Posted by: Alderis
« on: March 26, 2024, 02:53:34 AM »Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’d like to return to a story I’ve left hanging for far too long, as we continue our exploration of the harrowing and transcendent Wonder Egg Priority. I frankly would have returned much sooner, but the discussions surrounding the show turned pretty toxic by the end of its original run, migrating into that frustrating realm of condemning people for the stories they enjoy. Discussions like that were what prompted me to limit my engagement with online arguments in the first place, so I promptly removed my hand from the stove, waiting for the heat to dissipate.
Well, no one talks about Wonder Egg Priority these days, so I’m happy to finally be returning. When last we left off, Momoe’s anxieties about her gender presentation had just been assuaged by her fast friendship with Kaoru, her latest wonder egg project. Unfortunately, her victory was cut short by the appearance of a mysterious butterfly-headed girl, who promptly killed Momoe’s familiar Panic. With Momoe’s latest victory having also released the girl she’d long been fighting for, and the machinations of Acca and Ura-Acca coming into focus, it seems like the time for episodic adventures has ended, and the time of painful revelation is at hand. Let’s see what awaits in our next Wonder Egg Priority!
Episode 10
“An Adult Child.” An episode title with transparently ominous undertones, particularly in the context of this show. Sawaki in particular is constantly framing Ai as an “adult child” in the most predatory way possible, simultaneously playing up her innocence and growing maturity, the “latent heat” of his art exhibition. But in truth, that framing covers far more than just Sawaki – young women are constantly sexualized by society in ways beyond their control, simultaneously framed as innocent and pliable yet also sexually available, to the point where women are often “blamed” for “enticing” men simply by existing in society. The villains of our various wonder egg trials have offered a rogue’s gallery of men who feel wronged simply by the existence of someone who they are sexually attracted to yet who has no interest in validating them. Framing children as adults is a way of mitigating their natural sense of guilt or responsibility – their violent attractions are apparently less their own responsibility if these children “know what they are doing,” so the innocence of childhood is erased
We open with Rika also achieving her final victory, but having her longed-for friend slip through her fingers
“That’s okay. I’ll see you on the other side.” A loaded statement, reflecting Rika’s happier relationship with life and death. She no longer desires to kill herself – she misses her friend, but that friend has simply gone on ahead for a little while, and Rika will see her on the other side
And her familiar Mannen is the next to fall, killed by a dragonfly-headed girl who calls herself “Dot”
I’m certainly seeing why faith in Wonder Egg’s narrative was beginning to falter at this point. Graceful stories are generally both self-contained and self-reflective; their ends reflect their beginnings, their core components are established within the first act, and their resolution arrives as a natural extension or answer to their introduction. “And then new villains appear three quarters of the way through” is basically the opposite of all that, so I’m hoping the explanation of these insect-girls tethers them more gracefully to the variables we’re already grappling with
Dot says she’s “just following Hyphen,” who’s presumably the girl who confronted Momo. Their names frame them as not full people, merely punctuation in a sentence
“When you laugh, it makes everyone happy. Frill said so”
Excellent frenetic linework as Dot approaches, Rika’s panic clear in the detailed, wobbling lines of her expression
Also nice use of Dot’s buzzing wings to raise the tension of the moment
Back at the wonder egg garden, everything has been dyed a deep blue for the night, contrasting strongly with Ai’s yellow hoodie. God, I’d forgotten what an exceptional, creative visual identity this show has; it’s just bursting with compelling visual ideas, from its monsters to its layouts to its color design
And then there’s this phenomenal OP. “Aesthetically exuberant exploration of human psychology” is my favorite anime subgenre, really what I think the medium might be best at, so I generally hold on tight whenever an Eva, Flip Flappers, or Monogatari come around
Inside the house beside the garden, Ai finds a board of what seem like potential wonder egg targets, alongside clippings regarding the recent proliferation of young suicides
“Only Warriors of Eros can defeat Thanatos?” Though eros is normally defined as romantic love, it doesn’t seem that’s necessarily the case here, at least if the motivations guiding our quartet are anything to go by. Our heroes aren’t necessarily in love with their lost friends, they’d just do anything to protect them – thus, only a willingness to die for another can overcome the urge to erase yourself
She runs into Ura-Acca, who sets out a birthday cake. Everything in this world speaks to aging, to the moment of adolescent transition into young adulthood
“Back before we looked like this, we made a girl, just for fun.”
