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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ย. 2024
- Awful writing choices and production issues, this is Wonder Egg priority, an anime you'll hear people half heartedly recommend and this video will tell you why
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#wondereggpriority #WEP #anime
![Wonder Egg Priority: A Mesmerizing Mess [CC]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hPiN6hQ2asI/mqdefault.jpg)
Huge thanks to ya'll for the crazy support this video has been getting as well as all the great comments you guys have been putting down (Yes, I read all of them)
And since you guys have been asking, here's all the music I've used in order:
Blue dream - Genshin Impact
Lillie's theme - Pokemon sun & moon
Last surprise - Persona 5
Call it a day in liyue - Genshin Impact
Streets of Elegance - Genshin Impact
Vanishing trail - Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana
Iclusian dance - Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana
Welcome to the world of Pokemon - Pokemon mystery dungeon: explorers of sky
Rapid as wildfires - Genshin Impact
Marionette, Marionette - Ys IX: mosntrum nox
A painful battle - Final fantasy tactics A2
Heaven - Persona 4
Battle (v5) - Fate/Extra
Elv - Fate/Extra
Being slow on the waves - Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana
Enjoy
Can u get a real mic & up the sound quality itself? If u do just reply to this comment telling me you did it so I can finally subscribe
i thought it was cool because of the sakuga and then dropped it very early on because of school. then I saw people talking about "what happened to wonder egg priority" and then I got sad :(
I suggest using less gen💩 music, it's so obnoxious and distracting. Talk about low quality music, ugh...! 😒
Ys music slaps too good.
@@sakuraneko606 cope
It should have stayed as a 'exploring the harsh realities of life' show instead of changing the plot completely
Really did feel like they were making the story up as they went along
@@thebreadhead2000 Funny you say that, an interview with the head writer reveals that that _actually_ was the case
@@littlesmithy what interview? Can you link pls
@@littlesmithy dang if they were making it up as they went along, then why not just take the predictable route?
@@littlesmithy so why did they changed course? genuine asking
Wow, changing the message from "suicide is complicated and people have various reasons for doing it" to "it a monster's fault"
If you look at it monster was a result of two irresponsible men creating a creature that wants to love and to be loved, later abandoning her. Their ugly violent selfish personality is the reason she is like that. At least I hope anime wil take this path
@@ababa9678 that's besides the point. Imagine if the canon ending of Silent Hill 2 was the dog ending. That's what Wonder Egg Priority did. They can flesh out the dog's backstory all they want, but at the end of the day... Its a joke ending completely unrelated to the rest of the story.
I mean, it's not like all suicide is because of Frill (see all male suicide + all suicide before Frill existed), and having a particular monster metaphorically embodying despair is perfectly reasonable (Persona 3, for example), and the show is very explicit about those metaphors... it feels more like they couldn't figure out how to end it in a remotely reasonably, it probably would've needed 12 more episodes to be even remotely coherent, episode 13 is completely the worst ending I have ever perceived
i dont know,i think the monsters also like are supposed to represent those reasons? at least thats how i took it
Can be both
I had the privilege of visiting a panel with one of the show’s animators. With the finale, they only finished animating it 48 hours prior to airing. If that doesn’t show how much of a mess the latter half was, I don’t know what does.
I'm surprised they even had something to present wtf
thats anime production hell for you
Evidently that isn’t even very uncommon but other shows don’t tend to be as polished so their ability to do quick turn arounds is greater. It’s still a real shit way to run an industry.
I don't know shit about anime production. I thought they completed all episodes before the season started.
@@ravelhidersunk4458 I thought this as well. Evidently not! It makes sense for a show like South Park that needs to stay topical but for an original cartoon it seems bonkers to work like that.
Honestly I felt that episode 12 had the potential to be very poignant. I actually liked the message it seemed to give that “ultimately it doesn’t matter why Koito killed herself, and seeking answers forever won’t give you closure.” Ai choosing to leave Koito on the edge of the rooftop and go to save her other world self was a good scene! If they had cut the Frill and Acca shit and left the technical details of the dream world vague, I would’ve been satisfied with that as a kind of open ending.
Yeah, also, for a while, it seemed like the anime was going not just with the 'sometimes you don't need to know' route, but also the 'they won't be brought back, they're dead' route. The men in the garden never said the girls would come back, this was the protagonists assumptions, and the story seemed to be going through a going through the grief and following with life kind of narrative
SSSS.Dynazenon did something very similar, but with a lot more panache.
Yeah, it would be great if the girls had to save the versions of themselves who were stuck in the trauma. That's actually a thing that some therapy modalities focus on so it would be so cool to see it in an anime.
Agreed.
Bro actually used the word poignant in a sentence ain't no way 💀💀
The first half of wonder egg had me thinking I found my new favorite anime of all time… and I’ve never been more let down by an anime in my life
SAME I was so disappointed not only with the series but that “extra long episode” was such a let down like what was that
@@Miss_Witch13 when the video was talking about the special episode I couldn’t remember if I even watched it or not. Eventually I figured out I did, but I think I was so annoyed by the show I just completely blocked it out.
Or it was so forgettable because of how dumb it was.
@@parenthesiss it was so ridiculous I wanted to scream 😂
It's more disappointing then the second season of The Promise Neverlands
@@Miss_Witch13 This is how i felt with the first half of the anime Kiznaiver and honestly im pretty sure for decades now most anime like this has just been fucking made up on the fly like this
NOTHING is more disappointing than wasted potential. The first few episodes had me hooked by my flesh, but the second half really did feel like a diarrhea of random bs
I remember watching it every week as it came out and slowly feeling the rage of realizing this whole production was thrown down a well
I'm really glad people share the same thought as me about this anime. When it first came out, I was even telling my friends about it, but it all just became meh especially after the last episode came out. An anime that is sadly easily forgotten due to its weak story towards the end. At least the characters have good designs though
Watched the anime with actual teenage girls some years ago. No one liked it.
is the manga better?
@@rofecoxib There is no manga. Sadly, the breakdown of all aspects of the production is just... what the story is.
I had the (dis)pleasure of binging it and feel the same.
I can frankly tolerate a bunch of the middle to end bullshit but Frill just no and then it only got worse with those "final bosses" or whatever the heck they were.
THAT'S HOW IT ENDS???? After the last episode, I didn't bother to watch it since I heard that the storyline went bad and now I'm glad I didn't 😭 Really a shame that the anime turned out this way, the potential:((
Not the first anime that had a bunch of potential, and having a terrible ending.
I too abandon ship and came here to see how it ended and I as well am glad that I did not continue on because man they really butchered what they had.
The ending is literally incomprehensibly bad, yeah; the recap episode was due to production issues and I guess that's also the reason why the ending was so... like that
So the manga is trash got it
@@raulojeda8567 there is no manga, just the anime btw but yes sadly😔
Strange how it went from addressing serious subjects in an original manner to "AIs are bad lol", also they never confronted the supposed main villain that came out of nowhere, they killed the mystery behind what happened with Ai's best friend's death, they destroyed Ai's characterization, they shoved aside many MANY plot points (like the underlings, Neiru, the parallel universes that serve more as a convinient plot device than real worldbuilding with purpose, etc) and they force-fed all the backstory of how wonder eggs came to be to us in one episode randomly in the middle of the series.
Anyway, great video, you pinpoint well what happened to this anime in a comprehensive and fluid manner!!
Why is it so hard to find anime with AIs that are fully developed characters and aren't villains? From what I can tell, the prevailing idea is they "don't have real emotions," as though the chemicals produced in our brains are any more real than code made specifically to emulate those chemicals.
@@angeldude101 Totally agree, and it could also serve as a way to explore deeper themes about emotions and what makes us humans that isn't possible with just human characters, it can enhance interesting plot points and makes us question things with AI characters overcoming barriers or slowly developing human traits as a way to mirror society or something (if we stay on track with the serious subjects). Also in wonder egg priority, we understand why the AI daughter turned evil (jealousy) but we don't really get how it happened or what the deal was, this just feels like convenient writing more than good writing, because they needed to shove an easy villain that'll make the mystery something we never theorized about (which is bad).
