Wonder Egg Priority: Watashi no Priority

MINOR SPOILER at the very end of my review. I loved the first 12 episodes of Wonder Egg Priority. Sure it got messy towards the end, sparring from horrible staff conditions and meeting deadlines, but I enjoyed basically everything about it. Hearing that they need time to get out a 13th (and potentially, final) episode out was not a huge deal. They can wrap up what they've done right? I ... I don't know man. I don't mind the recap. I know a ton of people will give them crap for it, but I enjoyed seeing all the girl's stories again, whatever. The rest though... I'll give them credit, they*really* went off the deep end, and said screw it what's better than a deep end? A DEEPER END! It's hard to discuss what happened in this episode without basically spoiling the entire thing, but I'll try to wrap my opinions up nicely. Going into this I thought we were going to get an hour long special wrapping up what eps 10-12 of WEP threw on us, and we'd get something fairly good. I wasn't expecting it to be the best thing ever, given the staff problems and everything. What we got was more plot points. More loose ends. More... everything. Some things were.. resolved? It's hard to say honestly. I get what they did, but it's weird how they did it. I liked most of what they introduced. I think what's going to leave everyone sour is that they did this in something people presumed as the finale (and it might just be). If this is how Wonder Egg Priority ends, I will be disappointed. I love the girls, I love the world, but my heart will ache for a worthy conclusion. Given how it *did* end, however, I'm hopeful (copium) that we'll get something to wrap this up nicely. Who knows. I could totally see me changing my opinions on this special if they did.

*Spoiler warning!* Story/Plot 6/10 - Where do I even begin? The pacing was honestly way too fast, and if they didn't put that almost 30-minute re-cap in the pacing would've been way steadier. The plot gave us more questions than answered them, the "parallel worlds" thing was super confusing, and we honestly didn't really learn that much. Don't get me wrong, finding out Neiru was an AI was cool and all but besides that, the only other thing I can remember us getting was "closure" for Koito's death. (Which wasn't really closure at all considering it made her entire death seem pointless, and also kind ofmade her seem like a down-right terrible person.) Overall, the plot seemed really rushed and it honestly just was a huge letdown. Art/Animation 10/10 - Same as the regular series, and spectacular as ever. Same with the animation. Sound 6/10 - Same as the usual series. Characters/Personalities 8/10 - Now, I don't usually change the rating for personalities, but certain characters just acted off. For example, Ai made some decisions, which while I understand them I feel like she wouldn't regularly do. And yes, I do get the circumstances but I still feel like her reactions to certain things just weren't... Usual. The other 2 (Rika and Momo) acted pretty normally, but I feel like when Rika found out Neiru was an AI she would've still tried to help her and wouldn't have blown off the idea immedietly. (Ik after that we had the scene where she started crying and stuff but I'm just talking about her initial reaction.) (Neiru was also pretty normal.) Idk, I didn't go deep into their feelings like the usual series, and that kind of bothered me because that was one of the great things about the original series! (Again, they were still great characters but I feel like certain key things weren't focused on enough when it came to their personalities and emotions.) Enjoyment/Overall 6/10 - I don't have much to say about this. It was a letdown on many parts, I still enjoyed it for the most part because it's "Wonder Egg Priority" but I was also super bothered by the plot and the other stuff I mentioned. :)

Okay... I'm gonna try to be sincere. As a Finale, I like it. It's an open one, but it's cool. What is the problem that got many people mad? The fact that we got to wait 3 months for just 20 minutes of recap and 20 minutes of a new episode. I myself was just mad too by this. But, letting that aside, it a great end for the show that makes you want a Second Season. I really think if they just didn't make us wait 3 months for this, everyone would have liked it. The revelations in this chapter were pretty nice andthey resolve some things in the plot, but the things like fightint Frill or becoming and Eros Warrior aren't touched at all. And it's because of that that I think it should have a second season. So, please, if you watch it, try turning aside the fact that you have to wait 3 months and be more critical, because it isn't that bad. And if you didn't watched Wonder Egg Priority, watch it, it's very good.

