Wonder Egg Priority

I'm not sure I can think of enough shows going 'you don't have to dress butch, you can be conventionally feminine and still make out with cute girls' for it to be a cliche.

"Tomboy/Butch girl actually wants to be feminine and cute" is a longrunning trope that's usually very cringe. There's definitely the possibility for it to go more interesting directions, but this episode just feels very messy and unclear about what they want to do.

It's the fact that she seems to want other girls specifically to see her as an attractive girl (rather than a handsome guy) that mixes things up a bit. She seemed genuinely delighted that her statue girl wasn't the only lesbian in the world, and that Ai gushed over how pretty she was. She seems to be trying to build the confidence to break out of the roles imposed by gender and sexuality rather than the confidence to conform to them.

Edited by Iaculus on Feb 3rd 2021 at 3:28:18 PM

Yeah, if you relate to the other three girls, you can infer that Momoe is also a social outcast, and in her case it seems like she's actually feeling pressured to act "masculine" the way people stereotype her. Also consider that she most likely rejected her statue firend's advances, and might be thinking that her friend might not have committed suicide if she just played along so to speak. Of course, as Red Savant pointed out (and good catch on this by the way) Momoe being masculine might be a defense mechanism against a certain counselor...

I think the touchier topic is when the two straw guys talk about the difference between guy and girl suicides, but then again, you can't trust those dudes. In the end I'd say the most objectionable thing in this episode is Neiru somehow being a company president at her age. It's possibly another little way the show is blurring the line between reality and dreamspace.

I'm also glad that the girls have made a cozy little friend circle, and I hope they continue to support each other both inside and outside the dream world.

And once again I must gush over the animation and shot composition. Ai's finisher on the kraken lady was jaw-dropping.

Edited by fillerdude on Feb 3rd 2021 at 8:02:25 AM

Just like the trans interpretations, it still feels frustratingly unclear if she likes girls at all. I'm in "hope for the best but prepare for the worst" mode.

As long as what happens makes sense I'm fine with it.

I mean, like I said, she did seem genuinely happy when she found that another person was specifically gay for her. She may have rejected her statue girl, but the fact that she can now think of her with wistful fondness when another girl hits on her is pretty telling.

Oh, that's a good catch. Acca and Ura-Acca (aka Account and Personal/Secret Account) are strawmen. I guess it depends on what they do with that, if anything.

I'll also second Moth's hesitation, not because WEP has given me reason to worry about the message ending up as "Momoe is fine as long as she ends up more feminine" (and to clarify, it hasn't given me reason to relax yet either), but because anime tends to take that tack and that means it's almost always a possibility.

Edited by RedSavant on Feb 3rd 2021 at 7:46:20 AM

We’ll have to wait and see, but so far WEP doesn’t seem like it’ll trudge that cliche route.

Are they? I thought they were clothing store mannequins. They've got a heavy duality theme, so I reckon they'll probably be a disruptive but neutral force, equally helpful and unhelpful.

I was considering them to be a more neutral force myself.

Like their names and their roles thus far imply, what they're doing seems to be helping these girls connect with each other, but that isn't the goal, they're just here for their money and possibly their effort.

I'm not sure what to make of them cause they are taking advantage of the girls but also they just straight up don't answer them whenever they ask "Hey, will doing this bring my friend back to life?".

It's part of the reason I can't say I fully agree with their explanation of why there are no boys being up for suspect because they're incredibly unhelpful but also they've never really lied?????

Oh yeah, Those Two Guys are shady as heck.

Another wonderful episode out.

Okay yeah Acca and Other Acca are shady shady SHADY. But at least they'll let the girls play in an arcade. Yay? I love that we get this episode to show the four girls hanging out together and being friends. But it's scary to think how they'd be faring without each other. Momoe even jokes about offing herself without the "group therapy." Oh, and Rika abrings up some good talking points this chapter, but unfortunately she has no tact plus talk-no-jutsu doesn't have its usual anime potency in this show. Nevertheless, it's nice that at least they're talking about their issues and making some effort into addressing their psychological problems. Suicide is tough for the people left behind, too.

Also cool how the four girls went ahead and discussed the most popular theories about Sawaki the teacher. In fact they make him suspicious enough that I'm second-guessing myself. Well played. Interesting to note that Ai was actually serving as Sawaki's model for his painting, so Koito's suicide might have something to do with envy.

We also get to see Neiru's dreamworld in this episode, and it's the bridge her sister jumped off of AFTER SHE STABBED NEIRU. Holy crap, what? What's the story there? I'm dying to find out. On a side note, she has the best weapon. Love me some guns. And she has the sickest moves out of all of them. No wonder she's a president.

Momoe is also revealed to be Sawaki's niece. She'll probably be the key to figuring out what's up with that guy.

Could not agree with you more over Neiru! She is badass...

New episode out. Screw the Haters. Wonder. Egg. Priority!

Interesting that you can actually stow a girl inside an egg again and try again at some other time.

