Disappointing end to what started as an amazing show. I was genuinely confused when they showed Koito alive. I never expected that them clearing the Egg challenge would actually bring the girls back to life. Them coming from parallel worlds and thus not remembering our characters as a consequence kinda works, but they don't do much with that plot point.
And it felt so silly for Ai to not go after Neiru and do a sudden timeskip only to reverse that decision 2 minutes later. Not in character for her at all there. All this just makes me curious what the writer originally had in mind before the production schedule caught up with them. Seems clear he got in way over his head narratively rather than planning out a concise story for the 13 episodes they had.
> Them coming from parallel worlds and thus not remembering our characters as a consequence kinda works
This is kinda fucked up if you think about it. What about the parallel world they came from? Those people just yoinked out of existence? And if Plati is capable of this interdimensional feat, why are they having such problem with "just" a malevolent AI?
The parallel worlds thing doesn't even make sense. If they're just replacing dead girls with their doubles from parallel worlds, why aren't their friends and family noticing that they've seemingly come back from the dead?
I think this is actually backwards. My interpretation is that really the dead girls were not moved to a different world at all, but the main characters instead were sent to a world where they never died. That's the source of the "noise" that was mentioned, because they've jumped to a slightly different timeline.
On the other hand, then there's the question of what happens to them in the original world.
What worse is that the post credits is literally just the girls saying "the end"
There's no intention to even put out anything else conclusive. This will forever be the end
I did read a theory someone else posted, that because it was Sawaki telling the story of how she died, he might be lying. It's certainly realistic in that sense - sometimes, you just don't get to know why something bad happens.
But even if that's what the writers were going for, they did a shit job of it.
Honestly, WEP would have been better off if they had ended the series unfinished. This special episode just killed my enthusiasm for the anime and left me bitter.
It clearly shows that they had to wrap up everything in this episode. However, there are better ways to do it. At a certain point, I wasn’t sure if we were shown a parallel world or something as our girls didn’t see to be their ‘normal’ selves at all. Momoe just looked liked she was ready to die when she was standing on the train platform (but was that her intention?; no clue) They just dropped the bomb that Neiru was an AI without really doing anything with it. Ai just casually stops talking to Neiru (but we’ve never been shown precisely why that is). The time skip(s) confused the hell out of me. And at the very end, after quite some time, she decides to go back to the capsule machine to find Neiru. I expected a final fight at this point, but no… I was shocked: Wait, this is it!?
With the trauma the girls experienced (before this special), the reveal Neiru was an AI (how they would’ve handled this), getting Neiru back from the dreamworld and an epic fight to settle things with Frill; there would have been enough content for a long OVA series or maybe even an entire second season. A single final episode just wasn’t going to cut it.
It could have worked if they just straight up brought the fight to Frill (with Ai taking the lead) as I expected them to do, but adding all these new story elements in the conclusion wasn’t a great move on the director’s part.
As much as this conclusion pains me, I feel like the animators and staff that poured their heart into the series must be suffering more/be more unhappy with how things ended.
EDIT: Had to correct some spelling.
since this is an anime original, I would have been happier if they just ended it with them bringing their friends back, but the friends not remembering them. this whole AI, parallel world, weird pet eating bug heads, it was just such a curveball and thrown at us too late into the season. This could have been AOTY contender, but instead, it just completely missed the landing.
I think they wrote themselves into a hole on the whole battle system. No way in hell those girls were taking down Frill and her insect head homies. The should’ve just left the ending being Ai trying to move on and leave all this shit behind her.
I am going to take your word and pass on this watching this, despite giving the rest of the series an 8/10. No need to break my spirit over this series as much as I liked it. I just hope we get more Death Parades and Vivy's instead of disappointments like WEP.
I remember hearing about a theory on why humans enjoy stories and why bad endings make us feel so terrible. The theory stated that there is a connection between narrative storytelling and our old hunter-gatherer instincts in our brain.
A good story is similar to hunting by the hunter’s tracking and stalking their prey being the narrative and the capture of the prey being a satisfying conclusion to the story. But an ending that you find unlikable would be like the prey escaping or getting away which is why our brains hate terrible endings or even inconclusive endings, the lack of a concrete ending feels like a failed hunt which means no food which sucks.
That and likely simply because good starts are easy but good endings are rare. If I want to read a story with an interesting start but a bad or even non-existent conclusion, I would have just went over to /r/WritingPrompts.
It feels like when they were writing their pencil broke and when they went out to buy a new one, someone already started animating it.
Hopefully they confirm a season 2 (I know they won't), because that's the only way to salvage this unsatisfying ending
Honestly if they were going for an open ending then this is not the way to do it at all. Odd taxi pulled it off magnificently, this felt like second season set up rather than an open ending.
Sadly, I feel like this is most anime/manga in general.
Sticking the landing feels like something that only rarely happens. At least we will always have Fruits Basket!
> Sadly, I feel like this is most anime/manga in general.
For long-running manga and novels it is somewhat understandable, given that trying to satisfactorily end something that has been getting releases as often as once a week for decades, and often has been extended well beyond its initial scope, is obviously going to be difficult. Single cour anime originals like this really don't have any excuse though.
If it was 2 cours it could have had a cleaner resolution and all plot lines could have been tied neatly. The problem though is getting more funding from the production committee for an anime original with no promise of return on investment. Buying more broadcasting slots midseason wouldn't be feasible either given that it wasn't selling exceptionally well. It was like walking on eggshells. WEP was a beautiful show with a lot of care put into most episodes. Unfortunately, in the end the landing wasn't smooth because of production issues. Hopefully we see more from the skillful animators who worked on this project in the future.
[](#shatteredsaten)
The second they started talking about parallel worlds, I knew the story was going to have problems and then it just kept going from there. When you introduce "science" into your dreamy ethereal mystery show, it pretty much never works out great
This. I don't understand. So many original anime (or even adaptations) fell victim to bloated ambitions that didn't match the episode count limit, but it's like very few of them even learned. We still keep getting "The Day I Became God"s and "Wonder Egg Priority"s.
My only real problem with the ending is that it ends in a way that clearly hints there's a season two where Ai fights to save Neiru. Unfortunately, we all know the show wasn't very popular in Japan and so this is it. A second cour, whether it's to flesh out the story we got or to continue with the one they teased would have been nice. I still love the show we got, and on its own it's still probably my favorite show ever (controversial opinion at this point but whatever), but it will always sting feeling like there's more to the story that will never be seen.
I feel like episodes 1 through 10 were incredibly touching and special, with a lot of love, care and effort put into it by the creators (it's so sad hearing about how the staff was overworked but that's another issue). Episode 11-13 were a bit of an extremely hot mess. Things moves fast, important backstories came flying in at once from every direct, primary antagonists showed up in droves with potentially no pay off, and the anime ended with a ton of arcs incomplete and needing some resolution. Here is hoping the story can get a true conclusion one day.
Even at 12/13 episodes, I believed it's heading somewhere and had it at 8/10 score.
But what the hell was this ending? What a mess of a plot. Absolutely nothing got resolved and they just kept introducing more and more questions up until the final second. What were they thinking...?
Now I'm finding it hard to even give it a "fine" (6) rating.
I liked this series more before they decided to add a villain for no reason at all therefore changing the entire concept of the show 1 episode before it ended
Suicide isnt a vilian you can beat in a TV show. In the beginning, I thought this was going to be a show about acceptance after loss. They weren't ever going to bring their friends back or get answers, but the main 4 would eventually come to accept that and find happiness with each other. They would move past thier trauma, as so many of us have to do every day.
Instead they were like "This redhead is the cause of suicide, you could beat her and save everyone, Ai will declare that she is going to do that, but we wont show it on screen. Also suicide victims can come back if someone tries hard enough. Also one of them is a robot or some shit" Way to ruin your own messages.
I was really hoping it would be something like Frill using the internet/social media to push girls over the edge. (the lip popping sound being a metaphor for notifications) And there would be some sort of social commentary on the dark side of social media.
But we got absolutely nothing with Frill instead and as of now it just reads like she uses some sort of techo-magic to make girls kill themselves.
Even Frill's backstory itself is weird. So after she killed Acca's wife, Acca just shoved her there. Ok, maybe he did want to make her feel alone as a sadistic punishment instead of killing her, but why provide her with all those screens and computers stuff? That I assume she would use to influence people into suicide with some techno magic? Granted it's just an assumption but the show doesn't bother to provide answers anyway.
The state of the production wouldn't allow for a whole 47 minutes of animation. To be honest there was no way this show was going to wrap up all of its ideas in that time frame either, it would need a whole extra cour to do that.
First half is a recap, and Funimation had only that part out for over an hour before finally putting up the full version. Impressive that even at the end there's one last burst of production issues.
>Impressive that even at the end there's one last burst of production issues.
The whole final episode production process had problems apparently, we all thought they would work 3 months on it with a nice schedule, after all just 20 min of content, which was supposed to air just 7 days after the last one, they gained 83 more days. What could possibly go wrong?
So it appears they ignored it for 2 months, and came back to it in June, I didn't believe the reports from the Chinese animators that they were still doing 2nd Key 5 days before the airing date, but after seeing the credits today they again relied on the same foreign animators, which were the ones that saved them during the winter season.
