|
I do like how the albino girl just pops up like a goddamn Rick Sanchez and bums on Neiru's couch.
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 15:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 09:46 |
|
|
more like blunder egg priority
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 16:20
|
|
|
Episode 10 was the last really good episode. The show dealt with gender stuff in a really careful way. Episode 11 was like "uh....what?" The backstory was kind of interesting but we're presented with the idea that these two scientists are being monitored at all times. How did the government not realize they were creating an artificial human girl? And where did the house they lived in come from? Is it in an alternate dimension? Where does any of this happen? Is it one big metaphor? Episode 12: Oh okay we're focusing on Ai again, and I guess we get a conclusion to her arc. We don't get to find out how these girls coming back to life affects the world where they're supposed to be dead, but we can imagine it. What's with these moth weirdos? Go away, moth weirdos, we don't have the run time to deal with you. Episode 13:  Not since Charge on Behemoth have I seen a series torpedo itself so successfully in the final installment. Ccs fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jul 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 16:26
|
|
|
i would not describe episode 10 as 'careful'
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 17:58
|
|
|
Based on the little I know of episode 10, it…could be better.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 18:05
|
|
|
nojima is a writer who at both times kind of understands trans people and how to write dialog for them but also, barely understands trans issues or how to touch on gender with any degree of tact, and likes writing in random beats about (cw abuse i guess) them getting kidnapped and abused by pizza deliverymen
The Colonel fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Jul 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 18:34
|
|
|
I still have pending to watch it but... in between everybody's reception to it, the fact I already thought there was a clear downward slope from the mid point of the series onwards, and the hiatus itself made my appetite for the finale to grow cold, I don't even know if to watch it anymore.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 18:38
|
|
|
Ccs posted:Episode 10 was the last really good episode. The show dealt with gender stuff in a really careful way. isn't the sheer fact that the fact the dream world was girls-only say something about what the writer thinks in regards to gender identity?
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 19:33
|
|
|
Futaba Anzu posted:isn't the sheer fact that the fact the dream world was girls-only say something about what the writer thinks in regards to gender identity? Yeah that's true. I didn't think about the fact that the character professes they're a boy but is still trapped in this girls only dream world. Hmm... dang! I thought episode 10 was good but I guess it also has problems. I had hope the writing would hold up after reading this twitter thread. But pretty much none of his other stuff is available to english readers/viewers so its hard to say whether this was a fluke of his dropping the ball or his endings and handling of weighty themes has always been problematic. https://twitter.com/AnimesocMegan/status/1351043079319539724 Ccs fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jul 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 19:36
|
|
|
my understanding was the egg system is an Accas creation so, y'know. then it just loops back around to how they aren't fully addressed in the version of the show we have. so the slack any one person gives will vary
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 19:43
|
|
|
My actual problem with ep 10 is a lot of the eps deal with sexual assault but the only one they felt the need to show a flashback to was the one with the trans character
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 20:12
|
|
|
Episode 10 could've been salvageable for me maybe if I felt like the show as a whole cared about Kaoru, but the fact that he's literally never seen or even obliquely referenced again after his Very Special Episode makes him feel super token and disposable in a way I find intensely gross.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 20:35
|
|
|
All the characters that come out of the eggs are one and done characters though. They're all struggling with very serious issues but the show never returns to them, once their demon has been slaughtered by one of the main characters they continue their journey of maybe being reincarnated or something.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 20:39
|
|
|
Turin Turambar posted:I still have pending to watch it but... in between everybody's reception to it, the fact I already thought there was a clear downward slope from the mid point of the series onwards, and the hiatus itself made my appetite for the finale to grow cold, I don't even know if to watch it anymore. I watched it. Well, that was disappointing. We have two reveals that are done almost matter-of-fact (oh, btw, Neiru was an AI and Koito had deep issues)and then a non-ending with 'and she will finish the adventure!' which we will never see given the low popularity of the series. This story needed two or three more episodes, one dedicated to Koito, another 1 or 2 for the climax end with Frilly, Acca-Ucca, etc and some kind of epilogue. So at the end of the day I feel as if the budget was the limiting factor. More budget for two or three more episode would