Wonder Egg Priority
ワンダーエッグ・プライオリティ
Wonder Egg Priority (Japanese: ワンダーエッグ・プライオリティ, Hepburn: Wandā Eggu Puraioriti, stylized as WONDER EGG ✦ PRiORiTY) is a Japanese anime television series created and written by Shinji Nojima, and directed by Shin Wakabayashi. Animated by CloverWorks, it is a co-production of Aniplex, Nippon Television, and D.N. Dream Partners, which aired on Nippon TV and other channels from January to March 2021. Additionally, a special episode was released in June of that year. The story follows Ai Ohto, a teenaged hikikomori girl who has ceased attending school after the apparent suicide of a friend. After finding a "Wonder Egg," Ai finds herself in a dream world where she and three other girls whose friends also fell victim to suicide battle to protect various female suicide victims from the monstrous "Wonder Killers," grotesque representations of individuals involved in their trauma. In so doing, the girls hope to revive their lost friends. Wonder Egg Priority was the first anime production written by Shinji Nojima, who had previously scripted several live-action Japanese dramas. Nojima became interested in writing an anime series as he desired to reach a younger audience than he had been able to previously and to write a story which would not be feasible to achieve in a live-action production. He conceived Wonder Egg Priority as a coming-of-age drama that would blend the realistic feel of live-action television with the more exaggerated "fantasy" qualities of anime. Series director Shin Wakabayashi, in his first time directing a television anime, was recommended by a producer at Nippon TV as an ideal director to realize Nojima's vision for the series. Wakabayashi recruited numerous other young animators, often with minimal or no experience in directing television anime episodes, to join the production staff. Upon commencing its broadcast, Wonder Egg Priority received critical acclaim from English-speaking reviewers, with praise for its high production value, elaborate narrative, characters, themes, and handling of controversial subject matter. However, reviews of the series after the conclusion of its broadcast have proven more polarized, with the eleventh episode's focus on the backstory of a previously unseen character and the special episode's conclusion to the story, often seen as unsatisfying, being particular objects of criticism. The series was also widely noted amongst industry experts and anime-focused publications for facing significant production challenges due to its small and inexperienced animation team coupled with an unaccommodating schedule, leading to the production falling behind as the staff struggled to maintain the anime's high production value. Later in the production cycle, hobbyist animators from abroad were recruited via the internet to help finish some episodes on time. Some critics correlated their polarized responses to the troubled production.