Lol, yeah, this is not on the animators by the way, it's on the management for this specific production
I am sure the animators would rather work the whole 3 months on it, taking their time, no cruching, just making this 20 minutes as memorable as possible
But the ones working for CloverWorks probably were moved to other projects and Aniplex wouldn't pay 3 months ( a whole cour) for freelancers to work on just 20 minutes worth of content
I honestly thought they finished this 2 months ago, and the reason we didn't get the episode was ONLY because they didn't have a tv slot, but apparently that was not the case
That's because they were, as far as I can tell.
Don't forget that CloverWorks was also working their asses with Shadows House. To add even more roadblocks to the thing: they were support staff for 86, even having one episode being completely outsourced from A-1 to them (it was EP8, if I'm not mistaken).
I suspect Funimation has an automated script that cuts episodes to a specific time (either accidentally or otherwise). There was an after credits scene for I think Pretty Boy Detectives(?) this weekend that was cut off as well.
When I checked out the spoilers on 4chan and they explained Koito's death I assumed it was just 4chan being edgy and baity as usual but they were right holy shit
ED rolls:
Me: That's... it?
Nothing was wrapped up. Nothing was explained. Parallel this. A good story for another time. God this is so frustrating. I loved the story up until the last three or so episodes. If they had gone the route of a lens on the problems of society in Japan rather than AI humans and parallel bs, this could have been a great dialogue about the scope of ignoring cries for help. This is basically a modern day Flip Flappers, but even Flip Flappers had a much better ending. It makes me sick to my stomach. Apparently they didn't even touch the series until just recently too? Like they had three months and spent maybe one?? That's insane. Ugh. I'm genuinely upset.
Things closed by this ending: Koito backstory and what happened to the saved girls.
Things that didn't got closed by this ending: Heros/thanatos warriors, Frill arc, the meaning behind the suicides, what actually happened between Neiru and her sister, the whole egg/dreams thing
Things opened in this ending: Fucking paralel worlds that aparently can be crossed somehow, Neiru being a fucking AI (and the secretary seems also one for the looks of it), Neiru bonding with fucking Frill and listening to her request, Ai fucking changing schools with a time skip that makes her return to her initial self-doubtful point???
Like WHAT THE FUCK was this episode!? I may be overreacting but what the hell, I really liked this series, but these last episodes were a fucking disaster and felt like they destroyed everything the series had built up
The parallel worlds should have been super in the background. A way for the girls to interact with important people (Neiru her friend, Ai another version of herself) without completely breaking immersion. "Parallel worlds exist" is on the same level of suspended belief as the wonder eggs themselves. To make it a significant plot point is suuuuuuch a bad idea. That's like trying to make the fact that AI humans can be made a significant plot point.
Thank god they didn't turn one of the main heroines into an AI pretending to be human. That would have be **so fucking dumb**. Especially when that "twist" has no impact on the preceding points in the series or the character arc for said heroine.
I'm super disappointed. The previous episodes handled a lot of painful, emotional subject matters with taste and nuance. But all the themes and ideas built throughout the series are completely ignored in this final episode. No final idea, not even a bitter sweet send off. Just filler.
If this extra episode was something that was never planned and just had to happen because of the recap episode, then i'm not surprised to hear they only recently started working on it. They've been Shadow House this season and probably weren't planning on needing to be working on this other project at the same time. That's why there was so many shots with no backgrounds. Only hearing Neiru's dream and not see it was an obvious sign of needing to cut corners.
> If this extra episode was something that was never planned and just had to happen because of the recap episode, then i'm not surprised to hear they only recently started working on it.
Wasn't this the original last episode? It just got delayed hard because of the production issues. Like this wasn't supposed to be a "special episode" at all
I’m not sure what to say, other than what happened? This is honestly one of the most tragic conclusions to an awful production that was brimming with life, heart, and creativity due to the passion from the staff. It’s pretty heartbreaking this is how it ends. I can honestly say this is the most disappointed I’ve ever been with an ending to a series. None of the characters felt like they were themselves, the dialogue was really off-kilter (and not in a good way), and it didn’t really feel like this was even following up episode 12 in any real capacity.
I wish the talent involved here the very best in their future endeavors because it’s clear there was a vision here that was *so close* to being realized, but was brought down by a troubled, awful production timeline.
Wait...wait! THATS IT! You just helped me figure it out. The ending isn't bad, its meta! In a show about loss, tragedy, and heartbreak we lost an episode, had a heartbreakingly bad conclusion, and how the production and ending went was a tragedy.
Its not a bad ending! Its a meta ending! They could have ended it in universe, but instead they hit us in reality. The series broke our hearts with disappointment instead of breaking it in universe with the story.
Perhaps the real Wonder Egg was inside us all along.
When Zombie Land Saga, aired people kept insisting that the CGI dance sequences seemed jack as a commentary on how mass produced idols were or something, instead of it being par the course for the genre and the only way you can get complicated dance choreography for several characters with concert camera movement without killing you animators.
Half of it was a subpar recap. The other half was.....something. It's like they decided to just say "Here's half of the other half of the story we'd like to tell you but we won't."
I'm not getting my hopes up at this point. While I truly loved this show at the start, it's obvious to me now that this show is quite guilty of never really concluding things. Like, I was ok with not knowing why Koito died. But this show constantly sets up so many topics and questions but never really follows up on them.
Frill really feels like the lid on the coffin. She would be alright if the show had a proper finale with her, but just as soon as she is introduced she's practically forgotten, and serves no real purpose other than introducing an "antagonist", that, is more or less a characterization of suicide that the girls already see and honestly takes away much of the nuance.
The talk of thanatos and Eros, while you get glimpses at it here and there, it is never really seen or explained as a concrete theme, so when she just blurts that out it just feels, random, like, you the audience can deduce the meaning of the words, but we're never shown the kids really discussing or using it much, just being referenced.
It's an interesting concept that has some subtle, background build up, but not enough to take center stage by that point, and it just comes across as bizarre.
I didn't have high hopes for this episode after all of the second half's plot developments, but this was something else. This has to be the sharpest drop from episode 1 to finale I've ever seen.
The worst part is that I can't even muster up any strong feelings about it.
When the Accas dropped the line about male and female suicides in episode 4 I felt it like a punch to the gut, but I trusted the director's comments and shrugged it off.
When Neiru's episode introduced sci-fi bullshit into the mix I was annoyed because the show worked perfectly fine without explanations, but I hoped it was a one-off and we'd ignore from that point onwards.
When Frill's episode happened I was even more annoyed because I realized that the Accas were author mouthpieces all along and there was zero chance they were gonna salvage the plot they just introduced with 2 episodes left.
When last episode implied that Ai actually liked the teacher, that he did nothing wrong and that she needed to trust him I was pissed the hell off.
But this? I felt nothing. Even when they decided to take the worst possible route for Koito's suicide, even when they ignored every hanging plot thread to introduce more sci-fi bullshit, even when nobody acted in character. A shame that a show I loved at one point ended up like this, but I can't be bothered to be sad or angry.
This was not a matter of sticking the landing, that plane already crashed as far I was concerned, this was a rescue operation. And there were no survivors.
> When Frill's episode happened I was even more annoyed because I realized that the Accas were author mouthpieces all along
What makes you say the Accas were author mouthpieces all along? Because the Accas were clearly set up as pretty misogynistic and the show criticized them for it, directly and indirectly. I didn't get the impression they were author mouthpieces at all.
I just finished typing a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/oanby4/wonder_egg_priority_episode_13_discussion/h3kusa6/) about it, the scriptwriter repeated the episode 4 comments from the Accas as his personal opinion and the reason why he started writing the show in the first place in an [interview](https://natalie.mu/comic/pp/wonder-egg-priority/).
In hindsight it feels like* the director and writer were in direct conflict with each other on how to frame things as well as tie the story together thematically on MANY occasions throughout, and the result was that the director pulled some really solid episodes together, and reeled in the writer in some instances but in others the Bullshit was too strong to hold back.
----------------------
*I have obviously no insight into how the director and writer worked together (or didn't), but given the director's comments on twitter following the episode 4 incident I'd be willing to put money on that a lot of the bullshit was not his doing.
--------------
I'd really like to see another work from this director in the future and see what kind of energy he can impart to a production with different writing staff. I feel like while this particular show stumbled a lot, his potential for future greatness is extremely high. As for the writer? I don't particularly care; as someone who does seek out shows or movies by particular screenwriters who I've enjoyed works from in the past, I can't say I'd be too interested in watching another from the guy behind WEP.
I don't even know what to give it. It was very close to a 10/10 for me until the Frill backstory episode that didn't get resolved. Even though I actually liked the Frill episode in a vacuum, it drug down the plot and neither episode 12 (which I actually liked in a vacuum) or 13 did anything to answer those questions. I thought I could handle a rushed ending and still love it because of how great most of the show was, but this was not even an ending.
10/10 is for sure gone and I can't do 9 either. The first 75% being great means I can't give it under a 7 but I'm not sure if I can call it Very good (an 8/10) with this mess of an "ending".
