Wonder Egg Priority
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 series centers on Ai Ohto, a teenage who stops attending school following her friend’s suicide. After discovering a 'Wonder Egg,' she enters a dream world where she and three other girls—each mourning a lost friend—fight grotesque "Wonder Killers", manifestations of trauma linked to suicides. Their goal: resurrect their friends by protecting victims in this surreal realm.
Wonder Egg Priority marked Nojima's first anime project, following his work on live-action dramas. Seeking to reach younger audiences and explore stories impractical for live-action, he conceived it as a coming-of-age tale blending live-action realism with anime fantasy. Nippon TV producer-recommended debut TV anime director Wakabayashi assembled a team of mostly inexperienced young animators to realize this vision.
Initially praised by Western critics for its production quality, narrative complexity, and sensitive treatment of difficult themes, Wonder Egg Priority garnered more polarized reviews after its finale. The eleventh episode's focus on a new character's backstory and the special episode's conclusion drew particular criticism. Industry observers noted the production's struggles—an inexperienced team and tight schedule necessitated recruiting foreign hobbyist animators online to complete episodes, with some critics linking these challenges to the inconsistent reception.
Plot
The series follows Ai Ohto, a junior high school student who is temporarily not attending school, following the suicide of her close friend Koito Nagase. During a late-night walk, Ai is guided by a mysterious voice to a deserted arcade, where she finds a gachapon machine that dispenses a "Wonder Egg". That night, Ai gets drawn into a dream world where the Wonder Egg cracks open to reveal a girl, whom Ai must protect from a horde of monsters called "Seeno Evils". When the voice tells Ai that saving enough people in this world may bring Koito back, she resolves to continue buying Wonder Eggs and protecting their inhabitants. Along the way, Ai meets three other girls in the same situation as her: Neiru Aonuma, Rika Kawai, and Momoe Sawaki.Characters
Main
;Ai Ohto;Neiru Aonuma
;Rika Kawai
;Momoe Sawaki
Supporting
;Koito Nagase;Shūichirō Sawaki
;Acca
;Ura-Acca
;Frill
Production
Wonder Egg Priority is a co-production between Aniplex, Nippon Television, and D.N. Dream Partners. It was directed by Shin Wakabayashi, written by Shinji Nojima and features character designs by Saki Takahashi. Taracod served as concept artist, Keisuke Kobayashi as core animator, Yūki Funao as art director, and and as music composers. The series was Wakabayashi's first time serving as series director for a television anime; he had previously directed the web short series 22/7: The Diary of Our Days. ''Wonder Egg Priority also marked the first time Kanata Aikawa had been cast in a leading voice role, and De De Mouse had been a music composer of an anime work.Shinji Nojima, a well-known writer of live-action drama television, first conceived Wonder Egg Priority when he observed that live-action dramas had recently been less popular with the younger audience that he wanted to target with his next story. Nojima was attracted to the medium of anime due to his interest in reaching its engaged fandom that would often express their own interpretations in fan works, and his desire to tell a story that would not be feasible in a live-action production. Feeling that many anime leaned too far towards the fantastical, Nojima desired to find a middle ground between the realism of live-action dramas and the more exaggerated qualities of anime. As Nojima lacked familiarity with the anime industry and did not know who would be best to realize his vision, a producer from Nippon TV connected him with Aniplex, Cloverworks and Shin Wakabayashi, who would come to direct the series. Nojima said he did not consult Wakabayashi and the animation team about the scripts, as he was confident in their ability to realize his scripts as a high quality animation, and placed his complete trust in them to realize the story as they felt best. The difference in the half hour timeslot typical of late night anime as opposed to the one hour timeslots for live-action dramas that Nojima was used to was not a major creative consideration for him, as he was confident in his ability to pace the story effectively and therefore instead focused on the number of episode scripts. However, as the plot grew in complexity, he realized it would not be possible for him to finish all of his envisioned narrative in only twelve episodes, and thus some of the plot was cut from the final scripts as a result.