*spoilers for Wonder Egg Priority and this dumpster fire of a finale special* After its production troubles came to light around the time the show had to shove a recap episode into its 12 episode slot, fans privy to these troubles became concerned. As new pieces of information came to light, both within the show, and behind the scenes, everyone wondered just how the show could possibly wrap itself up. There were just too many loose-ends for one special to handle, but there wasn’t enough to truly justify a continuation. Alas, CloverWorks announced a special episode titled “My Priority”, which would seemingly conclude the series. 3 monthswent by and the most common reaction seems to be something along the lines of “what the hell is this?!” Contextually speaking, there is a mild sense of guilt in calling this finale vile, pathetic, and a complete invalidation of the series it was seemingly made to conclude. After all, such a statement ignores all of the passion and misery that went into the show’s notoriously troubled production and the months the staff at CloverWorks spent on this last episode following the TV run’s conclusion. However, it honestly must be said. This finale should have never come to pass. If this was what they originally planned before it got delayed, one really must ask “why”? Was this all some cruel joke? Were we meant to be taken along for a ride only to be met with the most mean-spirited, unsatisfying wet fart of a conclusion possible? Was this meant to challenge, even punish the audience in some way before the delay made the eventual tragedy all the more maddening and demoralizing? Why else would the writer, series director, and other staff members make some of the decisions they did? Why else would 25 out of the 46 minutes this finale special takes up, be nothing but recap after episode 8 was already turned into one? Why else would they have a ton of new, interesting music, including a nice insert song, and place almost all of it during the recap? Why else would they go so far to provide the most asinine, mean-spirited, series-invalidating reveals while largely sidestepping the main plot for the sake of a bait & switch plus an embarrassing sequel hook? It’s genuinely so difficult to comprehend why any of this was done in the 3 months since the TV broadcast concluded or how much of this was the plan all along because it’s so legitimately fucked that it’s easy to make up accusatory conspiracies on the matter. Speaking of so legitimately fucked, let's discuss the truth about Koito, Ai's friend who seemingly committed suicide. In the series, they did show snippets of the two in weird and uncomfortable situations regarding the enigmatic Koito getting bullied, as well as a moment where she’s crying in AI’s teacher's arms. At some point, Ai’s friends throw around the possibility that she wasn't a true friend. The series kinda sorta confirms this with Koito being weirded out that Ai would act so close when she doesn’t consider them friends, now that she’s been revived. There’s an explanation for this later that we will get to, but we have more pressing matters on our hands because after AI is distraught and she runs away, we learn what truly happened. Brace yourself because frankly, this is all kinds of revolting. It turns out that Koito was a serial suicide baiter that actually got a teacher, a father with kids, to kill himself. She attempted to do the same to Ai’s teacher, except it didn’t work and she lashed out upon a romance rejection that led to this, saying several things, up to and including a false rape accusation. At some point, when no one was looking, she slipped and fell to her doom. Just like that, the entire series has been invalidated and it’s now important that you avoid Wonder Egg Priority at all costs! As if the 25 minutes of recap wasn’t bad enough, this one singular moment automatically dismantles any goodwill left towards this series. The ultimate mystery of WEP, why Koito killed herself, got the worst resolution possible that invalidates why we’re even following Ai to begin with. First off, why is Koito so hell-bent on making people kill themselves? No one knows, unless spurned teacher love is all it takes, which...what the fuck? How much does it sting knowing that the only reason AI didn’t kill herself was because the existence of a being as vile and insipid as this came into her life, and that she spent so long trying to see what her thought process behind committing self-death was? On a scale of 1 to 10, 13. Does the show do A SINGLE GODDAMN THING WITH THIS REVELATION?! NO! ARE YOU STUPID?! THIS IS WONDER EGG FUCKING PRIORITY! WE DON’T DO ANYTHING TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OR ADVANCE CONCEPTS AND THEMES HERE! Not once does Ai ruminate on this or have it affect her. Not once does the show moralize about how sometimes shitty people can end up saving you or whatever, because this isn’t even important to the episode moving forward. Keep in mind that at this point, neither parallel universe Ai’s suicide nor Koito’s were caused by the extreme bullying they received. Sure, this breaks the rules for how the suicide statue people work, but at this point, there’s no merit going over the plotholes and inconsistencies. We move on from this mean-spirited dumpster fire that feels like it’s gaslighting both the audience and Ai, before she learns that apparently Neiru doesn’t know her either, except that’s her revived sister who looks similar. The truth is, just because you save them doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily remember you, let alone what happened. Reality shifts for some reason, probably to avoid the revived people from having to come to terms with having died and coming back because fuck doing anything interesting. This is meant to be of some relief to Ai when Momoe and Rika tell her this, which she’s gonna need for when Neiru’s secretary --who is now good again and no longer evil like the end of episode 9 suggested-- reveals that Neiru managed to create something that records her dreams. The girls learn that in it, she revived her sister and was visited by one of the insect-head goons, and said lackey offers her a chance to join Frill, for Neiru, too, is an Ai. We did learn that Neiru was born through artificial insemination, but that’s not quite the same as this out of nowhere thing that doesn’t explain her direct and logic-based outlook anymore than what we already got in the show. We didn't need this. It’s just there to explain why she gave her pet to Ai to look after and why she was gonna disappear from the show afterwards outside of one phone call that Ai ignores and immediately regrets. There is one decent scene where Ai and Rika discuss the fear of death, but in the sea of nonsensical, mean-spirited horseshit, gaslighting, backpedaling, and stupid reveals that largely ignore the main plot, it means naught. The girls all drift apart, Ai goes to another school, then she comes back in the hopes of becoming a Warrior of Eros and getting the gang back together to defeat Frill, presumably in a season 2 that will largely never happen because this ending was a dumpster fire everyone waited 3 months for after the show ended on an already terrible note following a nightmarish production. What a dire, insipid wet fart of an ending, this was. Imagine waiting 3 months for this, thinking that the show might find a way to conclude in 46 minutes. Even the visuals are far less polished compared to the rest of the series. There’s little in the way of decent animation and there’s only one or two remotely noteworthy shots. The backgrounds and character models are less polished, and very little of the new music introduced gets put in the actual new scenes for this special. Barring the passable audiovisuals, this was a miserable, demoralizing finale. Foresight wasn’t even a factor regarding this anime, was it? It hurts to be this venomous towards a show knowing how much better it once was and how notoriously awful the production side of things became. One can only hope that Shin Wakabayashi and his team at CloverWorks are able to get some semblance of rest. Still, the worst thing an ending can do is be so vile and useless that it poisons the very essence of the series. It’s not fun feeling contempt and resentment towards a show you were enjoying in its early stages. Now, if this somehow gets that continuation it desperately craves, there won’t be that same goodwill that was had going into the show. If there was ever a reason to avoid Wonder Egg Priority, this finale special might be the most damning one of all.

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