Not only "AIs are bad" but also "Anything femme is jealous AF lol"
Reminds me of David Cage games, where they start as a police procedural, but quickly spiral out to AI, aliens, spirits, old gods, and everything but the kitchen sink.
@@angeldude101not exactly an anime, but I recommend Your Turn to Die, a mystery game with a decent amount of ai themes later on without it feeling heavy-handed, stuffed into the plot, or only there to be evil. The game isn’t finished yet, but there are 3 chapters available to play, all in English
Broooo I’m so heartbroken, I’ve been *waiting* for a good magical girl-type story that tackles dark themes without going full edgy grim dark. If this anime stuck to its original premise it would’ve been up there with my top anime of all time. I remember hearing so much hype about this show, but I was in a bad place at the time and I kept hearing how dark it was so I put it off, and then then suddenly I started hearing all this backlash but I never knew what actually happened. The wasted potential is heartbreaking. All this beautiful animation and character designs - Ai has *such* a good design! All this amazing artistry gone to waste because they decided to completely change story directions and fumbled hard.
why not madoka magica
@@lampy1801 people think it's edgy because it's incredibly artistic, though I feel the the dark side of Madoka magic is pretty simple although very symbolic in a very beautiful way ! I do also wish more people would watch it but I also understand why it might not be for everyone.
@@lampy1801 madoka magica is so snazzy
Sleepless Domain is a magical girl story with dark themes but remains firmly "Hopepunk" and not edgy grimdark!
Havent seen it yet but that's Princess Tutu from what I've heard. Theres Minky Momo but that hasnt been translated to english.
The moment Ai threw her phone away, I cracked in a mixture of laughter, crying and anger
Because it was so damn wrong, story-wise, character-wise...everything was wrong with it
The first half was so damn good, I really thought its my new fav. Anime, but then all my hopes and dreams got destroyed on the second half and continually beaten and stomped on with the "extra episode"
I watched this show not too long ago. It's like some random dude who never wrote anything in his life watched Madoka Magica and thought to himself "I want to do that too!"
Too accurate 😭😭😭😭😭
This hits hard considering MadoMagi's creator's thoughts on the characters' actions...
Reminds me of Myriad Colors Phantom World
It's supposed to be a slice of life story about teenagers exploring concepts involving the human psyche, but the execution is done so poorly, world building episodes end up contradicting the entire premise and the ending just comes out of left field and only leaves you wondering what the hell were they thinking...
Also made by KyoAni, by the way.
The fact that it was produced by KyoAni and I have never heard of it up until now is shocking
@@thebreadhead2000 Look up for "Myriad Colors Phantom World is Pretty, Boring"
It's Digibro's (he changed his channel name now) video, he goes into several perspectives that I hadn't thought about when I watched the anime, but now I mostly agree with.
Lol all I remember is a beach episode and a stick in that series oppa
@@whatthepick Limbo Booba is all I know about that one
The vaguely similar Blue Reflection: Ray, while suffering from pacing and element distribution issues, was at least mostly consistent.
This whole video is what i've been trying to tell my friends about the show but couldnt put my frustrations to words, its just so devastating when you find something that seems promising and then they ruined everything right in front of your eyes 😭
Right?? The show is so out there it’s so weird to describe and explain, that just makes it so much harder to explain why it was so terrible. I remember trying to explain it to my mom and just having no idea what to say.
You haven't watched the promised Neverland have you
@@alexgreentea771 Oh believe me, you do not want me to get started on THAT one. That manga was so good on the first half and then its like they just dont know what the characters should do after escaping like what the hell is even happening on the later halfs
@@WhatAmIDoingWhat the fact that they completely cut the second best arc in the entire manga literally makes me seethe to this day. Like I remember being so hyped for season two to see goldy pond animated and instead we got ?????? The second half of the manga is pretty weak IMO but holy fuck the anime dropped the ball so bad and didn't even finish adapting the good stuff
I loved this 7 episode series, wish it had gotten a full 13!
Yeah! As much as I love The promises Neverland! Man I hoped it gets Season 2 already
A proper 12 ep arc would have worked. No recaps or AI = 3 episodes to close out.
I thought it had 12?
Tbh I liked it until the start of episode 11
@@jaylethel550They were being sarcastic....
Wow they really shafted this anime, maybe I'll just follow your advice and write a fanfic 😅
And it shall become my headcanon
Y'all got any fic recs?
I was all for this anime until they tried to push the narrative that young girls kill themselves because of some outside being??? I found this extremely distasteful
yeah they did a similar thing in madoka magica, wouldn't be surprised if they took inspiration from that
edit: since so many people think i'm talking about the main character's despair, i'm not. i'm talking about when the witches try to kill people, the victims appear to be trying to kill themselves (the woman about to jump off a building and the mass suivcide by gasoline or whatever) which is the influence of the "outside being" (witch) they can't perceive. i actually like madoka magica and i feel like wonder egg just did a super bad rip off concept
@@cowbanana but honestly I like the way it was handled in Madoka Magica it wasn’t saying that some outside being makes them off themselves it was more like an outside being takes advantage of the fact they do you know?
@@cowbanana Madoka Magica wasn't really like this at all, though. Kyuubi didn't make anyone depressed- he was more like a monkey's paw, giving the girls exactly what they wanted. The problem was them regretting their choice. No outside force made Sayaka fall in love with a thankless douchebag. No outside force made Kyoko's dad a murderous religious zealot. Technically an outside force killed Mami's parents, but it wasn't Kyuubi. He took advantage of them in their darkest moments, but he didn't rewire their brains to make them do anything.
Yeah, it is distasteful.
I fucking wish it was an entity that made me attempt so many times, but no, it was the abuse my dad did to me and the abuse a lot of people do to autistic people like me.
I hated it but sadly it just shows the mentality. Specially because it was basically based on what japanese social psychologists have said, but in some sort of allegory.
Psychologists keep investigating suicides because well, sadly that's a thing which happens a lot in Japan. And they are sometimes puzzled by teenage suicides (specially teenage girls) because there's a bunch of different reasons while the other ones can just basically be explained as "I failed society and I taking myself out for everyone else's sake".
And some social psychologists have come with the theory it's just the internet's fault. Teenager's get depression and suicidal thoughts because its a trend on the internet. The AI represents that.
Correction: Rika wants to bring back an obsessive fan who killed herself literally because of an asshole comment Rika made. They were never friends. Momoe just wants to bring back a friend. She was NOT a love interest. In fact, Momoe's whole thing is she does NOT want a relationship with her friend, but her friend confessed to her and Momone freaked out thus leading to her friend's suicide.
But yeah, as someone who spent their childhood dealing with depression (luckily no trauma) I was thrilled to see this kind of stuff tackled in such a great way in a show. Until the goddamn AI showed up. This enraged me too. It felt like the creators were saying "girls can't possibly be so traumatized to commit suicide, clearly it's something else" which just GASLIGHTS so many people it's not even funny. It was such a betrayal. Where once I would have considered it one of my favorites, it is not an anime I loathe.
Not just confessed, Haruka had tried to be intimate with Momoe without asking her consent.
@@EeveelutionStorm Whoa, you mean tried to r*** her, or just tried to kiss her?
fr no one talks enough about the fact Haruka was a huge creep who technically gaslit Momoe into feeling guilty for something that was not her fault.@@EeveelutionStorm
@@sheontialammm1725 Everyone acts like Momoe is a willing participant because "lesbians" and ignore the fact Momoe is clearly not into other girls and the feelings she had for Kaoru cemented that. Kaoru was a BOY.
@@EeveelutionStorm also haruka kind of sa'd momoe by making her touch her chest unwillingly and then killed herself making momoe feel guilty when she was the actual victim
I went from awwww cute slice of life to holy fuck this story metal as hell to what the fuck in the span of 30 seconds
The main character literally never even met the main villain???