have gone a long way as I say, and hell, the lack of budget can be noticed in this episode already, even if I ignore the animation problems in a few scenes, with Neiru's dream that we listen but don't actually see, or an emotive scene where the heroines reveal their vulnerability but we only see their back, because this was surely done with shoestring's budget. I'm surprised at the bad takes with Koito. I actually think that she actually being a problematic kid with potentially mental health issues and suicidal tendencies, unlike the other girls who killed themselves, is *theoretically* a good twist. Why all the dying girls would have to be the same, in the first place? And from the start there was something slightly off with her, and honestly, Ai never really got to know her. She says as much. The problem, as I said, it's more in the execution. Having a narrator voice (with the perspective of someone who didn't know her nor had all the context) telling us what happened in four sentences IS NOT the way to do it. Show, don't tell, FFS. And much less in something dramatic, that was an important mystery to the series. If it would have been properly dealt, where they would have explored the character, it could have been something good. Alas, not like this.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 20:48
|
|
|
Endorph posted:My actual problem with ep 10 is a lot of the eps deal with sexual assault but the only one they felt the need to show a flashback to was the one with the trans character That they were so unambiguous about Kaoru's trauma and gender identity shows how seriously they wanted to portray his struggle. I don't see how that's anti-trans. Spiritus Nox posted:Episode 10 could've been salvageable for me maybe if I felt like the show as a whole cared about Kaoru, but the fact that he's literally never seen or even obliquely referenced again after his Very Special Episode makes him feel super token and disposable in a way I find intensely gross. But that's the whole set up for the show. Every person the characters save has a different type of trauma that the show explores and they're able to move past it (or whatever the show establishes happens to them). Since they're all suicide victims they can't exactly be recurring cast members. All of the victims shown were faced by extremely serious problems, none of them were token characters.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 20:49
|
|
|
There were no "budget problems", the show's schedule was a trainwreck. Anime production isn't like "whoops we ran out of money, time to stop working", it's overworked staff members killing themselves trying to get anything remotely close to done in time for broadcast. More haphazard productions often end up spending more money because more people need to be involved to get across the finish line at all. Budget is a meme and almost never has anything to do with an anime's production quality. And the Koito twist is bad for a lot of reasons but one major one is that Sawaki appeared to be very obviously grooming Ai after being shown to have had an inappropriate relationship with Koito, and the show's conclusion about him is "nah he's a totally fine guy, don't worry so much, it was the 14-year-old's fault for seducing him." esselfortium fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Jul 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 21:24
|
|
|
Ccs posted:I had hope the writing would hold up after reading this twitter thread. But pretty much none of his other stuff is available to english readers/viewers so its hard to say whether this was a fluke of his dropping the ball or his endings and handling of weighty themes has always been problematic. i mean in this very thread they mention a review of sunu sumu muriku taking issue with its approach to the lgbt drama at the center despite enjoying the writing overall, and while the scans for the manga are absolutely terrible, it's honestly still very plain to see in reading it and it echoes a lot of the exact same problems wonder egg ran into; the more relaxed character banter is funny and endearing, the trans girl and her girlfriend are extremely fun characters, but their actual agency in the story is inconsistent at best and the story's priorities and approach to nono's character arc are at best clumsy and at worst feel ruined by a refusal to better research and understand what he's writing about in favor of going full speed into heavy handed shock value. i have no way of speaking for his work in the 80s or 90s, but if something he wrote in 2008 has largely the same problems as something he wrote in 2021, i'm comfortable saying it's all just characteristic of him as a writer overall that twitter thread is weird to look back on cause it's such a general summary of things he's included in his work but the writer doesn't seem to actually have engaged enough with any of his work to give anything past that, all it really says is that he's written about lgbt stuff and his work has been controversial for its darker themes but it omits things like his interview regarding one of his more recent yuri dramas that drew so much controversy for his incredibly ignorant and insensitive views on lesbian sexuality that the interview actually got deleted and only continues to exist in snippets of the more outrageous statements he made. i don't fault them if they just didn't know but i feel like the thread was very misrepresentative of the knowledge that was actually important to understanding where the show might have gone, someone gaining notoriety for including lgbt subjects in dramas in the 80s and 90s, without getting to actually see the context or execution of any of it, doesn't really mean he's going to do a good job writing about it in the current day
