Wonder Egg Priority (Season One)
When her best friend committed suicide at school, Ai Ooto stopped going. Then, one night she was guided by a strange voice to an underground mall where she was given an egg which might hold to key to bringing her friend back!
Wonder Egg Priority (Season One)
What did you watch?
This is another of those series that I had planned on watching when it finished airing but never got around to it. I’m not sure if the general disappointment with how it ended played into my decision to put it off or not, but that was probably the only thing I was aware of before starting it. That made for an interesting experiment because I could focus on trying to work out how the story might end, factoring in what might be considered a disappointment. Basically, I took the opinion that people were probably being harsh and they just didn’t get what they were hoping for. So, let’s see what happened. There will be spoilers, for sure.
What happened?
Ai’s best friend jumped off the school rooftop and died. She was distraught and as a result, stopped going to school. She had no idea why Koito killed herself and that was one of the things that really troubled her. They’d both experienced bullying and maybe if Koito had shared her troubles with Ai, they could have worked together to stop it… one way or another… However, she didn’t and now Ai was alone. Then, one evening, she was guided by a voice to an underground mall where she met a talking dummy. It showed her to a gacha machine full of eggs.
That night, Ai slipped outside and mysteriously found herself at her school. The voice appeared, telling her to break the egg. She didn’t understand, but eventually threw it at the wall. It cracked and then grew. Eventually, it exploded revealing a girl. They were chased through the school by these tiny monsters called See No Evils. Ai needed to protect the girl and defeat the wonder killer who had caused the girl to kill herself in the real world. If she saved enough girls, she may even bring Koito back.
What did you think?
Well, I fully understand why people hated the ending of this series. You can add my name to the list of people that felt that way. As I tried to work out how this series might end, I assumed that none of them would revive their friends and maybe that would annoy people. Of course, I believed that the series would be more about them getting over their trauma and learning to move on. Their friendship would help them grow, giving them more reasons to live. In a sense, it did that which I thought was really well done, but then it took things too far with AI monsters and science fantasy posing as pseudo-science. By trying to explain everything they actually made it worse. I really enjoyed the series but hated the ending.
What was your favourite moment?
It’s really hard to consider this a favourite moment as the entire series was incredibly dark. It was dealing with suicidal teenage girls for one and then there was the reason behind their decisions to end it. Some of those moments were horrific and left me holding my breath as they fought for a resolution. My favourite element of the story was how they found each other and became close friends. Each of them was probably only a bad decision away from committing suicide themselves. So, seeing them come together and grow was easily the highlight of the show.
In retrospect, I would have preferred it if they hadn’t revived their friends. Maybe, they could have gotten to a point where they realised that it wasn’t their place to bring them back. They needed to come to terms with their loss and move on. There were things in their lives that each needed to address and slowly they did that with the help and support of their friends. For me, that was the real message of the show. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they decided that they would try to explain how and why everything was happening…
What was your least favourite moment?
There are no prizes for guessing what I’m about to say. The ending! Well, the bit just before the ending. We were shown the lives of the two dummies, Acca and Ura-Acca before they transferred their brains into the fabricated bodies. They lived and worked together. They created an AI child, a girl around fourteen and lived happily together. Then, they both fell in love with a woman. She chose Acca and then conceived a child together. However, Frill, the AI they created killed the woman. The child miraculously survived, but then she mysteriously committed suicide too after revealing to Ura-Acca that she loved him. Frill had somehow managed to do it and was making more and more teenage girls commit suicide.
Acca and Ura-acca set up the wonder egg program in the hopes of creating warriors to fight Thanatos, the god of death. By adding all of this in an attempt to explain things, they ruined the show and took away the fantastic storytelling that went before it. We didn’t need an explanation. I think most people would have been happy with it just being some sort of mystical thing that happened to these girls, giving them hope and helping them overcome their grief. I think the fact that I would never have guessed this ending probably helps show that it really came out of nowhere and didn’t fit with the rest of the show.
Who was your favourite character?
Ai was probably the best character as she underwent the most development. We saw her at the beginning of the series as a shy, reclusive girl who didn’t understand why her friend killed herself. She was scared and timid. Then, as she met more girls that had killed themselves, she began to understand the importance of standing up for others. She took it upon herself to fight for these girls and show them that they were not being treated fairly by the monsters that had plagued their lives. We saw her struggle with her mother’s decision to date her guidance counsellor at school, especially when they began to hypothesize about why Koito killed herself. We even learnt that Ai had a crush on him too and things could have gone very differently for her. Seeing her journey was inspiring.
Who was your least favourite character?
I want to say Frill, Acca, or Ura-Acca, but I think it’s the way they were added and explained that made me hate them and not their characters. Would I have preferred it if they hadn’t been there? Absolutely. However, the one character that I felt that I didn’t like one bit was Koito. There was something kind of off about her at the beginning and then when we learnt how and why she fell off the building, it just got worse for her. Of course, the revived Koito which was kind of explained as a parallel universe was even worse. They should have let the dead sleep and focused on the girls’ rehabilitation.
Would you like some more?
Obviously, it feels like there is much more to the story thanks to the ending they slapped on, but I didn’t like the ending and as a result, I don’t think we need to see any more. I didn’t like the weird bug-like creatures that appeared at the end and killed their pets. I don’t understand where they came from or even what their purpose was. We don’t know who’s causing the suicides… Thanatos maybe, but that seems a bit ridiculous. Is it Frill? Maybe. The problem is that none of it really mattered beyond the four main girls moving on. That was the story. The ending should have been them giving up on the eggs and getting on with their lives. If anything they should have gone back and discovered the egg machine was gone. Keep the mystery alive.
What have you learnt?
The ending is possibly the most important part of a story. Sure, the beginning needs to be good too as it needs to hook the audience and make them want to see more. However, the ending is usually what everyone remembers once it’s over. I good ending can elevate a story considerably, but so a bad ending can lower people’s experience. I think the problem we saw with this ending was that someone decided that an ending needs to explain everything. In some cases, that’s true. If you set the audience’s expectations that they will get answers then the story better deliver.
However, an ending doesn’t need to explain things. Sometimes, it’s about the journey and the ending is showing us how the characters have changed or not changed as the case may be. It can be an open ending, but only if it’s done with intention. Too many shows end on a cliffhanger expecting to get another season, but it doesn’t come and everyone is left disappointed. This series would have been perfect for an open ending. It could have left off with them still saving the girls in the eggs without ever rescuing their friends. Just the fact that they have grown as characters and started to address the issues in their own lives would have been enough. Endings matter, but it has to be the right ending.
Other posts in the series
- Anime
- Analysis
- Lists
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