The butchered plotline that pisses me off the most is Koito's death. The teacher was built up as a predator since the first episode, soon after starts getting close to Ai's mom while often talking about Ai a lot, then later gets revealed to be a predator who was on Ai herself is another timeline, only for the writers to turn a 180 and say that Koito, a child, was actually the real bad guy manipulating the teacher, and then suddenly died by accident instead of kill herself because of the trauma. If that isn't victim blaming, then Idk what is.
The home teacher? Honestly? I think him not being evil is a breath of fresh air. What SHOULD have been handled differently is Koito's death itself, in my opinion.
Yeah the teacher was clearly giving predator vibes and the way that they made Koito manipulate him in the end is such bs
I WAS SO PISSED BY THAT PLOTLINE AS WELL
Everything indicated he was a predator, everything was written that way, and they suddenly came up with some BS that could make a actual victims feel guilty for something that wasn't even their fault....
I was so so pissed they showed him to suddenly be a "pretty good guy" and that Ai was actually IN LOVE with him and MANIPULATING him, ffs that wasn't how it was written at the start....
I think they either didn't know what they were doing, or they tried to make the audience feel dumb by going "oh if you think you know where this is going, you don't, TA DAH"
It didn't make sense. It felt anticlimatic. And it also seemed as if they were actually blaming victims of grooming and manipulation for the abuse they got, as if they were saying "you're the one being abusive, the manipulation is in your head" blah blah blah
I hated it so much...
@@NoxNovak Didn't have to neccesarily be victim blaming even with the teacher not being a predator. They could have done something like, oh say, she was preyed upon by another teacher and so is hyper alert on all other teachers...or something like that.
The subplot about the robot girl also had that weird vibe of "grown men can be manipulated by teen girl who desperately wants their attention" and like... it's giving child predator logic???? Like as a woman myself who, like most women, have had the misfortune of being at the receiving hand of unwanted male attention from a young age, it's super common among those creeps to spin the narrative and make YOU the "temptress" when they get caught. And they're always lying, cause there is NO WAY I HELL a child has more control over a relationship than a grown man. At BEST they groomed a child into doing their bitting and then try to make it sound like she was in control, at worst she genuinely never tried anything, probably just acted polite cause the guy made them uncomfortable, and their perversed attraction has them interpreting that as the girl "being into them".
It's legit an excuse for child abuse, it's so disgusting to come up with scenarios to make it real. Like a lot of predators do in fact date and even marry women to have access to their children and then gaslit those women into not believing their own child when they talk about how their partners prey on them. I legit have no idea why someone who isn't a predator themselves would even feel the need to validate/normalize these kinds of scenarios. Who in their right mind even thinks of a "twist" like that? It's super creepy. And given the let's say ... concerning approach towards CP in the japanese manga/anime community, I am genuinely concerned about what the FBI would find if they raided the houses of the people who wrote that storyline... I legit do not trust any men who just comes up with scenarios that just so happen to randomly coincide with the lies every child predator has ever told.
I wont forget this anime in my life. Watched if from week one and was one of those who discussed each episode on twitter to figure out its meaning and theorize. Stopped on episode 8, gave it a 10 on MAL and am still pretending none of the other stuff ever came out.
I see, so that's why MAL scores have become useless...
That's why mal scores are shit
Bruh I remember defending ep 11 thinking it was a rushed but not bad ending and having hope the special would resolve it's issues..
And then the finale happened.....
This is one of the worst animes of all time because it had 10/10 potential but completely destroyed it.
Maybe don't misguide and lie to people with false ratings cause you refuse to accept reality lmao
if your curious about how many problems were in the production, one of the producers had to be hospitalized twice due to overwork and many if not the entire team behind production had to go thought a lot of overwork
I honestly believe that japan itself, as a whole, or more precisely in an entertainment sense, was not really ready for a series that puts the trauma most teenage girls experience in the forefront and how they solve it or dont, like in the real world. The hectic production was a clear sign. it's obvious that wonder egg for the first 7 episodes was taking strides to put that issue into viewers faces, but higher ups in the company didn't want that.
I honestly believe that the animation team and the writer and producer were forced to change the story mid way through the season. the fact that the team put out the last episode 2 days before it aired screams foul play from high ups. This anime was sabotaged
The hellish production behind this anime made me lose faith in this show halfway through its run. It's why we ended up getting the recap episode and the film (the latter of which I have not watched).
This is sadly not surprising within many anime studios. It seriously hurt WEP in the long run though; it was unable to rise above the unbelievable crunch time people go through just to make sure the next episode airs on time.
To me, it feels like WEP was supposed to be a longer anime at first, but then something changed during production, and the writers couldn't tell the story properly so they had to abruptly end things. Hopefully one day we get a reanimation, but until then I still really like Wonder Egg Priority for the characters alone.
It definitely feels like it was perhaps intended to be a 26 episode series rather than an 11 episode plus 1 clip show series.
I think I have heard this before!
I basically erased the ending of this anime from my memory because of how much it pissed me off but the tipping point for me was actually a pretty small scene near the end. Ai spent the entire anime feeling guilty that she didn't approach her friend who committed suicide, that she could've done something, that maybe she wouldn't have done what she did if she was there for her.
Then. Then! After everything! When Neiru calls her and asks for her help she throws her phone away??? Like they REALLY destroyed her entire character progression in that one single scene. Ugh
I'm not gonna watch this show but this was an amazing video. Must have taken a long time to write
It did. But in the heat of passion, time is irrelevant lol
I wanted to recomend the show so bad, but you've seen the video lol...
The extended dialogue was an early pain point for me IIRC. It was this exchange over and over:
“I have something very important to tell you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s very important.”
“Tell me.”
“Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Yes, tell me what it is.”
“Ok I will after this ad break”
*commercial*
(Backtracks)”are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Yes, tell me what it is.”
“Ok here it is: important thing”
“Cool. Let’s not talk about that at all and go do something else.”
I never loved and hated something as much as I did with WEP, the first episodes still are some of my favorite anime of all the time but all that sci fi nonsense did nothing but hurt the story and it never offered anything better in comparison with the first half, it feels as if two different people wrote it without telling each other what was going to be about
Honestly I'm fine with it being over, I have no faith on anything getting fixed if they ever pick it up again with the direction it ended up taking
Thank you for this video a lot of my frustrations are the same as yours and it was very cathartic to watch, I will still love WEP and re-watch that first half but it's hard no to imagine how amazing it could had been
Glad you enjoyed the video! And yeah, despite the fact it boils my blood, I'll probably just watch an episode or two every now and then
Supposedly the production issues involved some staff being replaced during production, so I guess it could have actually been done by 2 completely diff ppl
A probably accurate theory! EP 1-7 were the excellent beginnings of a good story, but EP 8 on is nothing more than a train wreck! You cannot keep adding plot to your story and think that is storytelling! It really does feel "as if two different people wrote it without telling each other what it was going to be about" !!!
This is what you call the "Anime original syndrome"
Ojamajo Doremi: *avoids the syndrome*
there are a lot of good original animes, being the best example Evangelion
@@no_se_nada_de_nada As a "Anime" ending, Eva ending wasn't good that's why there's end of Eva but for Hideaki Anno's original purpose, the anime ending conveyed it
@@Flamne don't think so, End of the evangelion was just fanservice, The message of the series ("take care of yourself") is all embedded in the original anime.
Lycoris Recoil RULES
"Mom, can I have Madoka?"
"We have Madoka at home."
>The Madoka at home
I remember when I first started this show. I was in a VERY dark place at the time, & seeing a show that depicted & tackled these dark issues head on was incredible. I genuinely felt seen. I didn’t care if it was a bit episodic at times. I looked forward to every episode. Honestly, the writers could’ve made the entire show just about exploring these different reasons why, & I would’ve been happy.
Then came episode 8. You’re right. Seeing a recap come out of nowhere was strange. After that, & especially when they introduced Frill, I felt betrayed. It started out so strong & so brave. Only got it to go & stab its fans strait through the heart.