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 21:31
|
|
|
Nephthys posted:That they were so unambiguous about Kaoru's trauma and gender identity shows how seriously they wanted to portray his struggle. I don't see how that's anti-trans. im not saying they're the worst bigots to ever exist but the entire thing feels a bit voyeuristic and sloppy. furthermore there was also no need for him to have been sexually assaulted to begin with. they had other characters of the week who weren't. leaning on it like that feels like, again, voyeurism. not that you should never portray a trans character who got sexually assaulted but it needs a defter hand and more focus than kaoru got.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 21:35
|
|
|
Anime Slushie offered their review for WEP some weeks ago, episode by episode. It is not a love letter by any means. It may offer a road map explaining how some folks found this anime a disappointment long before the super special ending or the episodes from about ten on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMS5cHR14fc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3Bl7m9aLUw
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 21:54
|
|
|
Endorph posted:they did not need to explicitly show us him getting assaulted. there's only so much you can do with a character who's only around for a single episode and who exists primarily to prop up a main character's arc. if they actually wanted to seriously portray a trans man's struggle, they could have had him be a main character. The show handles an extremely broad range of serious topics in an uncommonly frank and unflinching manner. I don't think it's necessary to say one topic needs more screentime than the others when they managed to make their statement on the matter so clearly in just a single episode. Besides which given the writer and how the show went, it may have been better that Kaoru wasn't a main character. At least he got to leave the show on a positive note. Just imagine how lovely it could have been if he was in that finale. The act is portrayed in the utmost of negative lights, briefly and still half off-screen. If the options are that we're either intended on getting a sick voyeuristic thrill out of it or feel sympathy and righteous anger then it's apparent that it's the latter. Sure it didn't need to have him be sexually assaulted, but the intention is clearly to emphasise the hideousness of people who refuse to accept the agency and identity of trans individuals. It was an extremely pro-trans move. It certainly was an intensely upsetting moment but that's not an inherently bad thing to have in a piece of media when you're trying to promote sympathy for a cause.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 22:05
|
|
|
On the other hand, the show acts incredibly pleased with itself for arriving at what ought not to be a terribly complex moral of "I think raping and abusing trans children is bad actually" only after extreme grotesquerie IMO
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 22:13
|
|
|
I might be more inclined to give the writer the benefit of the doubt wrt Koito actually just being a deeply hosed up kid who did a deeply hosed up thing if the show had demonstrated literally any interest in exploring that in any way beyond as a last-minute twist, but if the show were actually interested in exploring Koito's issues then it had literally plenty of opportunity to do so considering the mystery behind why Koito committed suicide was, you know, literally one of the central conflicts of the show and of Ai's personal arc. So I really can't see the show's refusal to do so as indicative of anything other than the writer simply just not caring. Which for a show that purports to be exploring what exactly leads these young girls to suicide, sure does undermine pretty much the entire core of the story! ... Man, I can't believe the writer managed to write a conclusion to Koito's subplot that actually made me prefer the "actually an evil AI did it" explanation.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 22:34
|
|
|
So hey sounds like maybe I'll just enjoy the soundtrack from a distance
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 23:36
|
|
|
Nephthys posted:Sure it didn't need to have him be sexually assaulted, but the intention is clearly to emphasise the hideousness of people who refuse to accept the agency and identity of trans individuals. It was an extremely pro-trans move. It certainly was an intensely upsetting moment but that's not an inherently bad thing to have in a piece of media when you're trying to promote sympathy for a cause. i do not think the show literally meant for you to get off on it but there is very much a degree of atrocity tourism to how kaoru's story is framed. they are introduced, sexually assaulted, then cast aside. momoe never references him after his episode. i do not want 'promoting sympathy to a cause' to boil down to saying loving trans kids is bad. intensely upsetting moments can be good but they need to be earned not the entire point of a character's existence. they dont get a gold star for the bare minimum and they certainly didn't have to invoke as much as they did to meet that bare minimum. Endorph fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Jul 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 23:49
|
|
|
like believe it or not trans rep in media has evolved beyond boys dont cry lol idk if someone got something out of it good for them and i dont think the writer hates or fetishizes trans people exactly i just think its a really lazy way of trying to show support and they definitely dont deserve huge props for it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2021 23:52