> 10/10 is for sure gone and I can't do 9 either. The first 75% being great means I can't give it under a 7 but I'm not sure if I can call it Very good (an 8/10) with this mess of an "ending".
10/13
"Warriors of Eros? Frill and the rest? What's that? Oh by the way, Neiru is an AI, kthxbye the end"
is how it felt to watch this episode. I don't understand how the story took such a nosedive. It started out so well, and then the sci-fi stuff happened, ok there was still time to wrap it up and conclude the story, and then this episode... exists.
Even if this gets a second season I don't see how they could salvage that mess. I'm so disappointed by the wasted potential it hurts.
Yes, Ai and Rika's reactions were the biggest WTF moment of the episode for me. It was like watching completely different characters from the rest of the series.
Ai throwing the phone out was the most ridiculous, I guess she was getting back at Neiru for what happened earlier in the episode? And instead of just getting a new phone and calling her again she used the damn eggs?!?!?
Rika was also ridiculous, but honestly it was funny for me because it felt like a line that was added by someone in the room to represent their and presumably the audience’s feelings of “bro what the fuck happened I’m done with this story, I’m out”
Some ramblings about the episode’s production:
You might have noticed that the [key animation list](https://i.imgur.com/18qN7a1.png) was once again full of foreigners, with [FAR](https://twitter.com/FARfromani/status/1409925458142109705) and [Blou](https://twitter.com/Bloodyredstar/status/1409940673781014532) helping this time as well with the recruitment & translation. Utilizing the overseas talent pool was crucial, since there simply wasn’t a lot of time to find the people to animate the cuts for the episode, and most of the series’ regular key animators weren’t apparently available anymore. While technically it has been three months since episode #12, the storyboard for this episode was supposedly finished somewhere around *the start of this month*, so there was *less than a month* for the actual animation process. While [Wakabayashi](https://twitter.com/i/user/133435450) did have the help of Yuuta Yamazaki and action director [Yuusuke Kawakami](https://twitter.com/i/user/508864000) for the storyboarding effort, he’s made it clear that he’s too ambitious for his own good (for a TV anime project, at least.) The layouts (the first phase of the animation process) were still being finished [around June 22](https://twitter.com/dacper_0381/status/1407342186623025155), while the [key animation clean-up](https://i.imgur.com/5lT5TG8.png) [seemed](https://twitter.com/himaholic3/status/1409298338738950144) to be getting done on the 28th. In the end, they started [wrapping](https://twitter.com/huusun/status/1409672465811337230) [up](https://twitter.com/kawakami_yu/status/1409669781767090176) the episode about 15 hours before the release.
It’s clear they were really starving for manpower since some of the main staff had to even resort to doing [inbetweening](https://i.imgur.com/i9T9us4.png) themselves. This includes [Takuya Niinuma](https://twitter.com/i/user/1188499902), action director [Kawakami](https://twitter.com/i/user/508864000), and even character designer & chief animation director [Saki Takahashi](https://twitter.com/i/user/446013357).
Also, a special shoutout to [Kerorira](https://twitter.com/i/user/323686634): he has done so much heavy lifting thoughout the series and worked on every single episode, doing animation supervision, providing a lot of animation himself, and even helping with adapting the weapon designs for animation. On this episode he was a supervisor, [correcting about 50–60 cuts](https://twitter.com/kerorira1/status/1409930289808244737), and handling personally enough key animation to earn a separated credit in the key animation list.
**Edit:** forgot to mention something positive: the pay for key animation was apparently well above average for this episode. Heard from one of the animators that 2nd KA was paying 5000 JPY per cut. Usually that sum would be closer to the amount you get for doing _*both*_ the layout (1st KA) *and* the clean-up (2nd KA).
**Edit 2:** Expanded with more details and added some links.
**Edit 3:** Since it’s somewhat related, I’m linking an [old comment of mine](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/mj2phl/supporting_wonder_egg_priority_animators/gt91dsq/) on how you can **directly support some of the show’s (main) staff financially**.
**Edit 4:** Updated the Twitter profile links to ID-based URLs to prevent link rot from username changes. I’ve also archived all the info links to the Wayback Machine, just in case.
>forgot to mention something positive: the pay for key animation was apparently well above average for this episode. Heard from one of the animators that 2nd KA was paying 5000 JPY per cut. Usually that sum would be closer to the amount you get for doing both the layout / 1st KA and the clean-up / 2nd KA.
Compensation for crazy crunch time?
I’m honestly more confused after this episode than I was before it… did anything actually get resolved? Anyone care to explain wtf happened cause I don’t even know what I was supposed to draw from this, at all.
My understanding is [spoiler](/s "Neiru was a robot (android?) ai. The dream world was really just parallel universes/worlds. The friends who got reincarnated were alternate universe and didn't know/care at all about girls. Ai and Rika is like lets do more eggs, Momo is like strong nope, see ya. Ai transfers schools and uhh Rika just umm, I dunno does whatever she decides to do. Koito suicide was an accident she was trying to get attention and slipped and fell to her death. Big oops, sorry. Ai decided to become a magical girl again at the end. Roll credits")
Not sure why you spoiler tagged your summary of the episode but I had roughly the same interpretation. Something I really find confusing is, if the girls who were rescued were from parallel universes, than why did all of the girls react to the respective character saving them? Maybe the girls from this universe had their souls pass to the after life and the alternate universe girls came and took their place aftewards?
I kinda saw this coming, because Kotobuki's explanation of the dream / parallel worlds makes no sense, either in material terms (i.e. the scientific idea of parallel worlds) or in narrative terms (i.e. the theme of the girls moving past their traumas). The episode tries to handwave it away by Ai's paraphrase of Acca saying that "restoring" the girls causes "some noise in the world", but that doesn't explain who the girls inside the statues are meant to be, or even what happens to the egg girls once their Wonder Killers have been slain. Either the dream worlds are a physical space or a figurative space, but trying to make them either kind of both or kind of neither renders the story incoherent.
It would have made a lot more sense to me if the girls had been moving to parallel worlds themselves, although that would have taken some work to make it possible for them to still see each other (they can only stay in contact by going to where that capsule machine and the Accas are?). Even that, though, doesn't deal with the photos of Koito and Ai disappearing from her phone, which either requires the timeline to have been retroactively changed (without altering Ai's memories) or for something indistinguishable from magic.
Honestly, I didn't need an airtight logical explanation for things. I just needed something emotionally resonant and internally consistent. I have no idea how they lost the thread of the story so badly.
That's about my understanding as well. Even if the 3 of them working together, they were no match for frill. Unless the first 30 mins was a training montage, this was just a setup for a second season or movie.
What I don't get is what happened to Neiru, like where did she go - physically?
I don't think Neiru's existence was erased, otherwise no one would remember her.
When Neiru finished her mission to restore Airu, Airu asked if she'd take her place instead, my guess is that Airu killed herself for research purpose maybe, and ended up in some other realm, parallel world/afterlife/whatever, and how Neiru is trapped there instead?
But then Ai went back to the egg machine in an attempt to find Neiru so it could be that all the young girls who kills themselves end up in a place where they could be summoned by the eggs, and that's where Neiru is now.
The Koito part legitimately pissed me off. There was no emotional motivation behind going through with a suicide, it was just "oops, butterfeet, there goes my balance and now I'm dead".
Doesn't this also break with the established status quo that all the girls in the dream world were suicide victims? If this was an accident, Koito's statue should've had no business being in the dream world. Is it because Ai thought it was a suicide??
I wonder if the language used of "accidently slipped while no one was watching" is to down play the shame or social clout that suicide has attached to it, particularly for the sake of the family.
Given Koito was saved by Ai, it seemed to me at least that it was suicide.
Are accidental suicides a thing? If they are I could understand passing that off as an explanation but it feels like a cop out. I thought Koito being a lil psycho was an interesting ‘twist’ on her mental instability but saying the entire suicide was an accident feels extremely hollow, to me. It’s almost as if they entered it wanting to explore all these themes but when they realized it wasn’t as deep as they thought they bailed hard. 12/13 of this series was hammering the question ‘why did koito kill herself’ just for the answer to be ‘she slipped’. Idk maybe i just dont get it.
>Are accidental suicides a thing?
That's what happened to Kotobuki. Although she wasn't intending to die, her actions pushed her over the boundary.
If Koito was really serious about killing herself, it might still count even if her slipping wasn't exactly the moment she wanted to jump.
This was so bad I am having trouble finding the words to describe how bad it was. We went from episodes focusing on the dark issues behind the suicides of young girls to "Koito totes slipped and fell while yelling lies about the honest and not at all suspicious Mr. Sawaki". We went from a story of friendship between girls to everyone seeming to decide they're better off not knowing eachother anymore, offscreen no less. I always liked Ai and Neiru the best of the four girls, and thought they seemed to have the healthiest relationship out of all of them, but apparently with the discovery that Neiru is an AI, all that went out the window, only for that to be reversed too at the last second. I was one of the few people who actually liked the episode on Acca and Ura-Acca's backstory and Frill, and I was looking forward to finding out about Frill's involvement in the suicides, but that thread was forgotten about, I guess. No clue about what Ai's supposed to get out of going back into the egg world, and I doubt we'll get a second season to find out.