Long story short, I still rewatch the first 7 episodes. I’m in a much better place now partially b/c of them, & I will always love them for that. However, I will never forgive what the writers fid afterwards.
I get the vibe that an editor got involved and forced the writer to change the story to make it less real and more fantasy.
Close but not actually. It's actually the opposite, the director and writer had opposite visions, and the writer's "vision" is more in line with the nonsense that the latter half devolved into. Nojima, almost word for word, repeats the girls Vs boy's suicide nonsense the Acca's mentioned in the earlier episodes unironically
@@MamiK00
That’s… disappointing but entirely believable. As someone with great passion for fiction I will admit that writers can also be a tinderbox if not kept in check
@@blackchibisan8116 Being a writer doesn't mean you have talent, it just means you have a job. Hollywood is full of talentless hacks like that these days.
@@jkleylein
Exactly. I’ve spent most of my life refining my craft and I’m fed up with the talentless ruining the reputation of my passioncraft
How nice it'd been if the girls just made peace with their friends passing. I didn't really mind Frill, but she could've been executed better. She could've been the big bad that united the girls.
Edit: like Frill could've been so much more, Ai's foil. I wasn't against the idea of something tempting the girls to take their lives and the girls being the ones that help them move on.
It could've ended at just that: Girls helping girls, realising that they can not bring back the dead, but they can help them move on.
I did love this anime, as confusing as the ending was. I adore the characters, and it hit so many hard topics that I could relate to, with my own trauma. Even if it's an anime that I can't really show anyone in my life, because the topics are so touchy. I totally understood the way Ai saw her teacher. The way our trauma can cloud our trust, to the point were we can't tell people's true intentions. I've definitely been in similar situations. This anime is hard to swallow, but so healing at the same time.
I really relate to this comment, I felt so much of the same watching this anime too. It felt like bitter medicine to confront my own traumas with.
YESSSSS. This anime felt like a hug and a punch to the gut at the same time. Rlly reminded me of omori.
Lots of shows over the years are sold on a solid beginning and hope they go on long enough to figure out an ending. This inevitably makes everything a downward slope until it sloppily concludes.
Tbh I feel like even the character of Frill could even have been interesting, if used as a metaphor past "ooh bad AI it's all her fault", notably as a metaphor for abandonment and depression. They could have shown Frill not being able to grow up like a normal human and becoming less and less favoured by her fathers, eventually as they reduce her to only an AI and not their own daughter. They could have shown Frill to have a complicated relationship with Himari, both happy and jealous, the baby seeing her as a big sister before Frill eventually snap and dies like she did in the anime with her sister "joining" her later out of guilt and trauma of witnessing what her fathers did. Frill could have been an eternal child, who would show herself to be a pseudo 'peaceful release" to young girls and the wonder eggs being a way to face trauma instead and grow as a person instead, even if the reality is harsh to show them hope in the feature. Acca and Ura-Acca could have done this out of guilt for what happened, to help girls heal and not repeat the mistakes they made (of being the cause of the trauma of their two daughters). Idk.
I feel like they shouldn't handle such sensitive topics if they only wanted edgy shock values out of the second half, it's not just clumsy but plain offensive?
I remember seeing a lot of this anime when it released, then out of nowhere… it just.. stopped. No one talked about it anymore. I wondered why.. it’s so disappointing this happened.
I think the only two anime that have enraged me more or as much as WEP were The Promised Neverland season 2 and Higurashi Sotsu. And those ones were insults to their predecessors, so congrats to WEP for managing to be an insult to itself instead.
Those all came out in 2021 actually, wtf was in the water that year
well, at least manga is good...
i still can't get over tpn s2
@@peanutkix I mean, there WAS a global pandemic still in 2021...
@@clownpiecejunkoandhecatia7240 Still it was not a pandemic of stupid/bad writing.
Edit: Removed a wildly incorrect misremembered anecdote, refer to Raruru's reply for information on hos WEP went off the rails.
Wonder Egg shitting the bed was a genuine tragedy, and watching the series with a friend and seeing each episode after the seventh get worse and worse was one of the most jokerfying experiences of my life.
Considering Darling in the Franxx took the same twist I'd doubt how much staff changes were involved in the downturn and both shows were clumsy at best even in the early episodes if you're watching critically for the themes and morals.
Wow…just wow. I can’t imagine how horrible the hospitalized head felt, seeing their work tarnished and their story taken away from them. I have no idea why the story wasn’t properly finalized before it was being made, and why the new head was so egotistical to just take the story wherever they wanted.
It’s not like that at all
Umehara was the producer and yes he was hospitalized but the real culprit here was the writer who had no fkkin idea what to do and clashed with the director (the director wanted to do something more akin to what ep 1-6 were like, that was his original vision, however aniplex and the production committee shoved Nojima (the writer) into the production and Wakabayashi’s (the director) vision got distorted to the point of being unrecognizable
Then the writer was so fucking late on the scripts the production company (CLW) had no choice but to make a recap episode and the special episode was supposed to be ep 12 but at that point Nojima had no clue how to end the series and so, the special episode, the true final episode, was done in the span of a fucking month
Thanks for nothing Nojima
Source: I worked on ep 10 and ep 12
And had friends who worked on the special ep
Also there’s interviews with the producer and the director who kind of sugarcoat it but it still explains the situation behind the scenes
"This is lame, I can do it better" is a genuine disease on writing
@@Rarururu__ damn
This show is so utterly contradictory and ends with such demented harmful takes. I honestly hate the writer so much for the bait and switch and pity all the artist that crunched their heart out to make this absolute trash fire visually beautiful. Can never watch this again
I was talking to a friend way back about how i would rewrite this to make the surrealist and scifi elements, as well as the twist backstory work together.
Basically, the Acca/Frill stuff would be more central to everything. After the murder of Azusa, the Accas would get rid of Frill in a way that was just convincing enough for them to forget about her, like taking out her power-core and burying the whole basement in concrete. After Himari ended her life, the Accas would grow obsessed with figuring out the causes of suicide, and use tech from the dream-department of Neiru's company to investigate. The general idea is they'd illegally take brain-scans of girls who committed suicide, and recruit other girls to try to communicate with their virtual avatars because they'd be more willing to open up to girls their own age, and are saving a brain-scan of Himari for after they've gotten experience with the tech. That's where the magical-girl premise comes in, and why the first half of the show wouldn't change too much with my rewrite; the Accas would use trickery to convince Ai and the others(except Neiru, who could be their recruiter) that they're using some kind of magic, as a way to cover up for the illegal experiments. The climax of the show would be Ai and the others figuring out what's going on, and being asked by the Accas to help them talk to Himari now that they're experienced in sorting through trauma. Eventually, it would be revealed from Himari's virtual avatar that she was experiencing some epic-level gaslighting and harassment via all her electronic devices being hacked by [someone]. Then the Accas would realize Frill escaped, and had been planning to take revenge on them for abandoning her all along. Whatever's left of Frill at this point could be revealed to have uploaded herself into the dream-matrix like a virus (Agent-Smith style), and she could be the cause of abnormalities in the system that led to Ai getting suspicious of the magical girl premise in the first place.
Hard to fit a happy ending here, but something along the lines of the Accas finally joining the girls in the matrix, so they could have a bittersweet reunion with Himari and Frill before they fade away.(after Frill's been returned to her normal form following some kind of epic battle against Super-Nightmare-Frill and her depression-lasers)
Whatcha think?
Love it.
It's already leagues above the ending we got. Even taking out all that parallel worlds stuff and choosing to have frill influence girls through the internet is a lot more believable than whatever it was she was doing.
Can't believe we missed out on epic battles against depression lasers
I agree, the way the writing presents frill backstory literally screams this is the main plot
It would be fun that not only the main 4 are the only girls that got tricked.
The bug agents, like, computer bug, could be previous girls that died in the dreamworld. Weapons and all.
Would explain why they are so strong and have better combat skills than the main 4 girls.