|
|
|
momoe's eggs are definitely weird in that way given her first one also has a victim of sexual assault undressing to lure their wonder killer in i did not really pull anything out of it other than striking me as a misguided gravitas move
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 00:01
|
|
|
dogsicle posted:momoe's eggs are definitely weird in that way given her first one also has a victim of sexual assault undressing to lure their wonder killer in that was also probably the worst written wonder killer in the show because he literally just went on for ten minutes about how much he loved groping over and over
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 00:11
|
|
|
it's also really weird cause, again, nojima did, the exact same thing in sunu sumu muriku, except in sunu sumu it was like a mildly weird side note and the entire focus of it was people helping nono recover afterwards, it didn't linger on showing the event itself and it didn't define the entire core of nono's existence
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 00:41
|
|
|
Endorph posted:it was not at all an extremely pro-trans move and i do not want 'pro-trans moves' to be showing a trans child with five minutes of screentime getting raped, op It isn't '5 minutes of screentime'. The entire premise of the show is based around suicide and the causes of it. Kaoru's story isn't atrocity tourism just like none of the other victims were either when they were given the exact same amount of screentime while portraying just as important topics in just as empathetic a manner. You're acting as if it was an insincere effort when the whole show was created to explore these issues and raise empathy for them. The show wasn't a focused narrative on any one specific issue, which is how it was able to cover so many topics. Would it have added anything if Kaoru had an extra episode of backstory? I don't really see why it would. Momoe never mentions him because of other things in the plot that occur immediately after, not because he was unimportant. Momoe's interactions with Kaoru are the resolution to her character arc and how she learns to accept her own gender identity. In this respect Kaoru had an important part in the narrative, more than any of the other wonder egg victims the girls save in fact. You complained about this, but that's just how side characters work in fiction. He also got to be a pretty awesome person in his own right though, so I don't agree that he only exists to be a rape victim. In fact Kaoru's interactions with Momoe outside of the fight influence her more strongly than his backstory or the fight itself. Endorph posted:idk if someone got something out of it good for them and i dont think the writer hates or fetishizes trans people exactly i just think its a really lazy way of trying to show support and they definitely dont deserve huge props for it. That's a fair position even if I don't agree with it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 00:42
|
|
|
it wouldnt have added anything if kaoru got an extra episode of backstory, but it would have added a lot to the pretense that the show cares about trans issues deeply if the trans character existed for most of the show. i also dont really think a lot of the other characters portrayed their issues with that much empathy. the cult girl in rika's episode just existed to be a metaphor for rika's own social pressures, same with the wonder killer/victim girl in neiru's one episode. the idol girls barely even had their connection to their wonder killer explained.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 00:47
|
|
|
Endorph posted:like believe it or not trans rep in media has evolved beyond boys dont cry lol i think "fetishized" is actually a pretty good way to describe the way a lot of the egg girls (and the one egg boy who gets to show up for some reason) are treated by the show tbh, not necessarily in a sexual sense but in the sense of reducing them to symbols rather than people
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 01:53
|
|
|
i like the egg girl in ep 1 but also i feel like the entire way she and her egg world are written, feel nothing like any of the ones after. like there's way more emphasis in ep 1 on her and ai just kinda sitting around and having an awkward conversation than there is on a big cartoon blob monster screaming about how much they love to bully people to suicide
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 01:55
|
|
|
The Colonel posted:i like the egg girl in ep 1 but also i feel like the entire way she and her egg world are written, feel nothing like any of the ones after. like there's way more emphasis in ep 1 on her and ai just kinda sitting around and having an awkward conversation than there is on a big cartoon blob monster screaming about how much they love to bully people to suicide the coach at least was kind of something like a person? like she attempted to justify herself and 'reason' with the egg girl rather than just yelling about how she loves sexual assault cause sexual assault is badass. ig some of the others had a bit of that too but iunno it felt more, not nuanced, but comparatively layered with the coach maybe that sliding scale could have meant something in a better written show, but,
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 01:58
|
|
|
So uh, I've only watched the first episode so far and now seen the general consensus that this show bombs in the final half. Am I looking at another Black Rock Shooter situation here?
