Tag: Wonder Egg Priority

Posted on in Uncategorized

The Five Most Magical Anime of 2021

Special Notice: This should really go without saying, but since I’m going to be talking about all of these shows in general, overall terms, you can expect spoilers for all of them, up to and including their endings.

So here we are again, anime fans. Another year firmly in the past tense, not just within our specific sphere of interest but in general. Time is a funny thing, it’s already late November as I write this opening paragraph, which isn’t much less time than I gave myself last year, but despite the fact that I am demonstrably writing about fewer shows, I wanted to at least try and give each of them a bit more attention.

Yes, this marks a change in format. Last year I undertook the–in hindsight rather absurd–task of ranking every anime I’d finished that came out that year. The format required me to spend a fair amount of writing real estate on anime that I either didn’t like or simply had no strong thoughts on at all. This year, I wanted to simplify a bit. Only a bit, mind you. This is still me we’re talking about, after all.

So, this year the job is less complex, but simultaneously more difficult. 5 Anime I liked more than the rest; five that stuck with me and that I think will continue to stick with me. Plus, a handful of honorable mentions to get a positive word in for some anime that I enjoyed but couldn’t wholly self-justify putting in the main top five.

Just to fully disclose; as usual, these are indeed only my opinions, thoughts, and observations. My opinions that I consider reasonably informed and well thought out, but opinions, nonetheless. There is also the fact, of course, that anime I didn’t watch cannot make it onto this list by default, with apologies to the several anime I heard very good things about this year but did not find the time to watch myself. (Chiefly here I am thinking of ODD TAXI and Eighty-Six, but there are other examples too.) This list also consists exclusively of serial fiction, in the interest of keeping things fair, so the final Rebuild of Evangelion film isn’t here either. (Which is a shame, because it would’ve easily earned a spot on this list. My hope is that next year I’ll have seen enough anime films that actually came out in 2022 to make them their own list, but we’ll see.) And it’s only shows that are actually finished, so if Ousama Ranking ever shows up on one of these lists, just as an example, it’ll be the list for next year, when it concludes.

Ultimately then, what you have is a snapshot of what I consider particularly worthwhile in the medium of serial anime. A couple things went into picking shows for this list. The simple question of how much I enjoyed watching it week to week is obviously the biggest factor, and all else being equal is what I prioritized. But I did try to give at least some consideration to more nebulous things, such as general public reception, whether I think they will stand the test of time, etc. etc. (Factors that I am of course completely capable of being wrong about. But hey, I try my best.) Above all else was the simple fact of what they meant to me. It is, after all, my list, no one else’s.

Anyway, enough beating around the bush, let’s get to it.

#5. Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story Season 2

Madoka Magica was not the only franchise to make a welcome return this year, but of those that did, it’s probably the one closest to my heart. I will fully admit, there’s some circumstantial bias here. I missed out on the original Madoka Magica when it was airing now a good ten years ago. On some subconscious level it’s possible that my opinion of Magia Record is elevated by the simple fact that I get to see it unfold in real time. I’d be hard pressed to say that MagiReco’s second season was the most accessible anime of 2021–that’s part of why it rounds out the bottom of the list–but it was certainly among those I felt the most connection to. (Covering it week by week, on what would become my last bit of work for The Geek Girl Authority, probably helped.)

To a point, a show that looks like this speaks for itself. Public consensus has held for some time that Studio SHAFT‘s golden age is firmly in the past tense, but if there’s a case to be made for that whole “SHAFT Renaissance” idea that bounces around Anime Twitter from time to time, it’s somewhere in the frames of Magia Record. The season’s stronger episodes (which make up a good chunk of its brief eight) absolutely drip with style, and its premiere in particular is the sort of love letter to both the fans and the series itself that you just don’t get super often. Combine that with its wildly ambitious (some might say overly ambitious!) storyline that attempts to mythmake by tying together disparate parts of the wider Madoka ‘verse, it giving relatively minor characters like Kuroe a chance to shine, and just the frankly kinda insane fact that the Madoka Train is still chugging along at all a full decade later? Yeah, Magia Record earns its spot on the list, even if it is “only” at #5.

It’s totally possible that MagiReco’s third season–whenever it arrives–won’t be as good as this, or indeed that it’ll be much better, but this list is a ranking of what’s aired this year, and this year, the oddball middle segment of a three-part story happened to be the fifth-best anime of the whole damn thing. Go figure.

#4. SSSS.DYNAZENON

As a sequel to one of the best anime of the 2010s–2018’s SSSS.GRIDMAN—SSSS.DYNAZENON is odd. It takes place away from that anime’s setting and involves only two of its characters (and only in a supporting capacity.) But considered thematically, these deviations from its predecessor make perfect sense.

If, as is often held to be the case, we can map GRIDMAN‘s characters to the inner workings of a single mind, and thus make the case that that series is about self-acceptance, DYNAZENON is the logical progression. The exterior to GRIDMAN‘s interior. Like a lot of anime this year, DYNAZENON dealt in themes of alienation and misplacedness. Common emotions that we all struggle with in a world where things feel like they’re falling apart faster and faster all the time. Yet, at the same time, it re-lit the fire of that old truism; no man is an island.

How? Easy. Director Akira Amemiya proved yet again that, yeah, you can still make a show that’s at least 50% giant robots fighting giant monsters by volume actually say something and have it not come across as corny or just over-wrought. DYNAZENON manages the impressive task of welding those fight scenes together with interrogative character work all over again, in a way that feels distinct from, but very much related to, GRIDMAN‘s approach to that problem.

All five members of our core cast are disconnected from society in some way. Be it Yomogi’s parents’ separation, the death of Yume’s older sister, Koyomi and Chise’s mutually-enabling shut-in habits, or even how Gauma is lost from his own world entirely. Over the course of the series they heal, but the journey is not a smooth or easy one, and the kaiju represent allegorical threats to their wellbeing as much as physical ones.

This is to say nothing of the Kaiju Eugenicists, those alarmingly-named villains who serve as the main four’s opposites on the other end of the good guy / bad guy spectrum. They’re alienated too, but their alienation consumes them, and is the driving force behind their desire to subjugate and destroy. In the case of Sizumu, it quite literally turns him into a monster.

DYNAZENON‘s driving question is thus how to move on from that alienation, from those things that drive a wedge between us and others. To its credit, it offers no easy solution, although in showing what really happened to Yume’s sister when no one was there to support her, it offers a dire warning of the consequences of not at least trying. The Dyna Soldiers find solace in the pieces of the Dynazenon itself, which, perhaps tellingly, is formed from what appear to be mere toys in their dormant state. But more importantly, they find solace in each other. To quote my own writeup of the tenth episode from back in June:

The only reason she couldn’t be saved like Yume herself was just a single episode ago is that, in a very literal sense, no one was there to support her. I suspect that SSSS.DYNAZENON may lose some people off that fact alone, but the point here is that Yume is still affected by her death. There are no easy outs, not even here.