Also, how about a boy joining in? Not in the “romantic lead” way, just a guy they hang out with, fight the monsters, idk. I got just really frustrated what Ura and Acca said about suicide.
And how about more surreal dream escapes? Like, you’re on top of a bunch of tall buildings that are connected by wires. You can’t see the bottom at FIRST because there is clouds/smoke/fog but if you look hard enough and long enough you might see the bottom. And it’s horrifying. Won’t say what cuz Idk either ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿
A happy ending in my opinion is not something I would put in the end, more like, something bitter sweet. Feels like it would be better.
And it would be more interesting if not only there were young girls, but adults too. Fucking heavy yeah, but that would also mean there is Wonder Egg Fighters that are adults? Just not many, like, you can count them with two hands AT BEST.
And yeah, adults + teen girls? Creep alarm. But maybe a spin off where we see adult Wonder Egg Fighters? They are separated because Teen understand teens better and Adults understand adults better.
My question is what would entice the girls to fight? Like, is it like the OG where they fight to revive someone only to get “lmao get pranked” and not get their love one back. Or is it more of a escapism thing? Where they start to sleep more, evade responsibilities and such to fight in the dream world? Would create something like “escapism vs reality” I think?
Some of the symptoms of depression is like, you sleep a lot, don’t want to do things, don’t want to get out, you don’t find joy in things.
The girls COULD bond over that somewhat. When you find someone that understands, you just stick to them ya know? Talk about their griefs and more. Maybe that way Neiru sees them more like friends instead of “science volunteers”
This is why I always say I would rather have a good show that prematurely ends, rather than a good show that ruins itself in the later seasons. There's nothing I mourn more than wasted potential.
I fell in love with Wonder Egg Priority when it started. It covered girlhood in such a raw and beautiful way that I've never seen done quite the same way in anime before. Needless to say, I was heartbroken with how it ended up going. It had so much potential and it just completely threw it in the trash. The entirety of episode 10 is especially egregious but that's a whole other can of worms. I didn't even bother catching the finale OVA, and from the description you gave, I made the right decision.
I find the Japanese mentality on suicide really interesting, since it's apparently illegal to commit suicide in Japan. There's another anime that's about suicide that came out in 2019 called Babylon where a detective tries to find and catch a woman that drives people to kill themselves. It's not a very good anime because midway through the show there's this weird debate between the prime ministers of several countries about suicide and whether it should be legal, and what's good or evil and a lot of philosophical bullshit that goes completely against the western opinion on suicide.
What I got from that anime is that there seems to be this view in Japan (or at least that author's view) that suicide is something that you're driven to do intentionally by an external force, and that it's ultimately a thing of evil, a crime you do to hurt other people. This of course goes completely against the western (or at least my) view on suicide, that it's the final, desperate resort for people who fall into despair for one reason or another. While that anime argues that it's evil and the people who do it should be punished, it never once looks at it as a problem of mental health, only that it's an issue caused by a villainous force.
This all relates back to Wonder Egg Priority because of how it also blames suicide on an external, evil, force (Frill in WEP and Ai Magase in Babylon) that drives people to kill themselves instead of it happening as a result of their mental health.
Neither of these anime are good watch-throughs, but both of them gave me a lot of food for thought after I watched them.
I don't think there's ever been a show where the finale has made me feel more empty than this one. After I watched it I didn't know how to feel, I was trying to focus on the good aspects and look for hidden meaning in places where the writers never intended there to be. The next day I actually thought about what I had watched and realised just how downhill it went. I'll always have the memories of how good the first half was, but I wish I could say that about the whole series.
The change to persona 5 music as soon as you said dream world was really clever
Please forgive the machine translation, which may be difficult to understand.
Wonder Egg Priority has not changed the direction of the story from beginning to end. The theme is not to solve suicide. Nor is it about the good or bad of suicide. The theme is about four girls whose background is that their friend committed suicide and who grow up overcoming their own problems.
The episodes of the girls coming out of the egg project the psychology of each of the daily lives of Oto Ai and the others who broke the egg.
Think of the presence of frills as "the pressure that tries to keep a child a child. This is shown in episodes 5 and 12. Frill tempts the girls to death and keeps them in a world where they remain girls. For Fril, this is an act to keep the girls from becoming "unclean adults"; it is Fril, created as a 14-year-old girl, who is the "magical girl" who cannot grow up forever. It is a symbol of the psychology of children trying to remain children, of adults trying to keep children as children.
The situation of the frill in episode 11 is in contrast to that of Oto Ai.
In other words, the frill episode shows Ai Oto's previous feelings toward her mother, Sawaki, and Koito.
In episode 12, Ai Oto makes a different choice from Fril and is able to "give love" instead of being a "child who only wants love" like Fril.
Episode 11 does not deviate from the previous stories and is a necessary episode for understanding episode 12.
It should be kept in mind that the existence of Frill and the parallel world of Oto Ai is only a mechanism to depict the psychology and conflicts of the Oto Ai, their growth and the factors that prevent them from doing so.
When Ai Oto and her friends solve their own problems and achieve spiritual growth, Fril's friends appear to interfere and traumatize them. This is a mechanism to keep the suicidal girls in Fril's world. This causes Rika, Momoe and Ai to stop fighting. Aonuma Neiru lost her place in the special edition, and under Fril's pressure, she reverted to being a "child" and retreated into Fril's world. Due to the trauma instilled by Fril's friends, Ai Oto had stopped associating with Fril. However, in the end, Ai Oto goes to see her "friend" Neiru Aonuma. That is what she got by breaking the egg. This "going to see her" itself shows that Oto Ai has completely overcome Frill's pressure (the pressure to keep the child as a child). This is implied from the beginning in the OP. There is only one broken egg.
Wonder Egg Priority is a consistent narrative from beginning to end. It should not be negated by misinterpretations of plot changes along the way.
That's a great interpretation.
Though I can't help but feel it could've been presented in a much better and coherent way
@@thebreadhead2000the silly part about all this that you actually thought these kids are supposed to be heroic, well newsflash they aren't. The girls were given tools to fix *their* problems not anyone else's and yes they did good things but they ultimately wanted their special people back. They don't have any interest in the big bad because they don't have the means to defeat her.
You know what really bothered me especially in the second half?
How focused the show was on the struggle of little *girls* specifically.
At some point it just felt like a reason to trash on the "silly little problems" that girls have and how dangerous and toxic girls and women are.
As if little boys couldn't struggle with things like being dissatisfied with their looks or being lonely...
Yeah, and also Akka and Urakka's speech about how girls tend to be more emotional than boys was pretty weird, along with their idea of a "perfect daughter" for Frill.
(Edit for spelling mistakes)
@@m00nl1ghtj3w3l Yes! It felt so uncomfortable
I thought they were going the direction of "systemic sexism is creating a cycle of trauma for young girls" but no, they went the stupid route.
i mean, there was a wonder egg with a boy in it- kaoru in episode 10. but his inclusion brings up more questions: are the eggs going by sex, not gender? is he just an outlier to tie in with momoe’s gender struggles/possible trans-ness? are there more boy eggs but it was just a big coincidence that nobody but momoe got one? i forgot if they addressed any of this, but it’s just like… huh???
But it's allowed to focus on a specific experience without meaning other experiences don't exist
Likei can say how awful abuse against women is without it meaning abuse against men isn't bad? I could say I hate that it focuses on younger peoples problems and why doesn't it focus on adults too? Why not pregnant women?
It's allowed to focus on one group
Most anime have male focus so a single female centered anime is okay
If I can still watch, enjoy and relate to male characters and issues, then people can deal with one anime about girls issues
I love the Nigerian really coming out when you were angry 😭😭😭 “you can’t just introduce new plot points in the last episode and call it A DAY!” 😂😂😂
I was rlly excited about this show bc it reminded me a lot of Sarazanmai, if more serious tonally. I (fortunately) forgot to keep up with it, never got to the “bad” part, and have always been curious about what on earth went wrong, so thanks for the vid! I can’t really recommend Sarazanmai as a “replacement” for disappointed Wonder Egg fans. But for those who are chill with crude humor and, like…random musical numbers? I think it could be worth your time if you liked the surreal, mental health, and lgbt aspects of Wonder Egg.
