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EP. REVIEW: Wonder Egg Priority


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Penrhos



Joined: 09 Jun 2021
Posts: 167
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 6:44 pm Reply with quote
Bugger - they crash-landed the finale....6/10 and that's just because the first episodes were so good.

Worth watching the first episodes but stop after the recap as it goes to pot.8/10 up to this point.

The first 25 minutes are another recap - spoiler[the it looks like Neiru was an AI, the dead girls are resurrected in a parallel timeline but don't know the Egg Girls and AI becomes so vigalante egg girl love warrior trying to save the original Neiru.]

Far too convoluted and odd Cloverworks F**k up another Anime.
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MesousaGaby



Joined: 16 Oct 2018
Posts: 71
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 7:39 pm Reply with quote
Penrhos wrote:
Far too convoluted and odd Cloverworks F**k up another Anime.


Starting to get the feeling this is more Aniplex's doing, screwing over this and TPN2.
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JoelBurger





PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 7:52 pm Reply with quote
The way I see it: the last episode offered about as much (if not more) narrative conclusiveness as the special. So I'm just gonna take the series as its own discrete thing, and treat the special as a highly disappointing follow-up.
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Zeino



Joined: 19 May 2017
Posts: 1098
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 8:08 pm Reply with quote
Thanks, I hate it.

spoiler[
The resolution to the Koito / Sawaki mystery was perhaps the single worst answer they could have provided. Male teacher is good and innocent! Female student is evil and manipulative! fudge that shit.]


Okay I actually did like two things:

spoiler[Neiru being an AI copy of her "sister" was unexpected but maybe the most coherent and satisfying answer they could have given to her arc up to that point. It also had the potential to refute the Accas and their treatment of Frill. I think I have to stop there because any further commentary on that point would turn into criticism. It was an interesting idea! It had potential. The show had potential.

The statue girls being resurrected but amnesiac (or maybe parallel universe copies?) was maybe the best the story could manage for a conclusion that actually granted the main characters' goals while still being a bittersweet pill. That said, in the parallel universe version of this story that is actually good we got this revelation three or five episodes ago and seriously dealt with it instead of just shrugging it off at the last minute.]


But yeah, Wonder Egg has to be a major contender for all-time biggest drop in quality from episode one to the end. What an absolute infuriating shame.

And not to say that you jinxed it to be that way, Steve but it seems that fate itself decided to rebuke your declaration in the final Odd Taxi review that you don't need endings to be tidy by handing you this special though you still are doing your best to desperately spin something positive out of it here. I can't.


Last edited by Zeino on Wed Nov 17, 2021 3:12 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Leviathonlx1



Joined: 10 Dec 2018
Posts: 192
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 8:35 pm Reply with quote
Guess I won't even bother watching the finale since everything I'm reading about it is that it sucks and isn't worth watching.
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gsilver



Joined: 04 Nov 2007
Posts: 611
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 8:51 pm Reply with quote
Well, I was already mad at the show for the tone-deaf TV ending, and clicked on the review on the chance that they may have salvaged it with the finale.

I guess not.
More time to catch up on actually good anime. I still need to finish that little show called Megalobox
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OtherSideofSky





PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 9:31 pm Reply with quote
I wasn't expecting much, but that was still a huge letdown. The twists that worked (Neiru, the resurrected girls) needed to come episodes ago to work. As it is, they haven no room to go anywhere. A twist is not a replacement for a conclusion.

The whole mystery with Koito and Sawaki was central to Ai's character, and thus the series, but it always felt like it was an afterthought to the writers after episode 1. The level of renewed attention it got in the TV finale needed to come much earlier in the series and be much better executed. The explanation they went for is subject matter that could go somewhere meaningful in the hands of a writer like Natsuno Kirino or Kanae Minato, but it was a terrible idea here, and this is the absolute worst way to present it. No answer at all would have been a significant improvement.

Sawaki ends up being an absolute waste of a character. He probably gets the most attention of anyone outside the main four girls, but he's static. He reads as so creepy because he's written as a vaguely benevolent cipher who never shows any sign of a human emotion. If there's nothing beyond his exterior, then his screen time would have been better spent on literally anyone else (like Tae, Ai's mother, whose importance to Ai is a major story beat in episode 12 despite barely being present up to that point).

WEP would probably have needed to cut half its storylines completely to reach a satisfying conclusion in 12 episodes. (I think that was obvious by the time it hit episode 11 and was still introducing major characters and storylines.) Delving into the sci-fi elements was always a mistake; the show is at its best when it focuses on small personal issues, while it's broader setting and lore have little to offer beyond cliche. The show's saving grace is that its best episodes, like episode 7, are fairly self-contained and can be enjoyed without the rest of the show.

