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Winter 2021 brought a lot of anime that is still talked about, from the beloved romance Horimya to the first cour of Attack on Titan: Final Season. However, one anime that season is often forgotten by anime fans; Wonder Egg Priority. Why was this anime forgotten and really deserved to be largely ignored by the anime community?
Wonder Egg Priority is an anime about Ai Ooto, a blue-haired girl who is mourning the suicide of her best friend. Ai eventually finds a magical egg that transports her to another world, where she is tied up in a magical girlish job where she fights other people’s traumatic pasts. This leads her to believe that she may be able to save her best friend from her own trauma and prevent the past. Although the anime ranks relatively low in popularity rankings on anime tracking sites, the anime still has a good score, with a 7.70 on MyAnimeList and 79.65% Community Approval on Kitsu, as well as a 76% score on AniList. If the anime was generally well received, why was it forgotten?
Too many popular anime at once
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Like treasure planet was overshadowed by Harry Potter and the secret room, Wonder Egg Priority had a lot of great anime to share airtime with. As we mentioned earlier, the 2021 spring season was stacked, with Attack on Titan: Final Season, Horimiya, Jobless Reincarnation, Re:Zero Season 2, and That time I was reincarnated as a slimeto time the most popular anime from that season.
Unfortunately for Wonder Egg Priority, an anime that didn’t belong to an already popular series or manga didn’t stand a chance. This is mostly the case for original anime, although some more recent anime like Lycoris recoil seem to break the original anime curse. Wonder Egg Priority wasn’t so lucky, but more popular contenders weren’t the only thing holding on Wonder Egg Priority back.
Slow Burn Anime is no longer popular
Anime trends change often. Sometimes thought-provoking slow burns are popular, sometimes it’s an action-packed shounen, and sometimes a fuzzy slice of life is popular. Wonder Egg Priority is in the second case of being right at the wrong time. Wonder Egg Priority is a slow philosophical anime, the creator of which recently said in an interview that it is a “documentary that would highlight how dramatic adolescence is for a young girl”.
The slow, thoughtful anime was more popular in the 1990s and 2000s, right up to the early 2010s. This was when Satoshi Kon of Perfect Blue and Paprika fame was idolized, as well as anime-like stones; Gate, clannadand Haruhi Suzumiya were among the long, long list of slow-burn anime of the time. if Wonder Egg Priority came out ten or twenty years ago, it might be included in long-standing anime series from that period.
The heavy contents hidden behind the soft exterior
The accidental ace-and-switch with Wonder Egg Priority is another aspect that doomed this meaningful series to failure. The anime had originally gone viral on the anime side of TikTok because of how cute Ai was. This was unfortunately the last nail in the coffin. A lot of people, myself included, had gone into this anime expecting a real life anime with some magical girl elements. While a bait-and-switch worked well with Madoka Magica in the past it didn’t work well for Wonder Egg Priority.
Even the first few episodes leaned on this notion. However, around the fourth episode, as the anime’s plot became clearer than established in the first few episodes, many fans expecting a slice of life were put off watching the anime expecting friendships and coming together rather than themes of suicide. self-harm, bullying, homophobia, death and sacrifice are prevalent.
However, this can make a case for this anime. While many of the topics make it an adult anime, this anime covers topics that many of the viewers, even younger viewers, have experienced. Not much anime normalizes depression, self-harm and suicide, despite Japan having the third highest suicide rate in the world. Moreover, not only transsexual representation in a series, but also representation alongside a joke or fetishizing the symbolic LGBTQIA+ character is also not very common in anime.
The anime isn’t just about suicide either. One of the main characters, we’re advocating for, has scars from self-harm; Normalizing something like overcoming self-harm is practically unheard of. The main character is launched on this journey after her best friend commits suicide. There is a plot line towards the end, albeit a shocking leap in the science fiction genre, with child neglect and favoritism and the trauma that can cause in a child. This anime is boldly going where not only not a lot of anime has gone but a lot of people these days aren’t confident enough to talk about.
Wonder Egg Priority is available to stream on Crunchyroll
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