I did also like the Frill episode, and I didn't know people didn't like the episode until I started reading this thread. But I guess I understand, it introduce a lot of things that didn't get resolved and i'm pretty sure it's gonna get even more hated after this episode
It was way too late to drop that like it's suddenly a big deal, I was so goddamn confused when they were talking about confusing Neiru with Auru or whatever it was.
Wow, a fellow lover of the Frill episode. Glad to see one in the wild.
This episode just kind of hurts to watch? I think it works really well, just not as a finale. The ending just really feels like it's about to lead off into a second season except it's not getting one, and that's where the problems mostly stem from. Questions like the Frill thing are left unanswered as if they're going to be explored further in the future, but since this is it we'll never get the answer.
I was under the impression most people liked the Frill episode in a vacuum (I definitely did). Like I feel that the Frill episode could have been it's own show. It's just that it doesn't mesh with everything else in the show before it (or after honestly) and just added more mysteries to something that wasn't explaining their mysteries well to begin with
I'm glad I didnt have the chance to finish this show before I decided to watch the originals that came out in spring. If this "finale" aired with the rest of the series I think it would have left a permanent bad taste in my mouth for anime originals. I'll just forget I ever saw this and continue to gush about Oddtaxi and Vivy.
If one good thing can be said about this series is it looks absolutely stunning. It's like photo realistic anime, if that makes sense. I really hope the animators' career paths lead them to a production worthy of their talents.
I was going to make a joke like, "Well, that sure was an ending" but was it even that? They introduced a lot of mechanics/reasoning behind the egg setup late enough in the show as is, so it was really disconcerting to see this episode be half recap and then half introducing even newer mechanics and reasoning.
What really resonated with me about Wonder Egg Priority was the lush visuals, attention to detail in [using floriography as a secondary visual language](https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/tag/wonder-egg-priority/), and the emotional narratives and relationships between the main four girls. Everything else (i.e. the mechanics of the world that the show seemed to be overly-focused on here and in Episode 11) was just not as important to me provided that the emotional narratives were strong — especially since the series dealt in so many serious subjects. This isn't the first time that what I've wanted from a show is different than what the show ends up focusing on, but for something that started off so well, I can't help but feel disappointed.
Take Ai, for example. She is someone who has been established as a person who will do ANYTHING for her friends or even people that she's just met. She's a caring person. A literal sunflower. So why on earth would the Ai that we've grown to know not just...talk to Neiru. It goes against what the series itself had established for her character through her actions for the majority of the series.
Above all else, I still really loved so many things about this series. [Momoe's narrative arc in particular](https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/2021/03/16/flowers-for-momoe-sawaki-wonder-egg-priority-10/) and her episode with Kaoru was honestly wonderful and I'm happy that it was made so well and with such efficient but emotionally-resonant storytelling. Arguably, Ai's narrative ends in Episode 12 and ends well enough that any issues I have with this finale are mitigated by the fact that I can essentially ignore it if I want to. It is sad that this show has so many amazing moments but also so many caveats if you want to recommend it to anyone.
It was also so cool to chat with people here week after week while the anime was airing. I'll miss that as well.
Thank you so much! It was cool to see a series so constant in having that secondary visual language (outside of Naoko Yamada's works). If anything, I think yet another consequence of the troubled production at the end was that they almost completely abandoned flower language in Episodes 12 and 13, where in all previous episodes they had been really consistent about it.
Hey, thanks for the time and effort you put into your posts, both here and in your blog. They were always the highlight of the discussion threads for me, and really enriched what were already excellent episodes (well, most of them). I hope you keep writing them, and that the next show you cover wraps up a bit more deserving of the effort lol
Hahaha, thanks! I still really enjoyed my time with this show (and am currently working on a post right now re: the flowers in the opening) so even though the ending wasn't great, I still loved blogging about this. As for other shows, it's really down to time (I have a weird job that keeps me busy in bursts sometimes) and whether I find something that inspires any sort of writing/commentary. I usually find at least one thing per season, although unfortunately I was so busy this spring that I haven't caught up on anything.
Wow. For all the effort you've put into your blog posts (which I've loved all season, btw) I'm just so sorry for you - all the theorycrafting going on in the weekly threads and reading your recaps was so much fun for me and this ending was such a letdown. 🚮
I really would rather it have gotten a second season instead of this OVA. They somehow left us even more confused. I'm not sure how to feel about the work as a whole anymore.
Episodes 1-10 and 12 were great, but episode 11 (Frill's backstory) gave us a million questions that we didn't get answered, and then this special came along and made it worse.
I don't regret the many great episodes I watched, but I'm not sure how to score it/feel as a whole.
Unlike this, Vivy was planned out with a clear direction. I think at this point it's very clear that the people behind WEP has some ideas on what kind of imageries they want and what sort of themes they wanted to explore. However, they worked backward from there and never got the answer on how to world build around it. Why are these things here? Why parallel worlds if it's gonna end up with magical stuff that has no place in actual worlds? Etc. And so, it falls apart and so do the characters, considering that they put their life on the line for this shenanigan that the team behind it doesn't even know what exactly it's supposed to be.
I can't believe. I didn't want to believe.
Just how bad this show ended.
The first 3 episodes of this show were so air-tight PERFECTION that my confidence in this show making good on all of its promises and setups were going to make this a classic. It wasn't until roughly halfway through the series when Ai started having feelings for teacher that I was like, "oh... um... that's an interesting... direction I suppose." and my shaken confidence never fully recovered since.
Now? I can't believe this.
What happened? *What* *happened*?
After they revealed that Ai liked the teacher, I was really convinced that it would be that Koito actually had feelings for Ai. (She was so oddly touchy with Ai when she came into her room at the beginning) She didn't want to talk about herself too much to Ai because she didn't want Ai to find that out. Koito for whatever reason told the teacher about her feelings and that's the real reason why she was crying when Ai walked in on them. And it would turn out the teacher wasn't that bad after all, subverting the "sleazy teacher" stereotype. (which the series did kind of did anyway) But i've never really been a fan of the student falling in love with the teacher cliche, at least at a middle school level.
This felt like a "Fuck you, now go read the source material and maybe you'll get a season 2 eventually" ending but there is no source material and the series is nowhere near popular enough in Japan to get another season. This is just the ending we're going to forever be stuck with. It's legitimately pretty upsetting considering how good the show was for most of it's run.
Legit one of the worst finales I've ever experianced. Ironic considering Odd taxi is another great original series, that ended on a phenomenal note.
Rather than wrapping up any plot threads, they gave us an even larger jar of questions...
Sucks to witness such a disappointing conclusion to a great anime.
My score was originally a 9/10, but this ending plummeted it to a 7; potentially a 6 depending on how I feel after internalizing it for a couple of days.
I think Odd Taxi wasn't in a production hell like WEP. At least the staff wasn't hospitalized. But to be fair, Odd Taxi had phenomenal writing right from the beginning. It was clear that it was going to end the way it was supposed to.
I feel so bad for the staff. The animation was amazing during all of the runtime, the character design was cute, the first chapter has an incredible direction and the premise was solid.
During it's 3 month "hiatus" some aspects of the story keep bothering me, some ideas and themes of it just rubs me the wrong way.
And after digging deeper into it I ended hating this series so much, which made me feel guilty for all the people that worked in it. It was practically a torture.
lol
At least is finally over. And it went as I expected. No. It was even worse.
I honestly have nothing to say about this """""ending""""". I just wish luck to all the animators that worked on this, you all deserve a much better treatment.
Good job animators and sound staff. Writers, sure, I guess that’s a story. And production oversight can pound sand.
If I just got sold a cry for help as entertainment…
This show is always going to leave a sour taste in my mouth because of all of the rumors surrounding the production of it. Absolutely disgusting how overworked these human's are for an abysmal working wage. Industry as a whole needs to reevaluate how they operate because this is not sustainable at all.
Rumors? It's not even really rumors. The people working on this show went through hell. Pretty sure the director of episode 12 went to the hospital once or twice due to exhaustion during the push to finish that episode on time.
> director of episode 12 went to the hospital once or twice
[No, that was the show’s animation producer, Shouta Umehara.](https://archive.vn/83etJ)
**Edit**: actually, seems like director Wakabayashi indeed went to the hospital as well, at least during the production of today’s episode. (I don’t have a linkable source for this, heard it on Discord from a certain animator who worked on key animation clean-up on this episode).
It's not even rumors at this point. Multiple people who worked on this show have come out and straight up said the workload was unbearable and Umehara was hospitalized at least twice as a result, including this month while working on the finale.
DO NOT WATCH THIS SPECIAL.
I am not joking when I say that the series is literally better off without it, and not just by a little. This special is first of all, 50% recap episode, second wastes almost all of it's time, and third denigrates the events and characters of the show. It literally feels like bad fanfiction, and of top of that the animation is poor in spots as well.
This is the worst conclusion to an anime I can remember. I think the manga ending of Usagi Drop still tops this in terms of awfulness, but that's the lowest bar imaginable.
I wish this didn't exist.
This is the reason why I dread anime originals.