Wonder Egg Prioritys visual style was frequently compared by critics to the works of Naoko Yamada; Wakabayashi had previously worked with Yukiko Horiguchi, who formerly contributed character designs to K-On! and Tamako Market, both directed by Yamada, as she also provided the character designs for 22/7. Kevin Cirugeda of SakugaBlog said that though many directors, most recently inspired by Yamada's 2018 film Liz and the Blue Bird, had tried to emulate her style, Wakabayashi's collaboration with Horiguchi enabled him to replicate that style more accurately than any other director who had previously attempted such. Cirugeda did note, however, that Kyoto Animation's unique production pipeline inevitably made a perfect replication of Yamada's style nearly impossible, but that for Wonder Egg Priority, Wakabayashi and lead animator Keisuke Kobayashi had settled on a distinct style of "over-articulation" that was perceived as having "raised the volume" to distract from the small imperfections. The series marked many young animators' debuts in certain production roles, as Wakabayashi and his team recruited such new talents as Yuki Yonemori on episode 3, in his first time working as an episode director, and Yuzu Hori and Yuichiro Komuro, performing episode direction and storyboarding duties respectively, for their first time on episode 4. Episode direction and storyboarding work on most of Wonder Egg Prioritys episodes was delegated to a single animator, which Cirugeda believed was ideal as the team "dyed each episode with their own unique flavor," although he noted the possible drawback of overwhelming the inexperienced animation talents recruited to the production.
In planning Wonder Egg Prioritys cast of characters, Nojima gave minimal details in the script and outlines to give the animation staff freedom to flesh them out according to their interpretations. Wakabayashi selected Saki Takahashi, an animator previously known for her work on Darling in the Franxx and Her Blue Sky, to do the character designs, as her initial drafts of the designs were the first to strongly catch his interest. Takahashi enthusiastically joined the project, as doing character designs for an original production had been something to which she had aspired since beginning her career as an animator, and was also intrigued by Nojima's characterizations which she said "highlighted both the darkness in humans as well as their innocence." According to Wakabayashi, the design and characterization of protagonist Ai Ohto was strongly influenced by Miu Takigawa, a character featured in 22/7: The Diary of Our Days. Takahashi's initial designs for Ai were more in line with common media stereotypes of hikikomori individuals, with a moody and dark attitude about her, however Wakabayashi, believing Ai to be a fundamentally curious and cheerful character, asked Takahashi to alter how Ai was drawn in order to further bring out that side of her personality.
There was also a strong attention to detail focused on the clothing worn by the characters, as Wakabayashi felt it was important for their attire to be realistic, as well as deliberately curated in order to express each character's personality and disposition. Rika's outfit was designed to suggest that she was "tired of caring about her looks" as a former idol, while Neiru's was meant to imply that she wore whatever expensive clothing was selected for her by her assistant. Momoe's design was noted by Takahashi as the most challenging to create, due to her androgynous design and the idea that she curated her clothing according to her insecurities about her appearance and gender presentation, coupled with the need for the characters' attire to not be "too fashionable" in the interest of realism. Takahashi noted that she believed Momoe did not have many feminine-coded clothes in her wardrobe, contributing to her choice to wear only a dress when she is asked out on a date in the tenth episode.
The show's "action director," animator Yusuke Kawakami, was previously known for having contributed to the animation of Black Clover and SSSS.Gridman. Wakabayashi had previously invited Kawakami to participate in the production of The Diary of Our Days'', an offer he had to turn down due to scheduling conflicts. Kawakami joined the production primarily because he had grown tired of being in charge of action sequences that he felt were too divorced from narrative, and wished to focus not only on action but also scenes of realistic drama and everyday life that the action scenes would be designed to complement, an opportunity he felt that he would be afforded working with Wakabayashi. In collaboration with Wakabayashi and storyboard artist Keisuke Shinohara, Kawakami conceived the grounded everyday settings for the action sequences with this interest in mind. Wakabayashi tried his best to ensure the production "felt like a democratic environment" and that new ideas and communication from the staff were welcome, which Kawakami and assistant director Yuta Yamazaki agreed led to an improved quality of the final work. According to Cirugeda, Wakabayashi's careful sensitivity towards the needs and limits of his team was a strong contributor to the strength of the work's sustained quality despite tight deadlines amidst an unaccommodating production schedule.