But there are words of advice. Before the two leave each other for the last time, Kano tells Yume that she needs to rely on others more. And that, right there, is the entire thesis of SSSS.DYNAZENON as a series. Where SSSS.GRIDMAN dealt with the internal, all of its characters mapping to different parts of a single psyche, SSSS.DYNAZENON is external.

SSSS.DYNAZENON Recap: (S02E10) Which Memories Do You Regret?

It’s known that a third part of the trilogy; a crossover, likely in film form, called GRIDMAN x DYNAZENON, will round out this particular series of stories from Amemiya and co., beyond that, details remain scarce. But SSSS or no, if they can keep making stuff like this, stuff that hits you right in the heart? His place as one of the new decade’s best directors is assured. Keep broadcasting, kaiju king.

#3. Sonny Boy

Another theme we’re going to be seeing a lot of here is transience. It’s rather been my “word of the year,” so I hope you’ll forgive my use of it again, here, but it’s true. All things pass, and for many people our whole lives involve, at least to some degree, reckoning with that fact. Sonny Boy was not the only show this year to grapple with that fact, but it was notably thorough about it.

It begins in the void, but soon crash-lands into an island on the far side of summer. There, surreal parables about life, death, and everything in-between unfold like the show’s own Matryoshka Doll worlds. Universes within universes, wheels within wheels. The purpose? An ode to our lost digital generation; the Millennial/Gen-Z continuum. Adults are imposters putting on a show or so distant that they’re divinity. No one is truly there to guide the cast, much like there’s no one truly there for us except ourselves. They, as we, need to make peace on their own.

Of the anime on this list, I will cop to “understanding” Sonny Boy the least. There is a lot of symbolism here; it’s a dense show. (Which, hey, means it’s good for a rewatch.) But the series’ core of melancholy-hopeful nihilism is easy enough to map out, and that’s what earns it a spot on this list. Well, that and its absolutely stunning visual style. Sonny Boy looks like very little else that aired in 2021, and its surrealist, painterly looks would earn it a spot in the honorable mentions even if the show genuinely was all talk and no walk. But thankfully, while it may occasionally lean inscrutable, its heart beats strong.

Of the various treatises on the passing of everything that 2021 produced (gee, I wonder why that was on everyone’s minds), Sonny Boy stands as one of the more accepting. But in a way, my typing this is pointless. One of the show’s own characters put it best.

Perhaps I should be giving Rajdhani a co-writing credit for how often I’ve used these screenshots when talking about Sonny Boy.

(As a side note; creator Shingo Natsume‘s next project is a sequel to The Tatami Galaxy. So, it seems like this is hardly the last time he’s going to direct something delightfully confounding. Perhaps it’ll show up on the list next year!)

#2. Heike Monogatari

If Sonny Boy explored transience via surreality and imagined worlds far from our own, Heike Monogatari grounded its own investigation of the concept firmly in the real-world concerns of history and myth. Based on a historical Japanese epic, The Heike Story has the benefit of hindsight. From the beginning of the first episode, each character’s steps fall with inevitability. From Lord Shigemori, who takes protagonist Biwa in after her father is callously murdered by members of his own clan, to Taira no Kiyomori’s heartless power-grabbing ploys, every man, woman, and child here has their fate sealed before the first episode of the series even begins.

There is one exception: Biwa herself. (She’s voiced by Aoi Yuuki, in what would be the strongest role in the career of almost any other voice actress but is just another casual triumph for her. She brings alternating innocence for the Biwa we see most of the time, and stately, religious gravitas for the white-haired “seer” Biwa.)

Her role? To be conscripted as fate’s chronicler and become representative both of the nature of the original epic itself and more generally as a symbol of all of us. Witnesses to history, as we are, who so often are powerless to change it despite our own strengths. It can feel grim and fatalistic; seasons change and an empire falls like a leaf from a tree in autumn. But Heike Monogatari never makes it feel that way. Things simply are, and then they aren’t. Dust becomes dust, time ticks on.

Heike Monogatari is observance and acceptance, and the stormy lining to its silver cloud is that it’s so obviously timeless that even writing about it feels sort of pointless. It’s like trying to review The Iliad. It could have been #1, easily, and in almost any other year it would’ve been. Yet, at least to me, it was still somehow “only” the second-best anime of 2021.

But, before we get to the top of the list, let’s go through some honorable mentions. Because you’re worth it, dear readers.

Honorable Mention: takt op.Destiny

Ribbons of highway and a great blue sky way. Ruins, cities, deserts, forests, monsters, and song. A world that’s lost its music. That was takt op.Destiny. Hardly the year’s most “together” production, takt op has the dubious distinction of sharing a bizarre ending twist with notable “would’ve probably made this list if quality wasn’t a factor at all” shortlister The Detective is Already Dead. But obviously, its spotty ending is not why it’s here. Of what I saw in 2021, takt op had some of the most purely joyous animation. Most of it took the form of fight scenes, and it’s easy to dismiss that sort of thing as lowbrow. But by tying it together with a thematic core about rescuing a world that thinks it no longer needs art with that art, it manages to make it all feel meaningful. For the bounty of good to great anime 2021 did have, it was rather short on anime that I felt compellingly made the case for art itself–something last year had in spades–boiling down to mostly just this, Love Live! Superstar!!, and Kageki Shoujo!! (Which itself only missed the list by dint of a dry run of episodes in its middle third.) So, for filling that niche, I am quite grateful to takt op, perhaps the year’s messiest pile of camp.

Honorable Mention: Zombie Land Saga Revenge

If someone asks me what I thought about the general quality of anime in 2021, I will tell them that I had to relegate the second season of Zombie Land Saga to the Honorable Mentions list.

Honestly it barely feels fair. Zombie Land Saga Revenge is everything you could want out of a sequel; it builds on the original in logical and interesting ways. Franchouchou start the season having blown their biggest concert, washed up and down and out. But the mountain waits for no one, so what can you do but try to climb it again? And we saw them climb again. Those ridiculous zombies fought claw and jaw to bigger and bigger concert placements, and along the way we saw them grow as people, with particular star turns for Junko and Yuugiri. Let’s not forget that in the latter case, Revenge decided to just become a historical drama for several episodes, an outfit it wore better than many actual historical dramas do. Zombie Land Saga truly can do it all. The best idol anime of 2021, and almost certainly its best comedy. And I had to put it on the HM list. What a year it’s been, eh?

Honorable Mention: BLUE REFLECTION RAY

More than any other anime on this list, and maybe more than any anime I’ve ever covered period, I really strongly think Blue Reflection Ray is underrated. It’s a victim of circumstance, really. Animated by a studio long past its prime in a year that had two other anime that did many of the same things as it but in a more flashy and accessible way, there is a real case to be made that BRR never had a chance. But this list is, ultimately, about anime that I love. And I truly do think BRR was something special.

And not just because it’s really gay, although that certainly helps.