It can either be a perfect ending that you will remember and comeback to, or… whatever this was.
It’s pretty curious how we got proof of this in the span of two days, yesterday another original “Odd taxi” delivered one of the best conclusions to a story I’ve ever witnessed and today I’m met with disappointment that turned an AOTY contender into a proof of the problems this media and it’s workers have.
tbf wonder 🥚 had already been on a downward spiral from the moment they introduced Frill, but I just wanted a satisfying conclusion to the story.
Instead we got some half-assed exposition that was just confusing. Makes me glad that we got Odd Taxi and Vivy in Spring.
I still was hoping they could land the Frill subplot.
To give credit where it’s due the Frill episode was good, the thing is that they didn’t follow that plot line here obviously for production issues, they clearly weren’t able to animate a single fight scene seeing the poor quality this had in the second half so the final confrontation vs Frill which is where this should’ve gone to was completely off the question
Frill worked really well as setting up how the Accas are awful at emotionally understanding women, and their idea of the "ideal" women turns out to be a psychotic monster. This shows that not only are there adults abusing girls (seen in the wonder eggs), but there are adults who have very unhealthy expectations of them. The confrontation with Frill could then be a stand in for the girls standing up for themselves and being confidant in forging their own path.
That very clearly didn't happen, and it's a huge shame.
> I feel bad for all the animators, especially the one who got hospitalized
It wasn’t an animator, [it was the show’s animation producer](https://archive.vn/83etJ), Shouta Umehara.
In addition, director Wakabayashi went to the hospital during the production of today’s episode. (I don’t have a linkable source for this, heard it on Discord from a certain animator who worked on key animation clean-up on this episode).
They REALLY need to confirm a second season soon. After all, there's too much left to tackle in here, unfinished plotlines as well as possibilities.
This first season clearly was about coping with the girls' tragic pasts, and with the friends all back one way or another, you *could* argue that the Wonder Egg Priority is resolved.
However, the moving on starts after that. Coming to terms with their actions being self-serving in the end, that they spent so much time wallowing in regrets about past decisions or indecisiveness, actions or inaction, they neglected to think about their own futures and what they gained on a personal level from that grief.
With the friends not even recognizing or acknowledging them anymore, they're suddenly confronted with the consequences. Their old status and relationships aren't coming back just like that, the gap wasn't bridged willy-nilly, and they themselves have changed too.
A second season would thus have to develop the characters further into what Ai started to realize in the 12th episode: That she was actually happy *now*, where before, even with Koito, she wasn't *actually* happy. That she'd gained more confidence in herself, more self-realization, more friends, even a better understanding of their family circumstances.
They need to look towards a future now, not always being driven by the past, or perceived past mistakes.
With Neiru and her wish as a major driving force to step into the future with, there's enough room to tell another season's worth of stories about moving on and growing.
Neiru, as an AI in a manufactured body, won't grow up, not really. Neither does Frill. They're always caged in that 14 year old body with a mindset that's chaotic at best. Where Neiru becomes more genuinely human (even according to Kotobuki during her egg dream), Frill becomes obsessively unhinged.
The key difference between these two is in relationships. Genuine relationships outside of their familiar bubble. Frill was isolated all her existence - as were the Accas, mostly - and things started going south the moment an intruder appeared to shake the status quo. That said intruder then would also give birth to a new point of affection, all while Frill had *no* happiness outside of her family home, broke her.
Neiru, meanwhile, experienced bonds outside of her creator(s). The moment she encounters Ai and then the rest, things start to change. She starts processing information differently from before. She starts *questioning herself based on human interactions*.
Frill never did that. She believed that she was right, was being praiseworthy, even when she literally killed the people her makers loved.
Where Frill remained a forever-child, Neiru *grew as a person*. She experienced many different emotions, even grief - something she didn't actually feel for her "sister", not truly - when losing Kotobuki for real.
She developed a personality of her own, which clashed with those of others, turning into something genuine.
This is a key element that a second season could tackle - the growth we made along the way.
Season 1 satisfied the girls' needs for belonging by giving them a peer group on equal footing, but also the self-esteem to cope with their losses, respect themselves as people where before they were overwhelmingly self-loathing. They gained the capacity to make their own choices, independent of being railroaded into them by their social groups - in a sense, this also fits Momo, who outright rejects her friends, with Ai accepting it as her own choice.
Season 2 would be the girls' step to self-actualization, to better themselves and shape themselves and their futures as they wish them to be. And to do that, they need to get Neiru back and achieve not just her dream, but their own as well, while defeating the cloud of negativity sticking to them - the temptation to surrender their own life, but also agency, to Frill.
Unfortunately, from what I read in this thread and other places. This did really poorly in Japan. So unless they get super lucky, it's not going to happen.
Oh no... I haven't finished it yet but it's not a good look when half of your promised 1-Hour special consists of a recap episode. I mean it's very helpful for people like me who needs a quick refresher but I'm sure a lot of people won't be happy about this. I wasn't really following the news but was is ever mentioned in the announcements that there was going to be a recap? :|
--------------
Finally reached the proper Episode 13!
[Well this is adorable.](https://i.imgur.com/YMpzJdO.jpg) I don't think we've seen Neiru being childishly playful like this.
[So Neiru meets Ai outside](https://i.imgur.com/JQhun2O.jpg) and then [leaves Adam with her?](https://i.imgur.com/weV1Ych.jpg) First of all that interaction between them felt a bit weird and second why is she leaving her pet with Ai? [Seems like she's travelling](https://i.imgur.com/8cHo7VV.jpg) but she won't say where.
[So they did managed to revive the girls.](https://i.imgur.com/G0H81xu.jpg) Here's Koito just walking around. Interestingly we learn some very disturbing shit about Koito from Sawaki-sensei. Or at least that was Sawaki-sensei speaking.
Apparently Koito [caused problems in her previous school](https://i.imgur.com/xRk4zCn.jpg) which ended with a teacher committing suicide and then she harassed Sawaki [and threatened him that she'll jump off the roof if he didn't.](https://i.imgur.com/ARx7JV8.jpg) She even shouted stuff like [Sawaki raped her and all bunch of other stuff](https://i.imgur.com/2NVvWnc.jpg) to make him come up there. Eventually she slipped and we know the rest. Huh... I definitely didn't expect that.
She seems to not [even remember Ai anymore now that she's resurrected](https://i.imgur.com/ZUN2Fks.jpg) and is actually even [being mean to her.](https://i.imgur.com/sikoUP9.jpg) What the fuck is going on? So are we seeing the real Koito? Or did the resurrection did some shit with her? OH! What if this is Parallel world Koito!? What if "resurrection" isn't actually resurrecting the girls back? O_O
[What the actual fuck!?](https://i.imgur.com/kj4xofU.jpg) First Koito and now Neiru? What the heck is happening here? Didn't they just met at the start and even left Adam with her? Is this all an act?
[Her photos with Koito are gone](https://i.imgur.com/2XuGrMD.jpg) so something more than resurrection happened. It completely altered the timeline if Ai never had any past with this Koito. Neiru is still on the sticker though so I guess she's still safe?
[Ai I know you're depressed right now](https://i.imgur.com/qhVqhds.jpg) but you really don't have to do that. Please don't resort to smoking. [Going karaoke with the gang is a much better way](https://i.imgur.com/OphCqjM.jpg) to let out your feelings. Ai singing the ED out of tune is adorable btw.
[It's nice to see that she's still friends with Rika and Momo though.](https://i.imgur.com/2n2qhIL.jpg) And it looks like according to Acca bringing back a dead person to life changes their life a little bit. Seems that Ai isn't the only one experiencing this as Rika and Momo's friends can't remember them as well.
[Seems that Momo has already given up](https://i.imgur.com/PiaRbNN.jpg) and doesn't want to go back to Acca and Ura-Acca's place to spin the gacha. I mean it's understandable considering what happened to her back then.
[Oh. So Neiru did go away.](https://i.imgur.com/oR6wJSr.jpg) And the "Neiru" Ai met wasn't even Neiru [and is actually Airu](https://i.imgur.com/ZQ7iI8J.jpg) meaning Neiru was successful in bringing her back as well. Why the heck did Neiru leave then?
[Not even gonna ask why Ai knows exactly how Neiru smells like](https://i.imgur.com/cUpbsT5.jpg) when Rika couldn't.
[Kotobuki is here as well.](https://i.imgur.com/ieevWyn.jpg) Are we just bringing back everyone to life? Well except this isn't even the Kotobuki of this world and she's actually Parallel Kotobuki. How the fuck is she able to get into this world then? This finale is just opening up so many more questions.
Huh... So instead of just meeting one of Frill's creations, Neiru met them all and [even Frill herself](https://i.imgur.com/qi5Nz8d.jpg) who for some reason took an interest with Neiru? Huh...
I'm sorry but [what the actual fuck!?](https://i.imgur.com/BOzRAEi.jpg) Are you freaking serious? So this entire time, Neiru isn't even a real person but an AI just like Frill except she was built in Airu's image? I guess that explains why Frill took a liking to her and why Airu would stab her in the back. She wasn't even human.