I didn't really like the final episode of sarazanmai it definitely felt rushed in my opinion... I felt weird watching Enta get away with stealing the plates and causing so much chaos...Toi forgave him too easily
@@KumoriGatchi Yeah I can understand that sentiment! I really wish it was allowed 12 episodes instead of 11, which could’ve helped a lot with the issues it does have. Tbh the conclusion of Enta’s arc never bothered me personally bc he winds up on the brink of death as a consequence. Which even then is a bit harsh considering he was just a 14 yr old boy acting petty.
Lures a girl into an underground arcade
Gives her an egg
Doesnt elaborate further.
Lets her go.
i watched the entire show with my friends, start to finish. it became like a weekly ritual, and brought us all closer as a result. we still mourn the ending.
sigh i hope someday there will b an anime that talks and actually cares abt the dark side of adolescence specifically for girls
Cloverworks just like to f things up lol. They butchered the second season of TPN and then there's this crapfest as well. This felt like a couple of writers decided to write the story and the director just stitched all the ideas together and just went with it lol.
Gets even funnier when you realise they both released around the same time
@@thebreadhead2000 lmao 🤣😂
This anime embodies the meme they has us in the first half ngl
I first watched this anime cuz I saw a picture of Ai on Pinterest, I forgot abt it when waiting for ep 7 to come out, goddamn they messed it up huh I was enjoying it too 😭
I think the twist that the friend's death was entirely accidental after all the build-up of "an AI that influences young girls to off themselves" would've been a really great twist in a better-written series. The whole thing where the main character's sole purpose for participating was to find out why her friend offed herself only to find out she just accidentally tripped, and that when you revive someone they're pulled from a parallel world and have no memory of you and possibly have a different personality - it's such a great, bleak, tragic plot twist and I think it could've worked really well like with how horror movies sometimes end, if only the rest of the show had been better.
I remember in anime Shirobako (anime that talk how anime produce in Japan works) if they release a recap episode its a red flag, from that anime they tell maybe the episode havent met the standard they want or the director dont really know where the story goes or have personal issue.
Also wonder egg priority is an original anime that only the director or writer know how the story goes
When the ova was released, honestly, I thought I went insane. I genuinely thought that maybe I was wrong, maybe this anime is coherent but it's just too 'artsy' and complex for me to comprehend. I'm so happy to find out that it was indeed very awful for a lot of other people.
Goddamn it. I thought that we'd FINALLY get a good representation of young girls struggles, a happy story where we see them grow and heal from their trauma, but NOOOoooOOOOooo!!!1!1! Instead we got a convoluted mess of weird scifi, stupid plot points and parallel universes.
Also the queer themes were a bit oddly handled. It was made clear in the story that all of the people in the dream world are supposed to be girls, so it's really invalidating to include a trans guy in there.
yeah it’s weird. at least the implication of that episode seemed to be that momoe is also a trans girl, so??? it’s just really inconsistent
@@gaymiens Exactly! It just felt really dumb.
I recommend the anime the demon girl next door for a anime like that
tbh i didn't mind having a trans boy, but i feel like the point would've been better made if it'd been a trans girl because the show was meant to focus on the struggles of young adolescent girls. the queer themes were fine, it just wasn't handled well
@@kaiayang2855 Exactly! Very well said.
I definitely appreciate Wonder Egg Priority's courage to talk about dark topics and mental health, the unusual but captivating conflicts and its art style, and I would recommend it to anyone who's ready (putting TWs there). The creators have many, MANY interesting thoughts that resembles psychology theories, but they didn't handle them well, turning this beautiful anime into something unresolved and potentially harmful. For those who are not aware, the sexually suggestive plots are quite Freudian, the daddy issues, the sex/life drive and death drive are also something Freud talked about (and yes Freud is himself controversial). There are more that I forgot. And of course topics surrounding sexuality and gender, suicide, trauma, bully, family etc.... 12 episodes just have no way to handle all these. With these questions and dilemmas revealed but not resolved, and with it being quite popular on social media, I'd say we really need to put Trigger Warning whenever someone recommends it
I agree I personally wished they had handled queer issues better, like kaoru for example, I wished they had done a transgirl instead of a transguy
Trigger warnings are not necessary
@@Mr_Mistah what do you mean? Why?
@@monochrome74 Because people should use their common sense but you're proof that common sense isn't common.
@@Mr_Mistah LOL haha ok, I'll leave your comment for others to judge
Ugh..this anime let me down so hard. Coming into it... I was in love with the art and the plot and was really hoping this anime would go on to become something amazing. But then EP 8 happened.I was so confused thinking to myself...wait why the HELL is there a recap in a 12 episode anime? What a waste of an episode! They could have used that episode to even out the bizarre pacing of Acca and Ura-Acca lore dumping in ep 10/11. I pretty much only watched the last half because I was already in to deep and figured I should just finish it off. When episode 13 came out I was pissed that they decided we needed ANOTHER recap which ended up leaving only an episode worth of actual new content.
Honestly, I think this anime needed to be 24 episodes long to really balance out the story and to allow the characters to develop more. I agree that the Frill plot point didn't need to exist because the base story was so good on it's own. I understand there may have been production issues (Glaringly obvious by how the story was by the end.) but they really should have found a way to either leave it open ended or at least have left out the whole Frill plot. If they were to ever come back out with a reboot of this series or an alternate version, I would hope they will learn from their mistakes this time and produce a truly conclusive series.
I also kinda hope a different studio would take it seeing as the studio behind it, Cloverworks, gave us The Promised Neverland season 2.
But that's even less likely
I don't think I've ever had an anime I loved so much end up pissing me off as much as WEP. It had so much promise, then goes well past disappointment into straight up betrayal.
Yeah this show really should have stayed about these 4 Girls dealing with suicides affecting them and having this 'special power' and way to 'fight back' against suicides that affected other people in this fantasy world and just had them keep hope in spite of the darkness.
And maybe the ending could have excised about 90% of the shark jumping stuff and kept it very personal as each character would get closure for each of their stories.
If souls get isekaid to parallel worlds, why would there also be multiversal alternates of people? Does everyone just have infinite souls bouncing across infinite universes?
I really wish the opportunity of anime reboots were more of a thing, where production teams would revisit their shows and rewrite on where it all went south. It doesn't have to be by popular demand, it would be mostly so that the reboot could live up to the show's potential. But that idea might be a little messy (financially as well), and artistically debatable soooo..
Oof, that was rough. I haven’t even seen it, and I was still getting pissed off. Sounds like a classic case of the writers just running with a good premise without having thought up an ending. In order craft an ending, they would add new plot threads, which would require even more plot threads to explain, and on and on until you end up with a huge mess, way bigger than intended, and still no ending.
Putting in a recap episode with so much left to explain is really lame. However, the craziest slap in the face definitely had to be the “actual ending” being put off for months. That’s basically an admission that they really did have no idea how to end it and were winging it.
Sorry, man. That must’ve been ridiculously frustrating to watch weekly.
Well, yeah. The main character Ai is still one of my favorite anime characters I've ever seen in any show, because of her character design and altruistic nature. I love the color yellow and I felt like I could really relate to her. But for me to be able to say this my mind has blocked out everything after ep 7. Everything after it just feel like a fever dream and I do not count it as canon. Fuck.
