Wonder Egg Priority

 Wonder Egg Priority (ワンダーエッグ・プライオリティ) is an original sci-fi psychological anime Nojima Shinji.  It originally ran in the winter of 2021.

    Oto Ai is a depressed shut in middle school student who avoids her mother as much as possible.  Life wasn't easy for her due to having heterochromia, The friendship of a transfer student helps sustain her through the hardships of adolescence but when her friend commits suicide one day Ai's world crashes in around her.  One evening while wandering around her neighborhood she is given a strange egg.  She soon finds herself in an altered version of reality and is instructed to crack the egg, which reveals a girl who had committed suicide.  Ai must protect the girl from aggressive beings who are trying to destroy them both.  After succeeding in what is essentially putting the girls soul to rest Ai learns that a statue of her dead friend exists in this reality.  If she saves more lost girls she has the chance to bring her friend back to life.

         She quickly learns that other girls are also working to save lost souls for their own reasons and soon becomes friends with the small group of warriors.  Aonuma Neiru, a serious girl who has a hard time interacting with those her age.  Kawai Rika, a rambunctious ex-idol whose goal in life is to live off of others.  Sawaki Momoe a tall hansom girl who struggles with her less than feminine appearances and the attraction of other girls.  As the four girls risk their lives at night trying to help those that killed themselves battle their demons, they grow close in friendship, providing salvation for their own troubles.  They are each trying to save someone they lost but are they saving their friends or are they saving themselves?

    The series animation is quite enjoyable, with well done character deigns.  It also tackles realistic problems that affect adolescents and everyone really.  The struggles of self hatred, isolation, depression, confusion and regret.  Every egg presents an opportunity to showcase common causes to suicide as the girls fight against representations of the lost girls problem.  At the same time they are fighting through the problems they ear each dealing with in their own ways, using this salvation as a sort of therapy, all be it less than ideal therapy.  The world that is built is interesting and unfolds as the series progresses.  The main protagonists are believable for the most part, Neiru's situation is a little far-fetched, but the other 3 are firmly rooted in reality.  It's fun to see a take on a deeply personal and difficult subject as suicide in a format akin to the magical girl genre, which has been covered in other anime.

    While it's always welcome to see an anime tackle mature and realistic content, Wonder Egg Priority falls flat when the background of the story is unveiled near the end of its run.  A series that isn't exactly presented as sci-fi for most of its development works incredibly hard in the last 3 episodes to convince the audience that this has been a sci-fi story all along.  The machinations for the entire egg protection slash teenage trauma scheme feels cheapened by the underlying origins of the concept.  We already had a farfetched background with Neiru's story only to compound the mysteries by revealing the people behind the eggs pasts' via deus ex-machina.  To further frustrate the unfolding of the mysteries of the story, we have to suffer through essentially 2 full recap episodes, one of which is wrapped up into the extended final episode.  I really wanted to enjoy the series but in the end the sloppy climax made reaching the end a disappointment.  The reward for reaching the end of the mystery was not worth the energy put into getting there.

The series is widely available in both sub and dub format and honestly the dub English dub voices are pretty well done...I started the series sub but finished it dub.  As of this writing it is available on Crunchyroll in both formats.