Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Wonder Egg Priority
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meiam
Posts: 3447 |
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I guess I'd say it's a case of Chekov gun, the teacher is too present for him to be a small bits player and at the end there's going to need to be a main bad guy, and the teacher is the only character that could fit the bill right now (last episode will probably see Ai protect Koito from monster teacher, although I could see a monster Ai clone might be the final monster). There was a weird scene of Koito at the end of episode 2 where you see the teacher in background which is pretty heavy foreshadowing. And like I said with P5, the teacher being the bad guy is the obvious thing to do because it's "shocking" (see erased and so on), he didn't stop the bullying so he has to be the bad guy, and if they're going to bother making him the bad guy they'll take it as far as they can, ie raped Koito. |
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harminia
 Posts: 2045 Location: australia |
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Yeah, I was gonna mention that too. The scene where the teacher walks behind her and she turns as if to follow him. I picked up on it and it seemed like maybe Koito was in some relationship with the teacher, though whether she was forced or "willing" is another question. It could be completely harmless and she went with him to discuss something, though. We just don't know (yet). But it did stick out to me. |
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dm
 Subscriber Posts: 1460 |
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I don't remember that scene especially, but I did leave the second episode with the impression that there might have been more to Koito and the teacher's relationship than just an instructor helping a transfer student catch up on the material they'd missed.
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meiam
Posts: 3447 |
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I guess maybe it could be a willing relationship and toward the end the teacher tried to break up with her to spare her the bullying and that's why she killed herself or something. Honestly I hope that there's nothing there and that the show acknowledge that bullying is a really hard situation for a teacher to do something about even when they know about it, but I doubt that'll happen.
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15572 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Well, if the case, there would not really be a willing aspect to it, since Koito is a student who would be in a very vulnerable situation that is very not good.
We are still early on, I expect to get more information as we go. This aspect might only feel prominent since the main plot also dealt with an adult that was not being responsible with her relationship with a student. I also thought that what he said to Ai in her place was a tad manipulative, that question of whether she hates him for why she is not going to school, as if she is being a bit unfair to the friendly teacher who came to check up on her. He did not really give off an air for someone who might be truly sorry for a lasting impact on this girl because he failed to stop bullying on her friend that led to her friend taking her life. |
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dm
Subscriber Posts: 1460 |
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By the way, I recommend following Steve's links to his blogging friends' essays on Wonder Egg Priority. There's a lot of good stuff there (though be warned that you might find yourself spending a lot of time browsing the bloggers' other posts).
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Anneyuno1
 Posts: 68 |
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The second episode was still a strong. But really needs at the moment is to show that these dream fights are actually having some kind of effect. I dig its core schtick and am very pleasantly surprised at its continued focus on being an action show. I just think it needs to do a little bit better job making the case that
A.) What they're doing actually matters since it's all incredibly surreal and dream-like B.) They really need to justify where this whole wish thing came from. I also feel like we could have just left the suicide girl as where she already was, but apparently we're going to be over-melodrama-ing the ever-living hell out of it, with imputations that she was sexually assaulted as well as sleeping with one of the teachers. Less is more. Probably going to be about the living (Ai and friends) overcoming their own traumas and moving on from the dead whereas the school girl Persona bits are a means to an end for self-discovery, coming of age drama, social commentary. Kinda like that. I just really hope it’s not that because that would be really generic. |
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Goldenboy1990
Posts: 7 |
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I am wondering what the significance of the weapons are for the girls. My stomach twisted a bit when it was shown that Rika’s weapon are scissors after it had been shown that she cuts herself. I could only gather that scissors were probably the tool that she used when cutting herself. The pen seems to hold significance to Ai, as Koito was the one that returned it to her after they met. I wonder if Ai wrote something with that pen which may have triggered the dissolution of her friendship with Koito. Also of this review I’m kinda surprised that nothing was mentioned about the inherent creepiness of the school counselor. It seemed implied that he had some sort of relationship with Koito and he is now boning Ai’s mom? No wonder Ai needs an escape from reality.
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2266 |
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TIL what kayfabe means!
