I watched a current show for once! I was enthusiastically recommended this by a friend, who also suggested watching the Japanese version with subs because the 14-year-old main character is voiced by an actual teenage girl.

The wonder eggs of the title look like normal eggs, but when the bearers fall asleep, they’re transported to another world where they have to protect the girls that emerge from the eggs from supernatural manifestations of their trauma. But they’re not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts: they figure that if they can protect enough egg-girls, they’ll be able to rescue someone they care about deeply.

This show has definite magical girl aspects, such as the girls’ wonder-world weapons, which often sparkly when called upon, but it’s not a traditional magical girl show: no transformation, magical attack names, etc. And so it’s not dark in the way that Madoka Magica was dark, but it does deal with some heavy topics like suicide.

The game, for lack of a better term, is rooted in trauma: all four participants are fighting for someone important to them who committed suicide. All four have their own issues: when we meet Ai, for instance, she’s isolated herself at home for months, refusing to return to the school where she was bullied and her lone friend committed suicide

I don’t want to say too much about the setup, because the show did such a good job just hitting me in that first episode with how things worked. Not in a bad way!

As the show goes on, we see the characters grow closer together, finally being able to form connections with peers not just because of their shared Wonder Egg goal, but because that also lets them disclose some of their own hurt to people more likely to understand because of their similar experiences.

And you want them to succeed, so badly. These girls are so young, and so hurt, you smile with Ai when they stop just being passers-by at the egg machine and start hanging out like normal friends.

A lot of questions are raised through the episodes (like, how is this entire magical egg set-up even possible?), and while a good chunk of backstory and explanation happens, by the end of the 12th episode there’s still a lot to resolve. While I was waiting for the finale to air, I wrote “WEP is the kind of show that is alright not explaining every detail, which would annoy me except it’s so well-done.”

A brief explanation: Wonder Egg Priority premiered in January 2021, so was created during the pandemic. It appears to have been originally slated for 12 episodes (which wrapped up in early April), but shortly before the 12th, a special was announced that would act as the show’s conclusion, and aired at the end of June.

So like many people, I watched all 12 episodes (which are really 11 episodes of story, because #8 is a recap episode), and then waited for the conclusion. There were signs that we wouldn’t get straight answers about everything--it was just that kind of show. Not all stories reveal everything, and that’s a valid storytelling technique.

But it had been willing to give us some backstory, to explain the mysterious orchestrators of this game, to show us there might be another side. Is there an antagonist, or is it just trauma responses all the way down?

And then it all collapses in the last episode. I sat on my couch, and watched it, then turned to my cat and said, “what the fuck.” He farted, which is as appropriate a response as any.

Sure, you can blame it at least partly on the pandemic. It was clear going in that the story couldn’t wrap all the threads up in a nice little bow. How much of that was intentional, or due to pandemic affects through production, I don’t know.

But the storytelling is atrocious. The final episode (which excited me initially with its 45-minute runtime) spends about 20 minutes first just providing a recap of the series, which makes sense when you remember the nearly 3-month gap since the 12th episode, but is, at a minimum, annoying to a viewer who thinks they’re going to get 45 minutes of plot.

The regular episodes left us hanging: the girls are about to, or have, achieved their goals, and we’re going to see the results. Not to mention the reveal of the game’s creators’ backstories, and the closest thing this show has to an antagonist. Those two things are tied together and act as the basis for the entire game, but they’re also in conflict. Is it resolvable at all? Were Ai and her friends manipulated, are they just pawns in someone else’s game, or are they in charge of their own destinies?

The show spends the majority of its episodes building up the quartet of main characters, showing them forming connections, accepting parts of themselves they never thought could be viewed without pain, slowly breaking down barriers.

And then this final episode...I don’t even know. You could understand characters withdrawing from each other in the aftermath of what’s happened: these are girls whose friendships were forged in the fires of their desire to resurrect their loved ones. It would be understandable if they felt adrift after the climax, even though they’ve also been building more normal friendships with each other. Don’t mistake this as me complaining that people who went through multiple types of trauma aren’t magically healed from it at the end.

But basically, a show that has been carefully building up its characters and events for 12 episodes, at the last minute, throws a few of them in a completely new direction, one that had no basis, no hints. And it does that without resolving any of the big issues it had been building.

I would have accepted a bittersweet ending, because that would be entirely in line with how the show had conducted itself. But while the finale seems at times to be trying for bittersweet, it’s mostly a mess, with a side of oh wow you really did pick the most mean-spirited way to answer that one question, and it’s a question you absolutely could have left unanswered entirely.

Verdict

English dub? Yes, but I have no opinion on it since I watched in Japanese.

Visuals: It looks good! A lot of bright colors that contrast with the heavy subject matter, a lot of really good backgrounds, plus well-choreographed fight scenes.

Worth watching? I...really don’t know. Before the finale, the answer would have been an unequivocal yes. But that finale really...all I can do is sigh heavily. Probably, I guess. Probably worth watching. While it was airing, I saw so many reviews singing its praises, people willing to vote it one of the best shows of the season even before the finale aired, it was so good.

But don’t get too invested. Watch the dub, so you don’t have to pay attention to the screen the entire time. Enjoy the ideas, enjoy the characters as they are, enjoy coming up with what could have been. And then, once you watch the 12th episode...maybe leave it there. No, the series isn’t done, but the 13th episode really doesn’t change that at all.