As a love letter to the magical girl genre, as a scrappy example of what even the most “low budget” of anime can accomplish with enough sincerity and grit, and as a rumination on how society treats young girls–another theme that came up quite often in art this year–Blue Reflection Ray stands tall with the best of them. When, in its penultimate episode, the Reflectors transform back-to-back-to-back just like a “real” magical girl team for the first and only time, BRR felt just as important as any other magical girl series. Girls in a world of lies living their truth for the first time.

Speaking of other magical girl anime.

Honorable Mention: Tropical Rouge Precure

This was the hardest cut from the proper list. TroPre is relegated to the HMs by a technicality; it’s not actually over yet, a quirk of the show’s odd schedule. (Precure series generally run for a full four cours over the course of an entire year, which makes accounting for them in otherwise neat and orderly lists like this one difficult. And yes I’m aware I said that only finished shows would be on the list. Sue me.) But that’s okay, because while Tropical Rouge Precure is great, it’s on this list less for what it actually is and more for the experiences I had while watching it. Its placement here is not due to its excellent sense of humor, its wonderful characters, or its at-times gorgeous animation, even though those are all very much merits the series has.

Unlike most other anime on this list, I did not–and do not–watch TroPre by myself. I watch it with a group of friends, every weekend, at around the same time. In this way, I get to have an experience that I very much would’ve liked to have had as a little girl; getting to talk about one of my favorite magical girl anime with some other girls my own age. A sense of lost youth is a common side effect of being transgender, and while never having gotten to chat about Sailor Moon with schoolmates is pretty low on the list of things I’m sad I missed out on, it is still on that list. So, as a balm for that particular little hole in my soul, I value the series a lot. We plan to continue this practice next year, so unless something goes horribly wrong, you can expect to see Delicious Party Precure somewhere on the list next year, too.

There have already been three magical girl anime somewhere in this article, and that’s the end of the honorable mentions. So you may well wonder; what’s at #1?

Well, a different sort of magical girl anime.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Oh come on, you can’t actually be surprised.

#1: Wonder Egg Priority

I knew from the minute I started writing this list that Wonder Egg Priority would be my #1.

I tried to talk myself out of it more than once; to convince myself to put Heike Monogatari at the top of the list instead. I like that show and Wonder Egg almost as much as each other. It would’ve been a compromise, but it was one I could’ve lived with.

But that’s the thing, right? It still would’ve been a compromise. And it’s my list, so there is no room for compromise. Wonder Egg Priority is my favorite anime of the year. Is it the best anime of the year? That’s a level of definitiveness that I don’t normally strive for when writing, even if this sort of format implicitly demands it. But if I’m the one being asked the question? Then yes, it absolutely fucking is.

Quite unlike my #1 pick for last year, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, Wonder Egg Priority ends the year not as a widely beloved (or at least liked) exemplar of its staff’s prowess. Its place in the popular discourse is, and probably always will be, that of a great folly. A production train-crash that physically hurt the people working on it and squandered its potential and left its audience profoundly disappointed.

Which, of course, is a massive oversimplification. I try to at least pay some attention to what The Public At Large think about the anime I cover, if anything. But the fact remains that while the consensus will probably always be against WEP, and not totally without reason, there are people who still like it. I am one of them. There are dozens of us. I just happen to like it more than anything else that aired this year.

But of course you want to know why, which is a fair question, given what this website is and what I write about on it.

It would be fairly easy to fall back on its many technical merits. Wonder Egg Priority is an incredible-looking show, constantly toeing a line between appearing pristine as jeweled glass and wild as paint-buckets tossed at canvasses. If CloverWorks never make anything that has quite this level of visual pop ever again, it would not be a mark against them in any way. We could talk also about its soundtrack, an underappreciated aspect of the series that colors every moment of it in a way rare both this year specifically and in general. (Sonny Boy is its only real competition from 2021 in this aspect.)

If we wanted to really stretch our critic-brains, we could turn toward its thematic merits. To try to break down the series’ elaborate use of symbolism. Or perhaps its understanding of how gender roles define and oppress us, and how the modern world will beat any young girl it can’t control into submission, co-opt her for its own ends and twist her into hurting others like her. (See: Frill.) We could cite its deeply compelling four main characters and their own specific twists on this notion; a recovering hikikomori (Ai), a former idol with past sins on her mind (Rika), a mysterious wunderkind with a vanished sister (Neiru), and the series’ own high-strung, gender-nonconformant take on the obligatory “boyish one” (Momoe).

We could talk about how they smash personifications of pedophilia, misogyny, and transphobia to paint-colored smithereens and are pursued by anonymous maniacs called Haters through their imaginary worlds. We could talk about how their mysterious “benefactors” who promise they can restore the dead to life turn out to be little more than hucksters past their prime. We could talk, at length, about all of this.

We could even talk about this!

But frankly, I think “all of this” is, incredibly, at least to me, somewhat secondary. It is true that Wonder Egg Priority has all these merits, and I think they alone could be used as an argument for why the show is very good. And if they were all that Wonder Egg Priority did right, it would have earned a comfortable spot somewhere a few ranks back. Maybe between Sonny Boy and Heike Monogatari, as “merely” a show from 2021 that I’m confident I’ll still be thinking about in 2031. In truth, what is often cited as its greatest “objective flaw” (and oh, how I hate that phrase), is what locked me into holding it close to my heart forever, and why, if asked, I will say it’s among my all-time favorites.

Wonder Egg Priority doesn’t really have an ending.

Its story comes to an abrupt halt. Little is resolved, one of the main characters is missing. It’s a question mark. There is no “to be continued.”

This is, I realize, a stance held by very few. But endings are rarely what truly move me about stories. (Heike Monogatari is one of a quite small number of exceptions.) So on its own, WEP’s lack of an ending is no serious fault to me. Indeed, Wonder Egg Priority could have ended in any number of ways, from the sappy to the depressing, that would’ve given it some measure of critical and fan acclaim. If it had really nailed it, it could’ve sat alongside modern born-classics like Revue Starlight, hailed as a truly great example of what TV anime as a medium could achieve.

Instead, it dissolved into a cloud of smoke, seeping into our collective memories forever. It became an unanswerable question and an unsolvable puzzle; quiet as God and twice as unknowable. In doing so, it embodied the boiling haze of steaming existential confusion that is the modern zeitgeist better than almost any work of fiction I have ever experienced. Wonder Egg Priority left an axe-wound in the popular imagination. For that, I love and respect it immensely. In a way, it is this aspect that most closely ties Wonder Egg‘s form to its message. The girls’ struggle, ultimately, is against suicide personified. The Temptation of Death. The fact that they don’t explicitly “win” is contentious. But that’s the whole point; we don’t see how this story ends. Some small glimpses of incremental progress aside, we know nothing. Only that Ai marches forward, in spite of it all, to try again.