Careful color design as we return to Acca and Ura-Acca’s prior lives. The rooms they occupy are almost uniformly sterile gray – the only fragments of color are provided by the two themselves, in the forms of their pink and orange shirts
“What should we call her” one asks, as the screen focuses on an “AI strategy meeting” board. That might be a clue, but I somehow doubt Ai is secretly an artificial intelligence
“We tried to picture a being that we could love like a daughter, that would make us forget it’s an AI. Unstable and complicated, like the midpoint between childhood and adulthood.” So they created a woman who embodies the liminal stage this show at large is preoccupied with, and presumably bad things resulted
And that girl was Frill
“We gave her the traits a father would want a daughter to have.” So Frill was even more of a prisoner than these two, with even her personality dictated by her “parents.” No wonder she sympathizes with the wonder egg participants, but hates the familiars these two provided them
“Being uncontrollable is the essence of femininity.” Like this show’s episodic antagonists, Acca sees women as essentially animals to be tamed, their independence taken as an invitation to control them
Then Acca and Ura-Acca meet a woman, the same woman from the pictures in their house
Her name is Azusa Hoshina
“She seemed like a good person. But then, neither of us was a good judge of women.” Yet you still had the confidence to actually design a woman’s personality. Acca and Ura-Acca provide a fine complement to this show’s more aggressively abusive, manipulative authority figures; they actually think of themselves as reasonable people, and they can integrate quite well into society, but they’re still fundamentally driven by sexist notions of women being either unknowable or elemental, defined by a fundamental irrationality that they alternately see as charming or unserious
Check out a sampling of films from the ‘40s and ‘50s and you’ll see plenty of earnest articulations of this perspective: “women can be charming, but they’re not really adults.” Through that framing, this episode’s title gains an additional meaning – these male overseers’ perspective on all women, as perpetual dependents who can be humored, but not fully respected
It was apparently Azusa who invited them to the wonder egg house. Compositions directly mirror Ai’s approach as Frill first arrives at the house
“Azusa chose Acca.” Ura-Acca’s very lack of commentary on this turn reveals his feelings clearly
Frill’s response is colder: “do you hate your husband for cheating on you, or the woman for stealing him from you?”
Raised and literally programmed by these two, Frill can only see relationships in terms of power dynamics, of ownership and control. She announces she wants a friend, but also wants to design that friend herself, lest the friend actually be superior to her
“In her own way, Frill might have been trying to redirect her jealousy of Azusa.” And of course, that programming necessarily flatters Acca and Ura-Acca’s oedipal view of parent-child relationships
Azusa’s pregnancy prompts both Acca and Ura-Acca to forget all about Frill. She was just a fun diversion to them, a project they embarked on just to see if they could succeed. No wonder she despises them and their new project alike
So Frill lashes out at her replacement, killing Azusa. And in turn, she is treated like a failed project, not a daughter – Acca immediately abandons any pretense of respecting her identity, saying “all you’re doing is detecting inputs” as he roughly tosses her down the stairs. Women are to be tolerated until they cross the line; their personhood is conditional, and the condition is that they continue to flatter the men in their lives
“Not the dark! Not the scary place!” They literally bury her alive in a hole in the basement. Yeah, they deserve whatever’s coming to them
“The thing that saved us was Himari, the daughter Azusa left behind.” And even after that, they still see themselves as the victims! Still the sad put-upon men, failed by women, redeemed by a fresh woman who again embodies the qualities they’ll allow
“If you wait, I wouldn’t mind marrying you.” Raised by these two, their new daughter even comes to see herself as a replacement for the lost Azusa
“That night, Himari died. It looked like suicide, but there was no note.”
Somehow, Frill conspired to arrange the suicide. “Are you going to kill me?” “You’re not human.” “I am human! I’m scared of the dark, and I get toothaches.” Frill continues to embody their perspective on women, her humanity contingent on her remaining the perfect, idealized daughter. And she is still trapped within her subservience to Acca and Ura-Acca; rather than escape, she clings to their approval, destroying any competition for their love
“Don’t pretend not to see me. I was born from the two of you.” This backstory is actually doing precisely what I was hoping, tethering Frill’s existence both into the mechanical story of Acca and Ura-Acca, as well as the thematic cycles of abuse that have created this generation of lost wonder egg girls. She is the first girl that our villains betrayed, framed as monstrous for her refusal to be simply an accessory in their lives, to be enjoyed or discarded at leisure. And presumably, she will be the last girl that our current heroes have to save, somehow breaking the thread that binds her to her fathers
So the wonder egg system was set up in opposition to Frill
And Done
At last, the secrets are truly revealed! I was frankly expecting the worst from our Big Reveal episode after the unexpected addition of Frill, but this episode put my fears to rest and then some, positioning Frill as one more tragic consequence of Acca and Ura-Acca’s selfishness. Their unwillingness to see Frill as a genuine person, and their wholesale abandonment of her once a new love entered the frame, neatly echoes the conditional, possessive infatuation that’s characterized all of Wonder Egg’s villains, the shallow worship of femininity that always gives way to an overbearing demand for control, and condemnation of whatever instincts fall outside of their idealized perspective. Frill might as well be one of Madoka’s witches, unable to escape the societal condemnation that inevitably arrives when your will to suffer is extinguished, and you actually lash out in pursuit of your own desires. But through Acca and Ura-Acca’s very inability to see their compatriots as full people, there is yet a hope – that Ai and Rika and all the others have been thoroughly underestimated, and that through their solidarity, they might overcome the scorn and hatred of this unjust world.
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Source: Wonder Egg Priority – Episode 10