with this^ personally, when we first saw neiru's home i assumed that she was born into a super-rich family, and she was the daughter of the company CEO. which was also why she didnt go to school, she had a home tutor or something. i feel like if she had extra-busy absent rich parents that would be a more interesting and realistic background for her. you could still keep her as a smart person, but have her deal with the pressures of trying to live up to her parents' success and overworking herself. it would be a great opportunity to explore social and familial pressure conflicting with a desire to be independent, something that affects many people. eventually, neiru comes to realise that she is her own person and she doesnt have to be exactly like her parents, that "success" looks different for everyone, that she can prioritise her own mental health over work, and that she doesn't need to seek a connection with parents who were never there for her. BUT INSTEAD we got a super intelligent AI who runs her own company at 14. ok.
I love Wonder Egg Priority the same way I love Erased. Sure, it went off the rails towards the end but at least I enjoyed going off the rails with it... unlike Darling in the Franx. And it's animation didn't give me motion sickness like most of the last quarter of 'So Im a Spider, So What?' did. Also watch Vivy and Odd Taxi
Sometimes i really belive that there is some kind of evil curse over Manga/anime industry. In this last decade most of the major products keep failing without having an actual explanation for that. Unironically i'm glad HxH is into a n eternal Hiatus, so there are no way it will screw itself
This anime was a lot like a death machine made in roller coaster tycoon: funny and thrilling at first, but is poorly constructed and was set up to fail. All thrill and no finale setup
When I saw all about what the show wanted to tell, it look like it's doesn't wanted to tell anything about suicide, trauma, bullying or any other social issues, it's look like it was always about cute little girls fighting monsters in another dimension with pretty visuals, and nothing else.
You ever watched a natural disaster without ever looking away, hoping for some kind of hope or salvation in the end, which unfortunately never comes? Yea.
So this makes Paprika and Paranoia Agent turns, with a hundredth of the build up? That's a whole lot of Last act syndrome to dump on someone only to then stretch out the Last act to comical lengths. It's a good thing I went with Odd Taxi in Spring.
This morning I was choosing between starting Wonder Egg Priority and Otherside Picnic. I put both of them on my watch list because of your videos, so it made me wonder if you had uploaded anything recently. Then I saw the title and thumbnail of this. I am now 3 episodes into Otherside Picnic.