I have seen it argued that this is a relentlessly bleak ending, but both the reality of the subjects Wonder Egg speaks on, and its own stylistic flourishes make it fairly obvious that this is, in fact, hopeful. To live in the modern age is to live in a world filled with poison. To live on in spite of that, to get up every day, to snap your gaze toward the horizon and walk–as Ai does–is optimism. This world wants us dead. We live anyway.

Quite unlike last year’s #1, I do not expect that Wonder Egg Priority will ever be hailed as timeless or classic. I think if it is remembered at all, it will be as a mistake. The avalanche of public consensus is hard to fight against, particularly in the age of social media. But, as I have learned many times this year, I can be wrong. If I have ever been wrong about anything relating to this medium I’ve devoted so much of my time to writing about, I would like it to be this.

Because whenever I so much as think about Wonder Egg Priority, it comes back to me in an instant. The hyper-technicolor magical girl psycho-drama that no one asked for, but that we–or perhaps just some of us–sorely needed. Wonder Egg Priority might never gain any coveted status as a must-watch, as a classic of its medium or genre, as “one of the good anime,” or anything of the sort, but if it does not gain some kind of following, there is something truly wrong with this world indeed. We endure precisely because we know we’re not alone. It would be a horribly cruel thing for one of the best articulations of that idea ever put to the silver screen to be lost to obscurity.

Yet, in spite of everything I just said, I hold no delusion that I am the Wonder Egg Guru. I have spent the better part of a year attempting to reckon with the WEP Project’s first, last, and only output. To explain it succinctly, to square how much I love it with how strongly I oppose the worst parts of the industry that let it exist. But the fate’s-honest truth is that I am not much closer to “closing the book” on Wonder Egg Priority, for myself or anyone else, than I was when the TV broadcast ended in late March. It’s an enigma. I think at least some part of it always will be. And maybe it seems unfair to give the gold medal to an enigma. Maybe the #1 spot should be saved for something I can explain better. But it is my view that the role of the critic and commentator is not that of an interpreter. It is that of an honest witness. I could have sat here and thought myself into circles. I could have tried to justify putting something–anything–else at #1, but that’s not honest. And if I don’t have honesty, what do I have?

So, there it is. The most magical anime of 2021. The best anime of the year, so says me, is a series that draws a line from the strained psyche of four teenage girls to our own place, lost in the fog that smothers this haunted planet. Then, in a grand confrontational hammer-smash, it reveals that there is no line at all; these things are one in the same.

Now that’s a magic trick.

And, yes, that’s the list.

What did you think? As I mentioned last year, I try not to pay too much mind as to whether my picks will be “controversial” or not, but, well, last year I didn’t top the list with what is probably the most divisive show of the entire year. So tell me your thoughts! Did you love my picks? Were they utterly baffling to you? Maybe 50/50? What were your top five, top six, top whatever anime of 2021? I’d love to hear from you, so please do leave a comment here or on Twitter. If you’re one of the folks who was disappointed by my #1 (and more than one person explicitly said they would be, whoops!) then…well, I hope this will spurn you to write your own lists, at the very least. (I maintain that basically everyone’s life could be improved by running a blog.)

Incidentally, I ran a very small little competition on my twitter account yesterday, and wanted to shout out @lilysokawaii, @pikestaff, and @theplatinumdove for correctly guessing my #1 pick. For the rest of y’all: better luck next year!

Tomorrow, an article will go up that briefly discusses my plans for 2022, as she fast approaches. I’ll see you then, anime fans.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) The Long Road Home and The WONDER EGG PRIORITY

This review contains spoilers for, and assumes familiarity with, the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

“Sometimes adults seem like a different species.”

Six months that now feel like a decade ago, the first episode of Wonder Egg Priority premiered on Nippon TV. No one, least of all myself, really knew what to expect. Most pre-release scuttlebutt came from the odd title and charming character designs. (Courtesy of Saki Takahashi, and still excellent.) Some smaller amount came from its intriguing staff list and its status as an original project from CloverWorks. I don’t think anyone, really, expected the bizarre technicolor magical girl psychodrama we were given.

Many people ran to the series with an outstretched hand, myself included. When I wrote about that first episode not long after its premiere, the horizon was endless before us. Wonder Egg Priority could have been anything, and as long as you had the patience for a little bit of overt artiness, you could join the ride. And many people did! I made quite a few friends and acquaintances over the course of watching this series, some of whom are quite possibly now reading this article. A sizable amount of them now dislike, or at least are no longer fond of the series. Asking “what happened?” is the easy, but in my view incorrect, thing to do.

And for this series, which meant–and still means–so much to me personally, I do not want to take the easy way out. I have been workshopping different versions of my notes since the original twelve-episode run of the series concluded. But I wanted to wait until its finale–unlucky number 13, delayed after a truly awful production fiasco–aired to make any last calls. As I’m writing this opening trio of paragraphs, I sit in a limbo, aware of the sharply divisive reactions the ending has brought on but not having seen it myself. What will I think of it? It almost doesn’t matter, self-defeating as that may sound. The fire is out and the wizard is dead. Wonder Egg Priority seems tragically destined to exist as a footnote in popcultural memory.

But enough of that. Let’s start with the very first note I wrote, when the series had just ended its original run, over a month ago.

The world is a vampire. Those in power prey on the marginalized, who often feel helpless to escape their situation. If they do, it is often by opting out of existence entirely, either directly via suicide or indirectly via other self-destructive behaviors.

That thought out in the world, it is natural to ask what can save us. Wonder Egg Priority does not answer that question, and indeed I think the great contributor to the finale’s negative reputation is that it doesn’t actually try to. A fact I think many are finding frustrating and alienating.

The natural human impulse to seek an end to a story finds no recourse here. Wonder Egg draws on a long lineage; from Perfect Blue to Revolutionary Girl Utena, from Puella Magi Madoka Magica to Flip Flappers. But the key distinction to be made is that Wonder Egg Priority does not draw a conclusion in the same way that these works do. Utena, most dramatically among these, famously advocates rejection of and escape from oppressive systems entirely.

What is Wonder Egg‘s contribution here? Well, from this point of view, nothing. Wonder Egg Priority ends where it began, the only major change made being who protagonist Ai Ohto is seeking to find again.

Instead, it captures a strange, extremely specific feeling. The series’ final minutes billow and dissolve in the air like a dream the night after a tragedy. Was anything in Wonder Egg Priority “real” to begin with? It’s a fair question to ask, and if the answer one comes up with is “no” they might well feel cheated.

But perhaps we should back up a bit. Let us remind ourselves of the actual facts of the series, its characters and narratives.

As you know, Wonder Egg Priority is the story of Ai, a heterochromiac hikikomori. Before the series begins, her only friend Koito Nagase throws herself from her school’s rooftop, adding Wonder Egg Priority to a long list of anime from the past twenty-five years that fixate on suicide. Ai is given a chance by a pair of mysterious, magical benefactors to bring her friend back to life. The only catch? She has to purge monsters from the strange mental elseworlds of the recently-suicided, in a bizarre funhouse mirror of a typical modern magical girl setup. It’s quite the premise, bearing a passing but notable resemblance to the aforementioned Madoka Magica, but otherwise escaping easy description.