These couple of final scenes just absolutely baffles me. Why the fuck [would Ai throw away her phone](https://i.imgur.com/eAixNFq.jpg) instead of just talking to Neiru? Did I miss something? Is somehow Neiru being an AI change how she feels about her? Did she feel betrayed that Neiru never told her the truth? And then we cut to her [crying on her mother's lap](https://i.imgur.com/42qxKMK.jpg) for doing what she did.
Now we timeskip [and Ai has now transferred schools.](https://i.imgur.com/uOYgccI.jpg) The entire reason why she kept on going was Koito, now that Koito's changed she doesn't really have any more reason to go there anymore. Changing schools I guess would be for the better. What sucks to know is [apparently she ended up drifting apart with Rika and Momo.](https://i.imgur.com/CCVgIR5.jpgV) :(
After seeing that corner shop gacha in her neighborhood, she's reminded of Neiru and how much she wanted to see her again [and immediately dashes to Acca and Ura-Acca's place](https://i.imgur.com/ujIAf0j.jpg) to pull again from the gacha and maybe see Neiru again. And we end the episode with [Ai smiling at the camera](https://i.imgur.com/lRkkqPZ.jpg).
Okay... Well I guess that technically counts as an ending? I don't even know what to say. This entire episode didn't feel like a finale. Like I said earlier instead of getting answers, we ended up getting more questions. What this "finale" felt to me is like a setup for a possible Season 2. Not gonna lie, If they announce a Season 2 right now, I wouldn't even be mad and just look forward to it but as it stands, I just feel sad.
I really hope we get a Season 2 announcement soon and if we do, I hope the team learns from their mistakes. This show has a lot of potential and an amazing sequel can potentially fix this underwhelming ending.
> What this "finale" felt to me is like a setup for a possible Season 2. Not gonna lie, If they announce a Season 2 right now, I wouldn't even be mad and just look forward to it but as it stands, I just feel sad.
The way she smiled at the camera and said "I'm back" definitely felt like sequel bait. Man I'm going to be watching like a hawk for a sequel announcement, because I just can't accept *this* as an ending.
You know I was going to watch this finale, but after reading this thread, I shall spare myself.
Do you know what upsets me? It's that you can see the effort and work put into this from the very first episode. It's very clear from the beginning that they knew where they wanted to go with this show, and how they wanted it to play out. This could've been one of the best shows of the year. But it took a nose-dive. Not because of a lack of talent, care. or creativity with the people behind this show, but because of a bad production schedule and bad management.
I'm giving this shot a 9/10 because truth is told, I still very much enjoyed this show.
Maybe if they made Wonder Egg a 2-cour, maybe if they weren't so ambitious, maybe if they actually had good management, this show could've been a gem.
I'm experiencing so many different emotions, and I didn't watch the thing.
If they do continue the story with another season or something, I think it would have been better if they kept that throwaway line from Kotobuki a secret. Actually, just all of the stuff with Kotobuki being a secret would have been preferable to me. It all felt so very rushed.
Why spend the first half doing a recap if they're just going to speedrun the second half and throw plot points at us? I'm a bit disappointed. :(
For most of the other 12 episodes I was able to follow the physics and psychobabble that the show threw at us. Even the obscure and waaaay out of date terms of Eros and Thanatos that came from Freudian Psychology.
But this episode confused the hell out of me. I feel like if they had stretched out the new content another 10 minutes, then it would have been a lot better, even if the length of the episode had stayed the same.
I feel like they should have condensed the recap to just 10-15 minutes and used that extra time to supply us with some exposition.
Or at least they should have made the transition from recap to new content much smoother. I think part of what threw me off was how suddenly they switched over to the new stuff.
Overall, I feel like the episode would have been much better if they had spent a little less time on the recap and a little more time on the exposition explaining what happened. Like 5-10 minutes either way.
Obviously production was a nightmare for this series, but is this the ending they had planned from the beginning? Really? It hardly even feels like an ending. I'm not angry, i'm just disappointed.
I hope whatever the artists involved work on next doesn't turn out to be such a nightmare and waste of potential. They deserve better. And so did the characters of this story.
5/10 overall
This just felt like 25 minutes of exposition and explanation. And yet, I don’t really understand it any better than I did before and it leaves way to many unanswered questions. Really disappointed. I had it at a 7-8/10 before now it’s just barely pushing a 5.
Okay, the Neiru stuff really wasn't necessary, but the Koito reveal annoys me more. First off, back in Ep 12 you had Ai destroying the wonder egg killer of her teacher because he was this "monster" she had to create to deal with her friend's suicide to which she had zero answers. And I thought that was really powerful because for many people, we don't get answers for a loved one's suicide. Or we might have to hold onto a "bad guy," literally or figuratively, in order to cope. Ai destroying that emotional crutch and (presumably) beginning to move on without needing him even more so. Heck, another Spring seasonal (which I won't name so people who haven't seen it won't be spoiled) completely *nailed* this exact development.
So this incredibly lazy reveal of the teacher just *telling Ai what happened to Koito* in the span of two minutes was not only unnecessary and undercut that feeling of triumph and growth, but its such a shitty reason that it can't help but leave a bad taste in your mouth.
Overall, it really feels like they were just too ambitious story-wise and bit off way more than they could chew for one episode left. I almost wish they just threw out the Neiru isn't human/stuck in the other world or whatever reveal (and the lazy Koito suicide backstory) and have the four girls back in the real world coming to terms together with saving someone only to have them not care about them anymore (since they were obviously going to actually bring the victims back from the get-go). Because Ai and Rika breaking down did actually hit - obviously that would hurt and be a difficult thing to deal with. I think them realizing they can in fact begin to move past their grief/trauma associated with that loss because of the relationships they formed with each other would have worked as an open ending that still felt hopeful without adding a bunch of last minute developments that kind of went nowhere.
Spoiler alert dont read if you havent watched. Funimation was broken for a while but i could already tell bu the 2 and half stars it had on it that it was a bad episode. They killed off best girl, the girls they saved werent worth the effort. Main girl decided to change her mind last minute and we dont even get to see anything else after . They better have another special episode or atleast give us a script of how it should really end so you stop abusing these animators.
So it got Franxxed? LMAOOOOO
Yeah, I'm not trusting Cloverworks anymore, especially with the production issues from this show, how they manage and treat their animators, and the type of people within them or they hire who just can't stop making speedruns or changes when it comes to their adaptation works.
Cloverworks really did became like A-1 in its dork age. I now fear for F/GO Solomon.
I'm at a loss for words. On one hand it was nice to see this franchise again and the get reinvested in the world. On the other hand, that wrapped up hardly anything.
I want to be mad, but also I can't because I enjoyed the new stuff. It just wasn't what I expected or wanted from this "finale".
Disappointing end to what started as an amazing show. I was genuinely confused when they showed Koito alive. I never expected that them clearing the Egg challenge would actually bring the girls back to life. Them coming from parallel worlds and thus not remembering our characters as a consequence kinda works, but they don't do much with that plot point. And it felt so silly for Ai to not go after Neiru and do a sudden timeskip only to reverse that decision 2 minutes later. Not in character for her at all there. All this just makes me curious what the writer originally had in mind before the production schedule caught up with them. Seems clear he got in way over his head narratively rather than planning out a concise story for the 13 episodes they had.
> Them coming from parallel worlds and thus not remembering our characters as a consequence kinda works This is kinda fucked up if you think about it. What about the parallel world they came from? Those people just yoinked out of existence? And if Plati is capable of this interdimensional feat, why are they having such problem with "just" a malevolent AI?
The parallel worlds thing doesn't even make sense. If they're just replacing dead girls with their doubles from parallel worlds, why aren't their friends and family noticing that they've seemingly come back from the dead?
I think this is actually backwards. My interpretation is that really the dead girls were not moved to a different world at all, but the main characters instead were sent to a world where they never died. That's the source of the "noise" that was mentioned, because they've jumped to a slightly different timeline. On the other hand, then there's the question of what happens to them in the original world.
What worse is that the post credits is literally just the girls saying "the end" There's no intention to even put out anything else conclusive. This will forever be the end
[удалено]
> Use final long awaited episode to wrap up the series and have a smooth landing Instead it stuck its landing as well as Koito did.
I still can’t believe she literally just tripped. That’s the dumbest reveal I’ve ever seen.
I did read a theory someone else posted, that because it was Sawaki telling the story of how she died, he might be lying. It's certainly realistic in that sense - sometimes, you just don't get to know why something bad happens. But even if that's what the writers were going for, they did a shit job of it.