Ai has a cute sticker photo on her phone. Friendship is nice.

I can't be the only one who thought of Soul Gems when I saw the powerup necklaces that Acca prepared for the girls. Anyway, they now have animal helpers. That's looking closer to standard mahou shoujo.

Momoe's little dance when she learned her uncle and Ai's mom were dating was cute as heck. Meme that please.

The direction was great. Loved everything about the dinner conversation segment. Especially how you can clearly hear the plop of the meat in the sukiyaki bowl, when Ai's mom drops the reveal about her dating Sawaki. Also liked the abrupt shift from the phantom strangler to the dinner convo. I think it's kind of sketchy for a teacher to date the mother of one of his students... and I'm still not sure what Sawaki's deal is. I do love that the girls are actively throwing out the common theories; even Neiru thinks there's a possibility Ai likes Sawaki.

The episode ends with Ai exposing both her eyes and looking straight at Sawaki, and saying she's going to attend school again. She's found the strength to move on, and she's done hiding away. Really cool stuff. That should bring her one step closer to the truth, whatever that is.

As more episodes go by, I'm weirdly more convinced that the teacher is probably not a bad person. That's mostly because as more episodes go by, he starts resembling Koito in some ways to me

I have no idea what's going to happen here, honestly. At first it felt like they were setting Sawaki up to be a creep, now it feels like they're leaning too hard into it and it's a red herring... unless the red herring IS a red herring and he IS a creep?

I'm guessing the next episode is going to settle it one way or another, given the title.

Late to post this here but since this haven't posted yet: additional context for the "difference" between suicides of girls and boys. Also, as revealed in episode 5 and a bit of the suicide of her sister may not fall under "emotional" suicide. Neiru herself states that she does this for herself not necessarily to bring her sister back and given her corporate background, likely her sister's attempt at killing her and eventual suicide are related to who's going to become the company's next president which Neiru currently is. Maybe this is why in episode 4, Neiru seemed bothered.

Anyway, for episode 6, interesting choice of animal helpers. All reptiles and all probably have symbolism. I can think of chameleon for Ai cause she's hiding herself and turtle for Rika cause she protects herself with a rough attitude akin to a turtle protecting itself with its shell.

Also siding with the above posts. At this point, it would be weirder if the teacher was indeed a creep but it could be more nuanced than that. Perhaps he really is interested in Ai's heterochromia not necessarily in a sexual/abusive way but since he's an aspiring artist, he could be seeing it as inspiration. Meanwhile, Koito was into him but he rejected her which may have pushed her to suicide. Or he feels guilt from rejecting Koito and is attempting to get close to Ai to protect her.

It does seem like Sawaki is very popular with his female students, going off the students we saw before Ai caught up to him. I also got the feeling that Koito, when she asked Ai if she was really serious about modeling, was trying to separate them.

If that is the case, then the series might be trying to walk a dangerous line with "sometimes female students are the ones to blame for seeking out relationships with their teachers". It's been very blunt in addressing ugly social issues and happenings that are tinged with a sort of melodramatic intensity so far,^note I'm not saying that train molestation or physical/mental abuse in sports clubs are melodramatic, just that the show tends to go for a larger-than-life feeling while still maintaining a non-glossed over reality so if it's going to go in that direction, then it might pull it off. But if it tries to make Sawaki the... not victim, but the put-upon party in a situation like that, his conduct had better be unimpeachable if they want to present it as not his fault.

This episode actually made me pretty confident the teacher isn't on the level, since the whole episode was themed around girls who see dangers to them but aren't believed by others.

The cut line unfortunately doesn't do much to make the scene more coherent, but given how often Rika has been going "women be emotional" in the past few episodes, I'm now confident it's being set up as a flaw Rika needs to work through, and I'm willing to write off the initial exchange as a poorly done scene.

That's a good point, but unless ghosts are real in this universe (and... honestly, Wonder Eggs are, so why not ghosts, I guess?), Yae was also not correct about the dangers she perceived. That doesn't mean she was lying, and it's clear that the things she saw did eventually lead her to harm herself; and likewise, her dialogue makes it clear that things might not have gotten to that point if her classmates, teachers, or medical professionals had listened to her about how her subjective reality was harming her. But it doesn't necessarily follow that the threats she saw were real to anyone but herself.

Yeah, I think the issue with Yae was that no one was apparently able to help her through her paranoia, not that her ghost were actually real.

That’s the interesting thing about Rika, she sticks to her warped perspective because she would rather accept unsavory things as an unavoidable reality rather than accept that, maybe things don’t have to be this way.

Really curious as to where they go with Sawaki. He might not be as bad as Ai painted him as, but still, he did start dating the mother of one of his students...

I've never experienced anything like teachers dating their students parents IRL, so I don't have any real opinions on the morality of it. It's bad?

Yes, somewhat, in the context that Sawaki and Ai’s mom initially only seemed to meet up to talk about Ai.

Edited by fillerdude on Feb 17th 2021 at 12:24:51 PM