Eventually, she is joined by three other young girls, who form what becomes her new friend group; the playful and blunt Rikka, a former idol, the stern and serious Neiru, the young nominal head of a corporation, and the androgynous Momoe, whose gender nonconformance forms a plot point all its own.

Thematically, the topic of suicide is made mystical and ascribed a sinister, sapient character, named The Temptation of Death here. All else leads back to this, and understanding that is key to understanding the bulk of Wonder Egg Priority. The truth the main run of the show wishes to shine a spotlight on is a very simple one; people, particularly young women, are cast into idealized shapes by the world we live in. If they do not conform to them, they are punished and ostracized. Their eventual death by their own hand is seen as a tragic inevitability, rather than a preventable, active action on the part of the ostracizers. Those who survive eventually become the oppressors themselves, and the cycle repeats. (This, roughly, is what happened to the character of Frill. She is an oppressed-turned-oppressor.)

So all this in mind, what do we make of the show’s ending?

Ai and her friends, in a literal sense, solve very little. Frill, implied to be responsible for the Temptation of Death phenomenon, is not stopped. Acca and Ur-Acca, the maintainers of the entire eggs-and-elseworlds system, are not openly rebelled against, and Ai ends up back on their doorstep at the end of the show. (One might even indeed read certain things as implying that this has happened many times, and the main run of Wonder Egg Priority is just a single one of these iterations.) Even the less supernatural driving questions, such as why Koito killed herself, and whether Sawaki, Ai and Koito’s teacher, is a sexual predator, are not directly answered. Everything remains obscure. One might, not unreasonably, demand to know what the point of all this was. After all, the middle of the show seems to criticize these systems so sharply. What is the point of offering no solution, or even any obvious catharsis?

Well, rarely do I reach for the author(s) in cases like this. But Director Shin Wakabayashi offers this thought, and I find it illuminating:

On the surface it’s a curious notion, given the actual events depicted. But if considered in the proper light, it makes sense.

When Ai finds the garden in which she meets Acca and Ur-Acca in the first episode, she is distraught and directionless. When she returns in the finale, it is after much time has passed, and despite surface appearances, it is on her own terms. Note, specifically, the lack of the Acca-possessed beetle in her second arrival to the garden.

Whether or not she will succeed “this time” is not terribly relevant. She has returned to the unconquered mountain to try again. In her life, it is all she can be asked to do. The same is true of all of us in ours.

Evaluating whether Wonder Egg Priority “works”. Whether or not it “earns” its right to hash through all this difficult material and provide no definitive answers, and so on, is difficult. The series, especially its ending, is challenging and highly unconventional. I do not mean to suggest anything as pedestrian as those disappointed by the ending simply “not understanding it”, but I do think it deserves time and patience that it is not necessarily being given.

To go back to my opening remarks, I have never more in my brief career as a critic wanted to be wrong about the afterlife of an anime. Nothing would make me happier than five, ten, twenty years from now learning of some director, writer, or animator citing Wonder Egg Priority as an influence. But even if that never comes to pass, those to whom this series would speak will find it, I am confident of that much.

Even if we take Wakabayashi’s tweet as the series’ sole artistic aim, it well succeeded. Ai, Rika, Neiru, and Momoe will live forever in a certain corner of my mind for the rest of my life. As is true of all truly impactful works of fiction. If that was all the team went for, well, mission accomplished.

In these ephemeral, fleeting lives of ours, all that we can truly ask of each other is understanding. More than maybe any anime I’ve ever seen, Wonder Egg Priority understands that, if nothing else, on a deep level. In the end, it asks of us just two things; do your best, and take care of each other.

And surely, I think, we can do that.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

Becoming The Battle Girl: How The 2010s Transformed The Magic in Magical Girl Anime

Genre. “A kind of story.” Something that separates one group of narratives from another. Genres are tricky, malleable, slippery things. Outside the focus of this blog, there are terms like lit fic, slipstream, neo noir, dungeonpunk, and dozens and dozens of others, broader or narrower, over the entire range of fiction and analysis of that fiction. Sometimes a marketing tool, sometimes a fandom in-group identifier, sometimes an after-the-fact grouping to tie together similarities in disparate stories.

Cure Moonlight, Heartcatch Precure

When I first became interested in anime as a medium I ran into the term “sekai-kei”, or “world story”. A style of anime in which the relationships between two people are tied directly to global or even universal-scale problems, and often directly equated. Nowadays, the term is widely decried as a nonsensical westernism (if you google it, the first two results are TVTropes, not exactly a reputable source, a clone site of the same, and an article decrying it as “horseshit”, in that order.) It’s yet another example of how hard defining genre in anime can be, especially from what is fundamentally an outsider’s point of view here in the Anglosphere.

Another genre that is often mixed up in heated debate is that of the Magical Girl, specifically because it is among the hardest to define concretely. Stories commonly accepted as being part of the Magical Girl genre; say foundational text Himitsu no Akko-chan, and something like Sailor Moon, are quite distinct from each other. Thematic ties are the main binder here, as are certain aesthetic choices. The trials that young girls face as they grow up are, broadly, the key element. There is also a degree of demographic assignment here. Most Magical Girl stories have historically been for young women.

Homura and Madoka, Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie Pt. III: Rebellion

But defining the genre even in the very loose terms I just did is controversial. (Sometimes extremely so.) Less because of what it includes and more because of what it excludes. Puella Magi Madoka Magica hangs like a grim specter over the genre’s modern form, the oft-decried “dark Magical Girl” style is frequently accused of missing “the point” of the entire thing. (As if whole genres ever have single “points”.) But fair enough; some of Madoka‘s least imitators are widely considered to be….well, not very good. And as someone who is on record as thinking Magical Girl Spec. Ops. Asuka is the worst TV anime made in recent memory, I can at least understand the viewpoint.

Things become even more complex the farther from the latter-day “magical warrior” model we venture, as we’ll get to. The broader a view we take, the clearer it becomes that there is a space of overlap between “proper” / “pure” / whatever term you care to use Magical Girls and….something else, something slightly different. Something that has, to my knowledge, so far existed without a name. But if we gave it a name, what would be a good choice?

As it often does in life, manga has the answer.
(Yuuko and Momo, The Demon Girl Next Door)

The panel above is from a fan translation of The Demon Girl Next Door. It’s not really an example of the genre as I’ll shortly attempt to define it, but the name is catchy and it’s indicative. They’re girls, they battle. “Just Battle Girl things” indeed.

Like all art, what I’ll be terming “battle girl anime” here comes from a fairly long tradition. In this case, I would say that it unites–not necessarily intentionally–two diffuse strains of anime that were originally only loosely related. With the important caveats that I am not a historian of the medium, and that I will only attempt to comment at length on anime I’ve actually seen at least some of, I think I can draw a line from the early 2000s, where I believe this genre’s origins lie, to the present day.