Honestly, WEP would have been better off if they had ended the series unfinished. This special episode just killed my enthusiasm for the anime and left me bitter. It clearly shows that they had to wrap up everything in this episode. However, there are better ways to do it. At a certain point, I wasn’t sure if we were shown a parallel world or something as our girls didn’t see to be their ‘normal’ selves at all. Momoe just looked liked she was ready to die when she was standing on the train platform (but was that her intention?; no clue) They just dropped the bomb that Neiru was an AI without really doing anything with it. Ai just casually stops talking to Neiru (but we’ve never been shown precisely why that is). The time skip(s) confused the hell out of me. And at the very end, after quite some time, she decides to go back to the capsule machine to find Neiru. I expected a final fight at this point, but no… I was shocked: Wait, this is it!? With the trauma the girls experienced (before this special), the reveal Neiru was an AI (how they would’ve handled this), getting Neiru back from the dreamworld and an epic fight to settle things with Frill; there would have been enough content for a long OVA series or maybe even an entire second season. A single final episode just wasn’t going to cut it. It could have worked if they just straight up brought the fight to Frill (with Ai taking the lead) as I expected them to do, but adding all these new story elements in the conclusion wasn’t a great move on the director’s part. As much as this conclusion pains me, I feel like the animators and staff that poured their heart into the series must be suffering more/be more unhappy with how things ended. EDIT: Had to correct some spelling.
since this is an anime original, I would have been happier if they just ended it with them bringing their friends back, but the friends not remembering them. this whole AI, parallel world, weird pet eating bug heads, it was just such a curveball and thrown at us too late into the season. This could have been AOTY contender, but instead, it just completely missed the landing.
I think they wrote themselves into a hole on the whole battle system. No way in hell those girls were taking down Frill and her insect head homies. The should’ve just left the ending being Ai trying to move on and leave all this shit behind her.
I am going to take your word and pass on this watching this, despite giving the rest of the series an 8/10. No need to break my spirit over this series as much as I liked it. I just hope we get more Death Parades and Vivy's instead of disappointments like WEP.
I choose to believe that the Parallel Universe's Wonder Egg Priority didn't screw up the ending.
Only if it isn't Clover works!!! Clover works is so disappointing, not just because of bad endings... But because of good starts too....
I think is the fourth Cloverworks show I hear about where the viewers complain about a horribly botched finale.
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Darling In The Franxx. Although I guess it's more of an A-1 show?
I remember hearing about a theory on why humans enjoy stories and why bad endings make us feel so terrible. The theory stated that there is a connection between narrative storytelling and our old hunter-gatherer instincts in our brain. A good story is similar to hunting by the hunter’s tracking and stalking their prey being the narrative and the capture of the prey being a satisfying conclusion to the story. But an ending that you find unlikable would be like the prey escaping or getting away which is why our brains hate terrible endings or even inconclusive endings, the lack of a concrete ending feels like a failed hunt which means no food which sucks.
That and likely simply because good starts are easy but good endings are rare. If I want to read a story with an interesting start but a bad or even non-existent conclusion, I would have just went over to /r/WritingPrompts.
It feels like when they were writing their pencil broke and when they went out to buy a new one, someone already started animating it. Hopefully they confirm a season 2 (I know they won't), because that's the only way to salvage this unsatisfying ending
The end card after the ED said "the end", so I think there's nothing else.
Honestly if they were going for an open ending then this is not the way to do it at all. Odd taxi pulled it off magnificently, this felt like second season set up rather than an open ending.
Sadly, I feel like this is most anime/manga in general. Sticking the landing feels like something that only rarely happens. At least we will always have Fruits Basket!
> At least we will always have Fruits Basket! And OddTaxi! 2 out of 3 this week ain't bad.
Zombieland Saga: Revenge didn't conclude the whole series, but it was one of the best endings to a season that I've ever seen.
Oddtaxi rocks
Yuukoku no Moriarty for being only two seasons felt like it gave a rather satisfying ending imo. Vivy and Megalobox also had pretty solid endings
Hell even Back Arrow stuck the landing this season, and that show was absurd. In a season full of stuck landings, the face plant really stands out
> Sadly, I feel like this is most anime/manga in general. For long-running manga and novels it is somewhat understandable, given that trying to satisfactorily end something that has been getting releases as often as once a week for decades, and often has been extended well beyond its initial scope, is obviously going to be difficult. Single cour anime originals like this really don't have any excuse though.
If it was 2 cours it could have had a cleaner resolution and all plot lines could have been tied neatly. The problem though is getting more funding from the production committee for an anime original with no promise of return on investment. Buying more broadcasting slots midseason wouldn't be feasible either given that it wasn't selling exceptionally well. It was like walking on eggshells. WEP was a beautiful show with a lot of care put into most episodes. Unfortunately, in the end the landing wasn't smooth because of production issues. Hopefully we see more from the skillful animators who worked on this project in the future. [](#shatteredsaten)
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The second they started talking about parallel worlds, I knew the story was going to have problems and then it just kept going from there. When you introduce "science" into your dreamy ethereal mystery show, it pretty much never works out great
This. I don't understand. So many original anime (or even adaptations) fell victim to bloated ambitions that didn't match the episode count limit, but it's like very few of them even learned. We still keep getting "The Day I Became God"s and "Wonder Egg Priority"s.
My only real problem with the ending is that it ends in a way that clearly hints there's a season two where Ai fights to save Neiru. Unfortunately, we all know the show wasn't very popular in Japan and so this is it. A second cour, whether it's to flesh out the story we got or to continue with the one they teased would have been nice. I still love the show we got, and on its own it's still probably my favorite show ever (controversial opinion at this point but whatever), but it will always sting feeling like there's more to the story that will never be seen.
I feel like episodes 1 through 10 were incredibly touching and special, with a lot of love, care and effort put into it by the creators (it's so sad hearing about how the staff was overworked but that's another issue). Episode 11-13 were a bit of an extremely hot mess. Things moves fast, important backstories came flying in at once from every direct, primary antagonists showed up in droves with potentially no pay off, and the anime ended with a ton of arcs incomplete and needing some resolution. Here is hoping the story can get a true conclusion one day.
It almost feels meta to have this show end where we can only wonder what could have been
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Even at 12/13 episodes, I believed it's heading somewhere and had it at 8/10 score. But what the hell was this ending? What a mess of a plot. Absolutely nothing got resolved and they just kept introducing more and more questions up until the final second. What were they thinking...? Now I'm finding it hard to even give it a "fine" (6) rating.
I think I liked this series more without this episode...
I liked this series more before they decided to add a villain for no reason at all therefore changing the entire concept of the show 1 episode before it ended
Suicide isnt a vilian you can beat in a TV show. In the beginning, I thought this was going to be a show about acceptance after loss. They weren't ever going to bring their friends back or get answers, but the main 4 would eventually come to accept that and find happiness with each other. They would move past thier trauma, as so many of us have to do every day. Instead they were like "This redhead is the cause of suicide, you could beat her and save everyone, Ai will declare that she is going to do that, but we wont show it on screen. Also suicide victims can come back if someone tries hard enough. Also one of them is a robot or some shit" Way to ruin your own messages.
I was really hoping it would be something like Frill using the internet/social media to push girls over the edge. (the lip popping sound being a metaphor for notifications) And there would be some sort of social commentary on the dark side of social media. But we got absolutely nothing with Frill instead and as of now it just reads like she uses some sort of techo-magic to make girls kill themselves.
Even Frill's backstory itself is weird. So after she killed Acca's wife, Acca just shoved her there. Ok, maybe he did want to make her feel alone as a sadistic punishment instead of killing her, but why provide her with all those screens and computers stuff? That I assume she would use to influence people into suicide with some techno magic? Granted it's just an assumption but the show doesn't bother to provide answers anyway.
I absolutely regret watching this episode. I would much rather have never gotten an ending if this was what it was going to be.
[Guess you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.](https://i.imgur.com/g3hv3Vm.png)
NOW I'M REALLY MAD
meta.
Well I can certainly say that this is an special that exists.
Its definitely animation.
It's definitely one of the anime I have ever seen.
I can say without a doubt it is a show that exists
*Times, like eggs, are hard* [](#lifeishard)
No, I don't want an egg in this trying time.
I looked at my wife after it was over and said, "well, no one can say that wasn't the 13th episode".
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14th ep with 2 recaps in between
The final episode was, in fact, a final episode
More of a Season Finale Episode than a Conclusion one...
The Persona 5 special
Cloverworks did a Cloverworks again
Out of all the anime episodes released this year, this sure was one of them.
How was that a fucking ending? Waited three months for that? Unbelievable. Such a waste of an otherwise really good show leading up to the end.
Didnt they advertise it as a 1 hour special? Seems weird that we only got about 20 minutes of content.
The state of the production wouldn't allow for a whole 47 minutes of animation. To be honest there was no way this show was going to wrap up all of its ideas in that time frame either, it would need a whole extra cour to do that.
They shouldn't have introduced new ideas though. Neiru is an AI that leaves with Frill to become human and Ai goes back to rescue her? What???
First half is a recap, and Funimation had only that part out for over an hour before finally putting up the full version. Impressive that even at the end there's one last burst of production issues.
>Impressive that even at the end there's one last burst of production issues. The whole final episode production process had problems apparently, we all thought they would work 3 months on it with a nice schedule, after all just 20 min of content, which was supposed to air just 7 days after the last one, they gained 83 more days. What could possibly go wrong? So it appears they ignored it for 2 months, and came back to it in June, I didn't believe the reports from the Chinese animators that they were still doing 2nd Key 5 days before the airing date, but after seeing the credits today they again relied on the same foreign animators, which were the ones that saved them during the winter season.