I can't speak to this personally, but I remember when Rebecca Silverman reviewed the Orange manga, she didn't realize at first that it was about a suicide and the time-travel shenanigans involved in trying to prevent it. During her review, she mentioned that she disliked the whole premise of the story, because it felt like it was romanticizing a very real phenomenon for those close to someone who committed suicide, which is that they feel intense, psychologically damaging guilt and trauma while they play an endless game of "woulda-coulda-shoulda" with themselves about how they might have "saved" the other person. For me, WEP seems to be all about that phenomenon, in dealing with not just the grief at someone's suicide, but also all the other noxious, poisonous feelings it brings out of them--like Ai's anger this week, or even the not-so-subtle implication that she would've chosen to commit suicide alongside Koito if Koito had asked her to (much like the fangirls Ai and Rika end up saddled with). I also found it interesting that Acca told Ai that the one with the "strongest feelings" pulls the other one in; he didn't say *which* feelings, mind, and while I don't doubt that Ai misses Koito and wants her back, I do think he was hinting that Rika feels a heckuva lot guiltier about Chiemi than Ai does about Koito. I'm also really morbidly curious about Rika's home life; the way she talked about her dad, her mom, and older men makes me feel like Rika's dad was Not Great in his parenting and taught her inappropriate things that she's internalized to a scary degree--much like the side character in Ascendance of a Bookworm who was being groomed to be a concubine as a child, and so legitimately tried to flirt with every adult man she encountered, because she thought that was how she was "supposed" to act. That, or Rika's gig as a junior idol could line up with both Wikipedia and Neiru's suggestion that the majority of junior idol work crosses into gravure work and left an unfortunate mark on what Rika perceives as "correct" behavior towards adult men--namely that they want and like to be flirted with by a literal child. *shudder* Last edited by whiskeyii on Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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harminia
Posts: 2045 Location: australia |
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For me, I feel like that made sense. The Wonder Killer is whatever caused issues in the egg girls life, and for the two idol fan girls, they found her annoying and gross. They seem very superfluous themselves. They are, after all, girls that killed themselves merely because their fave idol died. They don't appear to be people who have much concern for life, nor a stable view of life either. So them having a Wonder Killer that's literally just another obsessed idol (but "the bad kind" as opposed to the "good kind" who uh kills themselves when their fave dies?) is pretty logical. Their lives revolved around idols, after all. Anyway, the animation in this ep was amazing. And happy to see more flowers in it. Gonna read your friend's blog now, as I find it very interesting! As an aside, the link for Yukiko Okada links to an animator. |
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whiskeyii
Posts: 2266 |
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Just as an aside, on rewatching episode 1 and 3, I have a sneaking suspicion that Ai had a crush on the teacher, and did also think he was giving Koito preferential treatment. There’s just something about the way she shields her face from Koito when she’s looking at her soiled clothing when Ai mutters that, “of course he’s treating her differently, she’s a transfer student” that makes me think it was to keep Koito from seeing that Ai agreed with her classmates. I think that could also be an alternative explanation for why Ai ran away when she saw Koito hugging her teacher; I think you could read it as either Ai ran away because she felt uncomfortable and didn’t know what to do but felt she was intruding, or Ai didn’t want her teacher to look at her because she thinks she’s “ugly” and doesn’t want him to think the same thing, and that she also ran away because [insert chosen variation of how someone stole her man]. I do think it’s intentionally showcasing this as an illicit relationship between Koito and the teacher, but I also think we’re being intentionally misled about how Ai felt about it, in that the show expects us to think she was squicked out, but in reality, she was jealous.
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15572 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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We were told that Ai can get pulled around by people with stronger will or something. Ai's pen weapon is specifically a retractable multi-coloured pen, you can draw that to her two different coloured eyes, but I am also thinking that it might say something about how Ai might change around different people or situation. She can be passive or she can be more forward.
That could be the case, but my running theory has been that Ai was in love with Koito, and does not realise it. Ai has talked about the appearance of girls on multiple occasions. If Ai did like the councillor, it certainly does not show up with her current interactions with him. She called Koito pretty, said that Neiru has a great figure and that she is "cool" instead of pretty. And it might be digging a bit that she went off of what Rika said about the doctor and her teacher being hot rather than something she could have shared. Also, not hard to pick up some romantic subtext in the fist episode interactions. If Koito was involved with the teacher, I am thinking that Ai might have been jealous that Koito's feelings were not towards her. Can never be sure if an anime will actually follow through on queer elements, but a certain show this season certainly surprised me. So if I was kind of made decisions off of what is shown so far, I would maybe put Ai coming to terms with what her feelings were, that maybe her jealousy was not the best but she can move past it. Last edited by DuskyPredator on Thu Jan 28, 2021 8:21 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Everlasting Coconut
 Posts: 316 |
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I find it a little odd how Ai resents Koito a bit for not confiding in her. Yes, that's a common feeling in people who were close to someone who committed suicide, but I don't think it fits Ai's character considering we spent the last two episodes establishing that she was a bystander and she was too scared to help Koito even when the latter asked her for help directly. Ai knows this better than anyone and she blames herself, so her suddenly wondering why Koito didn't confide in her felt off.
Anyway, Rika's cool, and it seems our theories regarding the teacher might be right after all.
Oh god, please no 
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Isvaffel
Posts: 9 |
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The pen's from Kurumi, episode 1 egg girl. You can see her playing with it during the chat with Ai in cafeteria. She leaves it behind when she runs away from Seeno Evils. |
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Goldenboy1990
Posts: 7 |
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Went back to see and you're right! Well there goes that idea. I wonder why that serves as her weapon of choice then? She didn't keep the gymnastic girl's er weapon... |
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