Cure Black and Cure White, Futari wa Precure promotional art

One half of the Battle Girl genre’s parentage is fairly clear. 2004 saw the premiere of Futari wa Precure, a Magical Girl series that synthesized thematic elements taken from more traditional stories in the genre with visual and aesthetic choices drawn from tokusatsu, including Toei’s own Super Sentai series. Precure has had a massively successful long run in its home country. New Precure series are still produced today, even into this very anime season, where they are often held up as the only “traditional” Magical Girl anime still airing. Precure has also been quite influential in a way that is frankly self-evident, almost any Japanese Magical Girl parody of the past 15 years goes to Pretty Cure before it touches on anything else. That alone speaks volumes. Precure is not the only series on this side of the battle girl genre’s heritage, but it’s by far the most important, and the most obvious.

Masane Amaha, Witchblade

On the other side, we have a tradition that is both more obscure and in the eyes of many, less respectable, that of the Battle Vixen genre. The slightly different name gives the key distinction away; while modern Battle Girl anime are certainly capable of having leery cameras or the like, a vast majority of Battle Vixen anime were ecchi series. Fanservice–“cheesecake” as it was often called back then–was a core part of the appeal. The anime Battle Vixens (or Ikki Tousen in its home country) that gives its name to the genre, aired just a year before Pretty Cure. It too has been fairly successful domestically, for an ecchi, at least, and got a fair amount of sequels. The most recent, the Western Wolves OVA, airing just two years ago in 2019.

Although the franchise lacks Precure‘s broad appeal for fairly obvious reasons, it is certainly something that left an impression on the otaku of the aughts, whether positive or negative.

This two-prong approach is a simplification; we are neglecting the fair amount of Magical Girl anime made for adults before this, including the seminal Cutie Honey. We’re neglecting the related “mecha musume” term, which refers to something more specific and not necessarily narrative (and also refers to a kind of model kit), and several other things. Nonetheless, the close chronological proximity of the two anime I mentioned above, and the general climate that surrounds them, makes me think that these are, if not “the catalysts”, at least some of the catalysts. The New ’10s saw several events that allowed these styles to mix together; it’s here where we bring up Puella Magi Madoka Magica again. While it was hardly the first magical girl series for adults (or indeed the first one to be “dark”), what it was was massively popular, carving out a new audience for people who wanted stories that featured girls in colorful costumes kicking ass but weren’t necessarily predisposed to seek out stories with the themes most Magical Girl anime traffic in. (Or even, indeed, necessarily Madoka‘s own themes.) Combined with anime’s resurgence in the Anglosphere in the age of streaming, and you have an audience that is eager for stories “like this”. Even if what “like this” is was not quite a definite thing yet.

That brings us to the third piece of the puzzle; Symphogear.

Hibiki Tachibana, Symphogear

The timeline hyper-compresses here, and I suspect that if one were to look at the actual movement of staff and so on, one would find many people influencing each other, rather than a simple case of cause and effect. Still, I would fairly confidently point to Symphogear as the first “true and proper” modern Battle Girl anime. Its protagonists function like Precure-style Magical Girls, but its writing gestures to themes that are somewhat broader than the Magical Girl genre’s usual concerns, flattening out the more specific bent of its parent genre to examine more general oppressive systems. And in the case of Symphogear specifically; propose that only full-hearted love and honest communication can save us. Something still very much rooted in the Magical Girl style. (This is a very inconsequential sidenote, but I’d argue this puts Symphogear among the “closest” to a traditional Magical Girl series, out of those we’re discussing here.)

Black Rock Shooter TV anime promotional art.

I cannot definitively prove that Symphogear‘s success inspired imitators–and indeed, there were other shows at the time working in broadly similar territory, such as the 2012 Black Rock Shooter anime–but the genre explodes from here. Not for nothing did the aforementioned Assault Lily Bouquet pick up the pre-air hype train nickname “SHAFTogear”. Anime fans can already recognize this genre, even if they don’t quite have a name for it yet.

So we can somewhat confidently identify where Battle Girl anime come from, but what are they? What separates a Battle Girl anime from a Magical Girl anime? What separates one from a show that simply has a female lead in an action-focused role? Knowing what we do about their lineage, we can make a few specific qualifying points. Things that separate a Battle Girl anime from its closest cousins.

  1. A Battle Girl anime must have an entirely female, or at least femme-presenting, core cast, consisting of at least two, roughly equally-important, characters.¹
  2. A Battle Girl anime must be primarily an action series, whose lead characters must possess some kind of special powers, exceptional weaponry, or both.
  3. A Battle Girl series cannot be an ecchi series. It may have such elements, but they cannot be the core appeal.
  4. Finally, as a more conditional fourth point: A Battle Girl series often features a theme related to breaking out of, subverting, repairing, or escaping an oppressive system.

Caveats abound, of course, and like any genre classification, much of this will come down to personal interpretation. (There is no objectivity in the arts, after all.) But I believe these four points are what separate Battle Girls from their closest relatives.

With all this in mind, it is perhaps best to define the Battle Girl genre as more of a super-genre–a broad storytelling space that more specific genres can exist within, or overlap with. It would be hard indeed to disqualify Precure itself, for example. And while the third point disqualifies some of the genre’s own ancestors, there are at least a few borderline cases. (I am thinking here of the uniquely frustrating VividRed Operation, mostly.) There is also room for a conversation about whether vehicles count as “special powers or exceptional weaponry”. If they do, we could possibly rope in series like The Magnificent Kotobuki and Warlords of Sigrdrifa as well.

AKB0048 Promotional art.

There is also plenty of overlap with other genres; Symphogear itself has some DNA from idol anime, and fellow Satelight Inc. production AKB0048 merges the two even more closely. I would also argue that say, Kill la Kill is either just barely or just barely not a Battle Girl series. It would have to come down to how much weight one wishes to place on both the ecchi elements and the male characters.

So, if the genre is so broad, and is nebulous at the edges, why impose it at all? Well, in part, I do genuinely think that all of these anime existing within the same roughly ten year span cannot be entirely coincidental. But more importantly I think it’s genuinely really important to spotlight anime that have all- or mostly-female casts². There is still a widely-held assumption in Anglophone anime fan spaces that women only watch certain kinds of anime. Certainly they don’t care for action anime with lots of punching and shouting.

The truth of the matter is that women love fantasy and sci-fi action as much as anyone else. It is no coincidence that both Precure specifically and the Battle Girl genre in general have a sizable following among female otaku. The genre is also not a marker of quality of course; none is. I’d call myself an easy mark for it, but upon reviewing what series I considered to be or not be Battle Girl anime, I certainly came up with some that I do not like. And quite a few more that I’m more mixed on.

Hiyori and Kanami, Katana Maidens promotional art

With all of the above in mind, I came up with a list of anime from the last ten or so years I’d consider to belong to the genre. It is not exhaustive, and this is not really a “recommended viewing” list, either, but I feel that simply lining the names up in a column speaks for itself.