They got their priority mixed up i guess... 😏
It took me a while to understand the joke behind "Wonder Egg: Sisterhood" XD
this just reminds me of the promised neverland. gorgeous animation, poignant story telling, the first season was an absolute masterpiece. I got so into it that I couldn't wait for season 2 and went to read the entire manga in less than a week. I was obsessed with it and it truly had the potential to be one of the most popular animes out there.
and then season 2 came out, and for some reason they decided it would be the last one. which means the show writers had to figure out a way to cram over a dozen different plot arcs into just 12 episodes. it was... a mess. I stopped watching halfway through the season when I realized that several characters and plot points from the manga had just been completely removed from the storyline, even though they were absolutely crucial to it. the story now made no sense, fans who hadn't read the manga clearly couldn't possibly understand any of it.
it still makes me so sad and angry to think about it. it's so incredibly disappointing when incredible animes get let down like that.
The heavily wasted potential of this show still haunts me to this day. I'm honestly worried about many of the currently ongoing series I watch/read would face this same fate.
WARNING: spoilers of death parade and artiswitch
important note: i haven't seen death parade in a long while, so i may get some things mixed or wrong. Also, i highly recommend you watch both of these, cause they're pretty great.
whenever i remember about this anime i just start thinking how it could've been had it followed a similar path to other one shots, more specifically, "Death Parade" and "Artiswitch".
In death parade, the main theme is the psychology of death in the lives of people with varied backgrounds and how these persons react to it, with each person's life stories and how they died being used to establish a final conclusion to analyze the concepts of both justice and morality.
The way it's ending was done was by utilizing it's pre-estabilished themes in exploring two different scenarios with distinct yet alike backgrounds. in episode 11, when Mayu choses to trade the life of someone else for Harada's, although morally it's may be seen as an act of love, objectively she chose to eternally condemn the life os a person she doesn't even know for the sake of bringing back someone dear to her, without considering any external factors, from whether or not that person actually deserved that fate to whether they had or not loved ones who were rooting for them.
With that setup, along with Chiyuki's development throughout the episodes from her experiences with each new different scenario, she manages to break the mold by choosing not to take the life of someone else, gaining the right to reincarnate.
It was a solid ending that was built upon it's main themes along with pre-estabilished conflicts that were solved with a cohesive solution, and just like WEP it's a one shot anime with no prior source material.
in artiswitch's case, it shares a lot of the same main themes as WEP, albeit both of them being very different from one another in terms of execution. Artiswitch is a web anime in which the main character, Nina, is a witch in training who looks into people's souls/minds in order to grant them their wishes, as to "peer deeper" into their being to know exactly what they want and grant it.
However, Nina is obliged to grant any wish people ask of her as for the rules of becoming a witch, and can't intervene with the person's wishes. One of those wishes was from a girl who wanted to end her life, and her supposed death was the trigger for her to realize that not all wishes should be granted, and that all wishes come with the price of fundamentally changing a person's lives for the better *or* for the worse. Those things were hinted all along, however she was naive and unexperienced, not paying attention to the underlying details of her deal, and that was the price of granting wishes. in this case, mirroring "the price of a free wish".
That became a setup for the final two episodes. In the first, she directly intervenes with a person's wish in order to help them, and when confronted about it decides she does not want to be a witch anymore, which leads to the final episode where, instead of "peering deeper" into somebody else's soul, she has hers explored instead.
After confronting her past self, she manages to forgive herself for being unable to help the girl who wanted to die, and that even though she might commit mistakes, that's a part of it, as being human means there's room for error. And like that, she decides she will continue to be a witch, as she wants to comfort the whole world.
it had a linear plot, which didn't deviate from it's main themes or it's premise, and even without a huge budget managed to tell a cohesive story with a good enough ending.
both death parade and Artiswitch were able to conclude their stories by using pre established plot devices built onto the narrative by only utilizing concepts which were explored throughout their shows and that the audience was aware of, instead of throwing in some entirely new concept that's completely detached from the cemented plot and didn't have enough time to be developed, like WEP did. To me, that's why those shows finales worked and WEP didn't.
sorry if i rambled anywhere in this, and if i got anything wrong please correct me in the comments.
edit: I'd like to make it clear that WEP wasn't a failure just because of bad writing, but also from the sheer production hell of a sweat shop it was. if they didn't exploit and nearly overwork the animators to death then possibly it would've been great.
I guess in the case of WEP if they took out the extra stuff (AI sentience, parallel worlds and exploring the concept of what makes a person "human" etc) and focused on how the girls delt with how the people they risked their lives to bring back didn't even know them anymore, it would've made for a more compelling narrative and I guess realise that the true priority were the friends they made along the way
@@thebreadhead2000 by all means i think that would've been better than whatever they tried to do with that ending.
But what if it was like this: instead of having to battle a monster/ai/pseudo-human thing they'd have to battle their own inner demons to save themselves (like how Ai did, just without the whole parallel universe shtick), and eventually reach out to one another in order to help each other to overcome the fact that the people they battled so long to bring back didn't remember them along with their personal issues, realizing that the friendship they made is the real priority.
basically what you said but in more detail. The disappointment this anime gave me is crippling so this is my headcanon now.
edit: also sorry for late reply
This reminds of another anime called Day Break Illusion. Strong start, interesting ideas on the magical girl show but at the end it was poor writhing and a rush ending that just left a bad taste.
I was initially enjoying being spoon fed bits of "not what it seems" in the middle. I liked it being brought into question if these girls the warriors were trying to bring back were really their best friends or if they just felt bad for the actions taken by this other girl and only wanted closure. I liked the concept that "of course" the girls they brought back to life wouldn't be the girl they knew.
What I didn't like was that this was all shoved and portrayed in a way that I honestly didn't know what was going on half the time the last few episodes. These cool, groundbreaking points I enjoyed were said and done with in a couple lines of vague dialogue and _us_ getting no actual closure.
Maybe I’ve got my interpretation hat on too tight, but I think people hugely missed the point with Frill. My read was always that she represented the pressures put on young women by men who won’t or can’t understand what it’s like to be a teenage girl. The Accas are the true antagonists. As evidenced by their offensive “why boys kill themselves vs girls” remark, they’re clueless to the point of villainy.
I think that Neiru being a robot proves this point. They’re both blank slates, but Neiru was imprinted upon by her peers, who were able to empathize with her trauma and support her. The final showdown we never got was going to be between these two in a battle of ideals, followed closely by the Accas realizing that they were ultimately responsible for all the evil things that Frill did.
That’s not to say that there weren’t some other distasteful aspects or that they communicated their allegories well. But it always makes me a little sad when people call it disrespectful when I think they actually “got it”, but cascading production failures cost them the chance to finish explaining themselves.
Bro, I'll never get over this. Wonder Egg needs a second season to fix the mess that last episode caused. This is the hill I've decided to die on because a bad ending does not erase what this series made me feel up until that point.
But by God. was that ending bad.
Surprised to see this video is from such a relatively small channel. You actually had me engaged the entire vid despite me never even having heard of this anime before xD Also I love your little character’s design!
When I first started the show, I was thinking this was going to be one of the best I’ve seen. BOY was I mistaken. I was watching weekly too and got to experience that recap anger
It feels like something they were just thinking of as they went on.
That's what happened, actually. The script was being written as the show aired.
@@m00nl1ghtj3w3l It's sad because it wasn't really the creator's fault apparently one of them was even hospitalized a few times and then immediatly returned to work on the show. I blame the company and really the anime industry in gerneral for giving their creators and animators such harsh deadlines and generally not treating them well.
WEP was such an amazin anime at first but the way they handlet some subject is really sad especially when it was originally about trauma and finding comfort in others with similar trauma
but then it kinda just fell off
This anime....is one of my favourite animes but i completely agree this one aspect stopped it from being so perfect, the characters, animation, setting everything is perfect up until that one thing, plus personally i hate when anime has like a supernatural reason for suicide madoka magica slightly did the same thing but yea
Man i felt so mad at the ending. I remember watching this till ep 8 and I thought it was sooo good I recommended it to my friend. It showed issues we could really relate to. We decided to watch the ending up from ep 8 together. Boy that was a mistake. We were both so disappointed and I felt bad I even recommended it to them.
This could have been an unforgettable title. Yet it was forgotten right after airing. Tragic.
I did not watch this, but from what I understand there is some hope...