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 02:05
|
|
|
black rock shooter was good
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 02:34
|
|
|
I've only watched the OVA but I thought it was cool - cooler than this, certainly
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 02:50
|
|
|
The Colonel posted:i like the egg girl in ep 1 but also i feel like the entire way she and her egg world are written, feel nothing like any of the ones after. like there's way more emphasis in ep 1 on her and ai just kinda sitting around and having an awkward conversation than there is on a big cartoon blob monster screaming about how much they love to bully people to suicide Hidingo Kojimba posted:So uh, I've only watched the first episode so far and now seen the general consensus that this show bombs in the final half. Am I looking at another Black Rock Shooter situation here? Elephant Parade fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Jul 3, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 04:06
|
|
|
I thought this show's highs were incredibly high, but it was so completely mismanaged and there were so many half-baked and outright bad decisions going into the writing. It feels like watching an extremely fancy meal splatter all over the floor before you get to take a bite. I think unlike the rest of the thread I am going to remember this show fondly just for the things it did well (music, visuals, a cool premise, really excellent character chemistry and energetic friendship animation, and a frank willingness to tackle extremely difficult subjects, even if it has trouble landing several of them). ironically, i think it could have been an all-time great show if it had set its sights lower, excised all the frill/japan plati metaphysics, and just focused more on the main characters and their real life struggles. if it had been 26-36 episodes, it could probably have pulled off an ambitious deep dive into the metaphysics stuff, but cramming them in at the last three episodes is truly insane to a caliber that i've never seen before. it literally keeps piling on more and more plot reveals until the last scene of the show. the stuff that happens in the finale truly seems like at least 5 episodes worth of content (1. koito comes back 2. other egg girls come back 3. visit japan plati and learn that neiru's missing, everyone chickens out of rescuing her, 4. everyone drifts apart, ai changes schools 5. timeskip where ai remembers neiru and decides she needs to rescue her). It's absolutely insane to me that they would basically put half a season's worth of plot events into a single episode that they had months to finish instead of reworking it into a conclusive ending. the most charitable thing i can say about how it ended up is that i liked it more than the anime ending to the promised neverland. wonder egg's ending is full of such  decision making that it's at least kind of fun to puzzle out what the hell the entire thing was even going for. and ending it on a cliffhanger mercifully lets me imagine a competent conclusion instead of being resigned to an actual incompetent conclusion.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 04:24
|
|
|
Cephas posted:I thought this show's highs were incredibly high, but it was so completely mismanaged and there were so many half-baked and outright bad decisions going into the writing. It feels like watching an extremely fancy meal splatter all over the floor before you get to take a bite. I think unlike the rest of the thread I am going to remember this show fondly just for the things it did well (music, visuals, a cool premise, really excellent character chemistry and energetic friendship animation, and a frank willingness to tackle extremely difficult subjects, even if it has trouble landing several of them). i'm in the same boat. i was blown away by the start of the show (also episode 11) and i'm happy i got to experience wonder egg priority. even if the writer was a dumbass and the ending was unbelievably bad. very few shows have the ambition or level of execution that egg attempted, there's no way i can hate what it tried to accomplish.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 05:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 09:46 |
|
|
the thing it turned out to be trying to accomplish was extremely stupid and bad unfortunately that first episode sure was good though
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2021 06:18
|
|