  • AKB0048
  • Assault Lily Bouquet
  • BLACKFOX
  • Black Rock Shooter (2012)
  • Flip Flappers
  • Granbelm
  • Katana Maidens: Toji no Miko
  • Princess Principal
  • RELEASE THE SPYCE
  • Revue Starlight
  • Symphogear
  • The Girl in Twilight
  • Wonder Egg Priority

I think this is sizable evidence that this is, indeed, “a thing” on at least some level. And this grouping leaves out some series I am personally on the fence on some of which I’ve already discussed, such as the aforementioned Kill la Kill, as well as things like Day Break Illusion and any number of other “dark Magical Girl anime” that could conceivably be counted in the genre but which, if so, form a distinct enough subgroup that they are a topic worthy of more specific discussion. I’ve also left out some anime that I’m reasonably sure likely qualify but that I have not seen myself, such as Yuuki Yuuna is A Hero and Battle Girl High School (no relation). There is also The Rolling Girls, a series that is definitely speaking some of the same language as these anime, but whose rejection of traditional heroism and odd structure prevent me from feeling comfortable listing it here.

Ai, Wonder Egg Priority

And even within this group, there’s a noticeable sub-category consisting of Flip Flappers, Wonder Egg Priority, and arguably Revue Starlight. These three have a more surreal presentation and somewhat different themes than their compatriots. I am not sure I’d be comfortable calling this its own “lineage”, exactly, due to its small size, but it may be the budding seeds of one.

All these caveats to say; I am under no illusion that I have “solved” any kind of “problem” here. Artistic frameworks–very much including genre–are imposed, they do not naturally exist. This is as true for the Battle Girl genre as anything else. What I do think I’ve done, though, is hopefully given a new lens through which we can analyze and think about these stories. I think art should be understood based on what it is trying to do. And I do think, at least to some extent, that framing shows like Symphogear, or Wonder Egg Priority, or Granbelm or any number of others as “Magical Girl Anime” harms understanding them more than it helps. Not because the Magical Girl genre is some exclusive sacred club (or indeed something to be shunned or avoided), but because the aims of the works are different. Different things exist for different people. That is not just something to tolerate; it’s worth celebrating.

I acknowledge that this framework I’ve devised is an incomplete one; my own relative neophytism is surely depriving me of at least some knowledge that would further flesh it out. (I have not even mentioned Mai-HiME, because I’ve never seen it, but I am near-positive that it factors in here somehow.) But that, in of itself, is a beautiful thing. If I have done something even akin to laying a single brick in what will one day become a building, it’s been worth the time, the words, and the thought.

As for the future of this genre-space, who can say? Wonder Egg Priority remains excellent, but time alone will tell if these anime continue to be made or if they will end up as a hallmark of the still, in the grand scheme of things, only-just-over 2010s.

Personally? I know what I’m hoping for.

1: There is some flexibility here. Male characters are still allowed in the periphery; as antagonists or as supporting characters like love interests or mentors, but they cannot be the main focus, and they should not have strong relationships with other male characters. The clause that there must be at least two characters is to distinguish these series from a not-closely-related group that star a lone, often wandering heroine.

2: It’s inarguably even more important to spotlight those that have many female staff, but that is another conversation, and is outside the scope of this article.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work for The Geek Girl Authority.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

When The Rain Breaks in WONDER EGG PRIORITY

Note: This article contains discussion of suicide and other potentially upsetting subject matter. Reader discretion is advised.

They really just don’t make many like this.

When I first wrote about Wonder Egg Priority some six weeks ago, I said that the only real potentially bad thing about its first episode was how high it had set expectations. Five episodes later, the very notion seems quaint. Among a great majority of the people watching it, Wonder Egg Priority is a frontrunner for the coveted “anime of the season” badge. For a smaller, but still significant portion, it may well be much more than that.

But just gushing about the show’s quality would largely be relating things people already know. Likewise, critics smarter than myself have pointed out that despite definitely being unique in this season, Wonder Egg Priority does have several obvious ancestors. Most notably Kuniko Ikuhara‘s work and much of what it’s subsequently influenced (your Flip Flappers-es and your Revue Starlight-ses) on one hand, and on the other, the Kyoto Animation school of stylized life dramas. These two schools of creative work together inform both Wonder Egg‘s look and feel as well as its general ethos, which I think is where much of the interesting work remains to be done on our part as viewers.

With most anime–and indeed most serial fiction–you can generally “figure it out” fairly quickly. This isn’t a bad thing, a lot of fiction gets its very power from conveying resonant messages through combinations of classic tropes. (Which are, after all, classic for a reason.) What makes Wonder Egg Priority feel distinct is that it falls into a slightly different category that I am increasingly fond of; anime that can be treated like something of a thematic puzzle box. This has vexed some of the series’ own fans. When an in-series bit of gender essentialism by the shadowy Acca went immediately unchallenged, the viewer concern was enough that the show’s staff felt the need to address it on Twitter.

That kind of commitment to “getting things right” is commendable–and very rare–but I have to admit that a small part of me was a bit disappointed that they felt the need to do so. At the risk of coming across as something of an elitist; Wonder Egg Priority demands that you engage with it critically and intelligently. While it would be unfair to say that most anime don’t assume you’ll do that, Wonder Egg seems to be inclined to much less signposting than is the norm. Things as basic as character motivation are implied instead of outright stated, and much of the series operates on symbolic logic. This can make it hard to get your head around what exactly it’s trying to do, and lest I come across as thinking I’m smarter than everyone here, I will completely cop to the very real possibility that I also don’t understand the show. But, fittingly for its halfway point, I think Wonder Egg‘s sixth episode gives us some indication of where it will go next, and what it wants to accomplish by getting there. Some indication, but not a crystal clear one.

I’m sure, for instance, that someone out there has figured This out. Not me, though.

Wonder Egg Priority‘s subject matter has consistently been heavy. Suicide is baked into the series’ very premise, and its only through its absolutely wonderful visuals and sound that it avoids being a drag to watch. Along the way, abuse, familial conflict, sexual harassment, and a million other things have been dragged along for the ride. At the heart of this lies Ai Ohto, our protagonist. Her guilt over the suicide of her close friend Koito Nagase has driven much of her action throughout Wonder Egg Priority. So too has the repeated housecall visits of school teacher Shuichiro Sawaki. Sawaki is a figure it is very easy to read uncharitably.

He’s older than Ai but seems to have some kind of fixation on her, and several shots throughout the show frame him in a way that gives off a decidedly sinister air. In this very episode, he and Ai’s mother broach the subject of entering a relationship, and co-protagonist Rika openly speculates that he might be a sexual predator using that relationship to get closer to Ai. Neiru (another of the main four) meanwhile speculates that Ai’s frustrated feelings instead stem from the fact that she herself has feelings for Sawaki.