Since parallel universes exist, this timeline is technically non cannon.
I had this happen twice, both the promised neverland and wonder egg priority had me hooked in the beginning but by the end I was just left annoyed especially whenever I remember how good it used to be, from what I've heard both shows had some production issues wich shouldn't be surprising considering even after rushing through the rest of the manga and skipping several arcs TPN still had to use a slideshow ad the end to 'cover' the remaining important events and apparently the final episode of wonder egg had its animation finished 48 hours before release, really a lot of parallels between these two that it's almost uncanny
tbh i only read the second part of tpn and it still felt like a slideshow...I dont think it had many chances to being with
Imagine this anime as a car. The car is doing well. It's on the way to a personal best lap. Then they swerve hard left for a "twist" then flip the car over 20 times fly over the railing and blow up in the stands killing the audience.
Now that I think about it, it probably fell apart during the 8th episode. I don't think it was originally supposed to be a recap episode. That much is obvious, but I think that missing episode was either a continuation of the original direction or would have contained something that could have helped tie everything together even a little better. Most probable thing though is that a change in director caused a change in direction and they literally needed to scrap an entire episode to have the time and budget to finish the pivot and it failed spectacularly.
Nice video! Fully deserved of all the views it's getting right now :D
Like you said, the saddest thing is how much potential it had. Perfect atmosphere, interesting world, well designed and written characters and a fresh topic. So much potential, it's just frustrating.
I still only remember this show as "protagonist is anime Coraline"
sounds like the anime went through development hell. Thing is suicide is a big hot button issue in japan due to culture norms. So manga and anime writers need to get creative with it, and go into a weirdly metaphorical notion. I mean one of the most known anime Evangalion had the same happen. the company making the show was bleeding money, and the animators took their frustrations out on the show itself.
if you watch the first half and then the second half of the OG release. they are really 2 different shows.
so my guess the investors of the anime started to get cagey with how suicide was being presented and told them to change it, which is why a re-cap was made so they can change the plot.
It seems like they wanted to go for the Madoka Magica, “cute but dark story that starts to unravel as it reveals to the degree this had to do with so much more than them” concept, but had no direction on how to get there or the means to bring it there tactfully.
Okay, honestly... I feel like there was so much potential with Frill! Hear me out: while the whole... sci-fi background and workdbuilding was clumsily handled, but if Frill were considered as a representation, or a manifestation of society's impact on adolescent girls, instead of... tantrum child? It would have been a much better fit for Wonder Egg's original message. It's hard to merge both concepts, the coming of age and the sci-fi, living AI thing, into a whole plot while being respectful to the origins of the first 7 episodes-- that much is obvious. But tweaking little things here and there, giving more autonamy to Ai and the girls' personalities and their new bond, having that be the 'trump card' against Frill (instead of shafting 2/3rds of them just so the writers didn't have to worry about giving them a proper ending) and just... IDK, having less crappy writing? It COULD have been a satisfying, open-ended season finale that could've been left to personal interpretation. I'm never gonna forgive the last 3 episodes for fumbling so badly what was probably my favorite anime plotline of all time, lol.
Ok Plot for WEPS, first 2 seasons Are like the first 7 eps (new girls btw) THEN they can add in this by having the MC "lost one" come back as the only one from a different world. They then start to either go alone or ask for help to get their real friend where you get the later episodes (the underlings now are trying to dissuade them slowly going further to stop them (like force feeding them their pet.) And thats where we get the story (partially) of the little red head. I feel this would give the dark reality time to play out then get into the sci-fi because its now a more personal stake (given their friend is stolen by "The perfect daughter" because she felt a kin-ship to her)
I couldnt get into the show personally a lot of teen drama I couldnt relate to cuz Im a grumpy adult man that just wants to see cool fights ( which granted it had some) but its a real shame to hear what happened to the show.
As a young girl I didn't attempt because of an entity, I did because of the sexual assaults, mental illness, and other issues I faced
If they had completely left Frill out of it, and maybe made it that each girl unalived themselves in other timelines being what connects them to the eggworld, it would've been a good show. I think the gut punch that they'll never truly get answers, and those they were trying to save will never know them or their sacrifices, would've been amazing. I would've been fine with it ending in them all clearing the game, people returning but from other timelines, and watching the girls cope with the consequences until they slowly grow apart.
Honestly, it would have made a great plot for a 3 season anime. It feels like half way through production it was announced that they get less episodes than anticipated. After episode 6 or so, it feels like you watch it onfold on 2x speed and skips.
So in 2001 , I had a driving incident where I fell asleep at 4am trying to catch a flight back home...... this was on the interstate in LA. i woke up 4 minutes later in a spot driving on the road and in my lane when i realized where i was. No way that happened. no way going 80 I stayed in the lane driving through curves and such for 4 minutes (clock is in big letters that you can clearly see while driving so thats how i knew how long i was out for ) and when i get back home it was what you call mandela effects 15 years before people talking about mandela effects. I think there are so many parallel realities that when we die sometimes, our conscious comes to in a close to our own reality. ..... either that or somehow angel type beings are real and they saved me and somehow altered my memories to have mandela effects back then. either way is wild . just bringing this up by how the one friend in the anime talked about when you die you go into a parallel reality/universe.
ACCA and URACCA weren't lovers, the official website had said they were twin brothers
It really did just betray us, I’m glad it wasn’t my hidden, overbearing sensitivity that made me get so disappointed with this anime that made my starry-eyed before and it’s actually a widely known disappointment.
I can’t explain enough the disgust and such a feeling of ickiness and disorient passing through me when I finished this anime. I distinctly remember laughing in scoff like “Was this a joke? Nah, really, this fr the case? Y’all messing fr, wtf did I just watch.” Omg, I didn’t know much of anything going through with this anime, I only saw the characters and the whole “pop” thingy with the mouth, and a comment saying “ppl who know the context of the **pop** know how i feel rn” which in turn is a comment that led me to watch the show. Everything you said was GIGAFAX (no printer). You didn’t lie, you encapsulated the thought process and feeling 99% of us felt to an absolute T.
I’ve never felt that way after finishing an anime, besides maybe after Seven Deadly Sins S4; it’s not even disappointment actually, after WEP it just felt like my brain kinda smoothed out and I felt like I just poured powder or flour in my mouth, just an odd feeling I just can’t even describe actually, I laughed hysterically at the buffoonery of it, and maybe went through the 5 stages of grief rq, then I accepted I wasted my time and let WEP become a distant memory like a unfavorable fever dream my brain wholeheartedly wants to erase (like I just went straight to YT and acted like nothing happened, as if I never even watched WEP).
I feel you on this one, the decline this show took HURTS, especially given how much I typically dig this kind of anime (FLCL, Madoka Magica, Flip Flappers, Kyousogiga, etc.). The new villains and plot points introduced at the end wouldn't have been so bad if they had at least been properly built up to instead of coming out of absolutely nowhere (better writing could have saved this); the finale being half clip show and ultimately failing to resolve anything is absolutely unforgivable, though, and really sours the whole experience. There is an aspect of the show I did find problematic (and I HATE using that term) even in the better first half, though; while I do very much agree that the raw, non sugar-coated approach to the dark subject matter is good, it has two primary problems: it handles very delicate and sensitive subject matter with all the tact and sensitivity of a public flogging, and neither does it handle said subject matter with much subtlety (they really couldn't come up with a better name than Seeno Evils?) or, crucially, nuance. Never are questions of personal failings, societal ills, or the like ever really raised; it always comes down to there being an abuser. I get that this is so there can always be a monster to fight (and to be fair, the monster designs and fights scenes ARE really good), but again, I feel like a better writer could have found a middle ground and done more with this without losing out on any of the good parts - hell, using some other ideas would give the artists free reign to go even more wild with the designs, maybe make the monsters personifications of some of the stuff I mentioned. Ultimately, I find this show endlessly frustrating, because there is SO MUCH great material and ideas here, that are all wasted on the poor writing and lack of anything resembling a payoff.