I would, however, be interested to know if they originally had a different finale planned. The new half of the special is the only episode without action scenes and suffers from a dramatic drop in animation quality, so I wouldn't be surprised if older drafts of the script called for something that turned out to be technically infeasible.
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darkchibi07



Joined: 15 Oct 2003
Posts: 5459
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 10:01 pm Reply with quote
I really don't want to wipe away a lot of the REALLY good stuff Wonder Egg Priority has done in the show (I especially like that episode dealing with Rika and her fickle relationship with her mom). But yeah, this "final" episode was essentially the culmination of "too ambitious" writing and behind-the-scenes tumult caving in catastrophically that I'm surprised the episode didn't ended up being done in popsicle sticks and crayons. And in the end it's another consistent anime production industry problem plus inexperienced staff that got the best of them.

So is this what's going to happen to Wonder Egg Priority as we go on in the rest of 2021 and beyond; it being all tattered and possibly forgotten? I am still interested in what these animators are capable of in future projects.
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neptun1



Joined: 27 Sep 2018
Posts: 11
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:19 pm Reply with quote
I can't imagine they screw it that completely.
It was still 7/10 (kind of enjoyable) at the point of episode 12
and now 4 or 5/10. why don't just leave it alone since the TV ended.
why even bother make a 45min(half recap) disaster to hurt those who really
care about this franchise. unless there is some whole sequal after
few years. but that doesn't seem to happen.
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dm
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Joined: 24 Sep 2010
Posts: 1346
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:34 pm Reply with quote
Back in the day, anime series were released one three-or-four episode disk at a time (or one two-episode tape...). With Wonder Egg Priority you could get the first couple of disks, and pretend it was an OAV that just never got to go any further. You'd be sad about what might have been, but I think it would be better than being sad about what actually came to be.

There was so much animation talent on display, and so much directorial talent. I really think it's fair to blame a lot of it on the writer.
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Helix91
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Joined: 30 Apr 2017
Posts: 62
PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:58 pm Reply with quote
Most people are going after the finale for bad writing, and rightfully so, but I just want to point out that it also looks like crap.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15433
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:04 am Reply with quote
It is hard to believe that this actually what they planned. They turned the girl who was super important for Ai to start to love herself a bit, into a teenage girl who pushed her previous teacher to suicide and was trying to force her new teacher by accusing him of rape? Not to mention that she practically came across as now a bully of Ai.

Neiru is an AI robot who her "little sister" was the original and tried to kill her before killing herself instead. The pun was right there to make Airu the AI version of Neiru. Neiru kind of came across as neurodivergent, so making her a robot feels kind of crappy. Maybe they could have done something like saying that Airu as an AI was jealous because her creator still preferred the original Neiru. Neiru's friend that was in a vegetative state is now her mother?

And the it ends with saying that Ai's life pretty much became melancholy where she changed schools, drifted away from her important relationships, decided to not pick up the phone from Neiru, and then at the end just decides to suddenly try and find Neiru in the eggs? I thought that Ai had decided in the previous episode to already fight? This all seems to be so out of place compared to the writing earlier in the series.

Although I do think that it was falling off the rails when it started to hint that Ai might have liked her teacher, and then started adding in sci-fi explanations of things like robots, and making the parallel worlds such an integral part.
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Everlasting Coconut



Joined: 22 Jul 2019
Posts: 290
PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:26 am Reply with quote
I agree with most of the complaints you'll find online regarding the finale, but I am legitimately confused as to why people are saying this episode looked like crap. I mean, I guess it's kinda boring in terms of direction, but crap?

Guess my eye is just not trained for this kind of thing.
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The Anime Binge-Watcher



Joined: 28 Jan 2020
Posts: 82
PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:34 am Reply with quote
Everlasting Coconut wrote:
I agree with most of the complaints you'll find online regarding the finale, but I am legitimately confused as to why people are saying this episode looked like crap. I mean, I guess it's kinda boring in terms of direction, but crap?

Guess my eye is just not trained for this kind of thing.
Personally, I don't think it looks like crap; in a lot of ways, it looks really good. But when you compare it to how spectacular so many of its episodes look, it definitely doesn't measure up. Which is a shame, because in almost any other show, this episode would look fine. It's just that WEP set such an absurdly high standard for its visual presentation that this episode now having just okay visuals feels like a step back. When you get used to 10/10 presentation, suddenly going to 7/10 presentation is bound to be jarring, even if it objectively doesn't look that bad.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15433
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 2:11 am Reply with quote
I just remembered. Neiru went to the hospital, and it was meant to be a bit of a deal when she could do stuff because of the dream world. That kind of feels like it is totally undercut by revealing that she was actually a robot.
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