I don’t know what the “easy way out” of this particular knot of character relationships would be. What Wonder Egg puts forward is that Neiru is, if not right exactly, at least in the general ballpark. The episode, despite its sinister title, ends on a happy note, with literal clouds parting and sun shining down.

In any other series it would be quite easy to take this at face value, and that might well be what Wonder Egg is going for as well. Yet there remain lingering doubts simply due to the show’s nature, and I would not be surprised if they remain right up until the finale. For some (and I’m kind of including myself here), there will remain a suspicion, perhaps a fear, that the other shoe is about to drop, even if it never does. I’m sure, too, that others will forecast a worst-case scenario: “Oh god, they’re not going to have Ai hook up with her teacher, are they?”

I would love to refute “well no, of course they’re not. Have you seen this show? It’s too smart to do that.” And indeed, I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely. But, Wonder Egg Priority‘s very nature encourages these widely divergent readings, and I honestly think that’s part of what makes it so special.

In the opening minutes of the episode, there’s a title drop. It feels just a little tongue-in-cheek, but not so much so that it feels in any way insincere. What has me so enraptured with Wonder Egg Priority is that very sincerity. Despite its heavy themes and despite how it plays with audience expectations, nothing about it feels in any way false. Nothing feels contrived, overthought, or half-baked. It is what it wants to be. No more and no less.

What I will say, is that I tend to broadly divide all narrative art into two sweeping categories; the diagnostic and the idealistic. The former showcases and draws attention to the ills of the world. The latter presents a vision of the world as it should be. (Neither, it must be stressed, is any better than the other. Though I suspect the categories resonate more strongly with different people.) It’s usually not hard to drop an anime firmly in one bucket or the other despite many anime obviously doing at least a bit of both. With Wonder Egg Priority, I’ve been unable to place it firmly on either side. Certainly, it is keen to the problems of the world we live in, but the sheer sincerity of it all, and the weighty metaphors of eggshells and paint, seem to gesture at a brighter future.

Is this when the rain lets up, or merely a lull in the storm? Who, really, can say?

“Please let those kids find happiness.”

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: You Really Need to See WONDER EGG PRIORITY

Note: This article contains discussion of suicide. Reader discretion is advised.

When Wonder Egg Priority was first announced last year, most attention went to its title, which undeniably is odd in a specific way that really catches the ear. Early trailers were sparse on much plot information. The (wholly incorrect) impression I got from the initial promotional materials was that this would be a youth drama of some kind, something in the vein of A Place Further Than The Universe or O Maidens In Your Savage Season. What Wonder Egg Priority actually is is still something of an open question, as we’ll get to. But its first episode “The Domain of Children” is perhaps the strongest original anime debut since Flip Flappers some five years ago. Wonder Egg is also similar to that series in some other ways, but we’ll get to that.

I normally like to kick off this sort of thing by explaining, broadly, what the series is about. That’s a bit hard for Wonder Egg Priority, so let’s instead tackle another aspect; the visuals. Wonder Egg Priority is the best-looking anime of the young year, and it has virtually no competition. CloverWorks make good-looking shows in general, but their collective talent pool has never done anything quite like this before.

The series’ backgrounds are rendered in hauntingly liminal laser-precision by what simply must be a crack CGI team. In the coming days you will probably see someone say that Wonder Egg Priority is denpa. There are a lot of reasons that this is true, but one is its recontextualization of a school building as a place of terror. Other anime have done this, but it’s been ages since I’ve seen it done so effectively. Every internal shot of the school looks like it’s had the air sucked out of it. Faceless figures stalk the hallways. When they attack, the windows are framed in paint-like blood.

Its characters are brought to vibrant life through gel-pen-esque digi-paint. Every single one shines. Main character Ai Ohto is the greatest triumph so far here; her oilslick hair, distinctive heterochromia (actually a plot point!), and yolk-yellow hoodie evoke the image of a cracked-open egg or a newborn chick depending on how she wears the hood. A cutesy nod to the show’s title and a nice bit of symbolism all in one.

May I offer you an egg in these trying times?

All this is a flowery way of saying Wonder Egg Priority looks amazing. I found myself absentmindedly tapping my “save frame as screenshot” key every few seconds. It is very rare that almost any given still from an episode could make a compelling screengrab, but it’s true here.

Four paragraphs about the looks and nary a hint of what the show’s actual subject matter is. As mentioned, explaining what happens in the first episode of Wonder Egg Priority is a bit difficult. The episode makes fairly heavy use of non-chronological order, and it becomes clear about a third of the way through that we’re dealing with a “real world / mental world” sort of divide. (Or at least something similar.)

The gist though is this; Ai is a hikkikimori. Why? It’s not directly spelled out for us, but we’re shown here that her only friend, a girl named Koito Nagase, threw herself from the rooftop of Ai’s high school. Which, yes, means you can add Wonder Egg Priority to the long list of anime that have a suicide in the first episode. A sad reflection of a despiriting reality.

Note also how the real world tends to be drawn in sepia and shadow. It’s not a happier place than the “Egg World”, but it is certainly more physical.

This heavy subject matter is contrasted by the series’ fantasy elements. Ai begins the show by coming into possession of a mysterious, titular “wonder egg”. The short version is that these allow her to enter….mental worlds? Afterlives? Other universes? It’s not totally clear, and rescue, or at least attempt to rescue, people from being pursued by mysterious, malevolent figures known as See-No-Evils. Ai’s only guidance here is offered by the apparent ghost of a beetle, a truly weird take on the “magical girl animal companion” trope if ever there was one. Towards the end of the episode, he implies but does not outright say that helping enough of these pursued people may somehow bring Nagase back.

He’s very trustworthy, I’m sure.

The details matter less than the emotional force. Ai is able to break through her own apathy (“pretending not to see”, as she, and others, phrase it) to help the person she needs to help, even before doing so to bring back her late companion enters the equation. The episode’s climactic emotional moment is hard to put into words. Basically; she goes full Pretty Cure on the See-No-Evils. It’s just, you know, much more violent and surreal. The lingering trauma of Ai losing her only friend, her own frustration with herself for failing to prevent it, her determination to never let it happen again, it all builds up to a single, powerful thwack. It’s the single most viscerally satisfying moment I’ve seen in an anime in ages.

And thus does the first episode of this denpa-action-mystery-fantasy-magical-girl??-thing come to a close.

Where does Wonder Egg Priority go from here? First episodes need to make a strong impression, and without a doubt this is the best I’ve seen so far this year. (With apologies to BACK ARROW, which must now settle for second place.) The simultaneous benefit and curse of having such a strong one is that now the expectations are sky-high.

Yet–and I of course could be wrong here–I just have a feeling about this one. While watching this episode I couldn’t help but tap on my desk excitedly, at the climactic scene above I whistled aloud, and my mind didn’t wander for even a second. Whether it will do all it strives to do is an open question, but we are unquestionably in for an absolutely wild twelve weeks. In the realm of anime, I can ask for nothing more.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.