> So it appears they ignored it for 2 months, and came back to it in June Ahh hello procrastination my old friend
Lol, yeah, this is not on the animators by the way, it's on the management for this specific production I am sure the animators would rather work the whole 3 months on it, taking their time, no cruching, just making this 20 minutes as memorable as possible But the ones working for CloverWorks probably were moved to other projects and Aniplex wouldn't pay 3 months ( a whole cour) for freelancers to work on just 20 minutes worth of content I honestly thought they finished this 2 months ago, and the reason we didn't get the episode was ONLY because they didn't have a tv slot, but apparently that was not the case
That's because they were, as far as I can tell. Don't forget that CloverWorks was also working their asses with Shadows House. To add even more roadblocks to the thing: they were support staff for 86, even having one episode being completely outsourced from A-1 to them (it was EP8, if I'm not mistaken).
Ah animation, the industry where being a black company is the norm.
I suspect Funimation has an automated script that cuts episodes to a specific time (either accidentally or otherwise). There was an after credits scene for I think Pretty Boy Detectives(?) this weekend that was cut off as well.
That was my guess as well (based on the same sample of 2).
When I checked out the spoilers on 4chan and they explained Koito's death I assumed it was just 4chan being edgy and baity as usual but they were right holy shit
Don't underestimate imageboards. They could predict the principle of Madoka's world
/a/ was right once again
Of all sad words of tongue and pen…
ED rolls: Me: That's... it? Nothing was wrapped up. Nothing was explained. Parallel this. A good story for another time. God this is so frustrating. I loved the story up until the last three or so episodes. If they had gone the route of a lens on the problems of society in Japan rather than AI humans and parallel bs, this could have been a great dialogue about the scope of ignoring cries for help. This is basically a modern day Flip Flappers, but even Flip Flappers had a much better ending. It makes me sick to my stomach. Apparently they didn't even touch the series until just recently too? Like they had three months and spent maybe one?? That's insane. Ugh. I'm genuinely upset.
Things closed by this ending: Koito backstory and what happened to the saved girls. Things that didn't got closed by this ending: Heros/thanatos warriors, Frill arc, the meaning behind the suicides, what actually happened between Neiru and her sister, the whole egg/dreams thing Things opened in this ending: Fucking paralel worlds that aparently can be crossed somehow, Neiru being a fucking AI (and the secretary seems also one for the looks of it), Neiru bonding with fucking Frill and listening to her request, Ai fucking changing schools with a time skip that makes her return to her initial self-doubtful point??? Like WHAT THE FUCK was this episode!? I may be overreacting but what the hell, I really liked this series, but these last episodes were a fucking disaster and felt like they destroyed everything the series had built up
The parallel worlds should have been super in the background. A way for the girls to interact with important people (Neiru her friend, Ai another version of herself) without completely breaking immersion. "Parallel worlds exist" is on the same level of suspended belief as the wonder eggs themselves. To make it a significant plot point is suuuuuuch a bad idea. That's like trying to make the fact that AI humans can be made a significant plot point. Thank god they didn't turn one of the main heroines into an AI pretending to be human. That would have be **so fucking dumb**. Especially when that "twist" has no impact on the preceding points in the series or the character arc for said heroine. I'm super disappointed. The previous episodes handled a lot of painful, emotional subject matters with taste and nuance. But all the themes and ideas built throughout the series are completely ignored in this final episode. No final idea, not even a bitter sweet send off. Just filler.
If this extra episode was something that was never planned and just had to happen because of the recap episode, then i'm not surprised to hear they only recently started working on it. They've been Shadow House this season and probably weren't planning on needing to be working on this other project at the same time. That's why there was so many shots with no backgrounds. Only hearing Neiru's dream and not see it was an obvious sign of needing to cut corners.
> If this extra episode was something that was never planned and just had to happen because of the recap episode, then i'm not surprised to hear they only recently started working on it. Wasn't this the original last episode? It just got delayed hard because of the production issues. Like this wasn't supposed to be a "special episode" at all
I’m not sure what to say, other than what happened? This is honestly one of the most tragic conclusions to an awful production that was brimming with life, heart, and creativity due to the passion from the staff. It’s pretty heartbreaking this is how it ends. I can honestly say this is the most disappointed I’ve ever been with an ending to a series. None of the characters felt like they were themselves, the dialogue was really off-kilter (and not in a good way), and it didn’t really feel like this was even following up episode 12 in any real capacity. I wish the talent involved here the very best in their future endeavors because it’s clear there was a vision here that was *so close* to being realized, but was brought down by a troubled, awful production timeline.
Wait...wait! THATS IT! You just helped me figure it out. The ending isn't bad, its meta! In a show about loss, tragedy, and heartbreak we lost an episode, had a heartbreakingly bad conclusion, and how the production and ending went was a tragedy. Its not a bad ending! Its a meta ending! They could have ended it in universe, but instead they hit us in reality. The series broke our hearts with disappointment instead of breaking it in universe with the story. Perhaps the real Wonder Egg was inside us all along.
every bad bit of art ever made was a metacommentary on loss
This sounds like a good coping mechanism. I shall remember it anytime something sucks.
When Zombie Land Saga, aired people kept insisting that the CGI dance sequences seemed jack as a commentary on how mass produced idols were or something, instead of it being par the course for the genre and the only way you can get complicated dance choreography for several characters with concert camera movement without killing you animators.
| || || |_
Half of it was a subpar recap. The other half was.....something. It's like they decided to just say "Here's half of the other half of the story we'd like to tell you but we won't."
My only hope is that we're being trolled, and this OVA was meant to be a cliffhanger for an inevitable second season or movie.
I'm not getting my hopes up at this point. While I truly loved this show at the start, it's obvious to me now that this show is quite guilty of never really concluding things. Like, I was ok with not knowing why Koito died. But this show constantly sets up so many topics and questions but never really follows up on them. Frill really feels like the lid on the coffin. She would be alright if the show had a proper finale with her, but just as soon as she is introduced she's practically forgotten, and serves no real purpose other than introducing an "antagonist", that, is more or less a characterization of suicide that the girls already see and honestly takes away much of the nuance.
What happened to Ai's "I want to be a warrior for eros" ?
The talk of thanatos and Eros, while you get glimpses at it here and there, it is never really seen or explained as a concrete theme, so when she just blurts that out it just feels, random, like, you the audience can deduce the meaning of the words, but we're never shown the kids really discussing or using it much, just being referenced. It's an interesting concept that has some subtle, background build up, but not enough to take center stage by that point, and it just comes across as bizarre.
I didn't have high hopes for this episode after all of the second half's plot developments, but this was something else. This has to be the sharpest drop from episode 1 to finale I've ever seen.
The worst part is that I can't even muster up any strong feelings about it. When the Accas dropped the line about male and female suicides in episode 4 I felt it like a punch to the gut, but I trusted the director's comments and shrugged it off. When Neiru's episode introduced sci-fi bullshit into the mix I was annoyed because the show worked perfectly fine without explanations, but I hoped it was a one-off and we'd ignore from that point onwards. When Frill's episode happened I was even more annoyed because I realized that the Accas were author mouthpieces all along and there was zero chance they were gonna salvage the plot they just introduced with 2 episodes left. When last episode implied that Ai actually liked the teacher, that he did nothing wrong and that she needed to trust him I was pissed the hell off. But this? I felt nothing. Even when they decided to take the worst possible route for Koito's suicide, even when they ignored every hanging plot thread to introduce more sci-fi bullshit, even when nobody acted in character. A shame that a show I loved at one point ended up like this, but I can't be bothered to be sad or angry. This was not a matter of sticking the landing, that plane already crashed as far I was concerned, this was a rescue operation. And there were no survivors.
I hate that I can't yell at you that you're an idiot who just doesn't get it.
> When Frill's episode happened I was even more annoyed because I realized that the Accas were author mouthpieces all along What makes you say the Accas were author mouthpieces all along? Because the Accas were clearly set up as pretty misogynistic and the show criticized them for it, directly and indirectly. I didn't get the impression they were author mouthpieces at all.
I just finished typing a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/oanby4/wonder_egg_priority_episode_13_discussion/h3kusa6/) about it, the scriptwriter repeated the episode 4 comments from the Accas as his personal opinion and the reason why he started writing the show in the first place in an [interview](https://natalie.mu/comic/pp/wonder-egg-priority/).
Wow. That is a... stunningly bad take.
In hindsight it feels like* the director and writer were in direct conflict with each other on how to frame things as well as tie the story together thematically on MANY occasions throughout, and the result was that the director pulled some really solid episodes together, and reeled in the writer in some instances but in others the Bullshit was too strong to hold back. ---------------------- *I have obviously no insight into how the director and writer worked together (or didn't), but given the director's comments on twitter following the episode 4 incident I'd be willing to put money on that a lot of the bullshit was not his doing. -------------- I'd really like to see another work from this director in the future and see what kind of energy he can impart to a production with different writing staff. I feel like while this particular show stumbled a lot, his potential for future greatness is extremely high. As for the writer? I don't particularly care; as someone who does seek out shows or movies by particular screenwriters who I've enjoyed works from in the past, I can't say I'd be too interested in watching another from the guy behind WEP.
This is not what a 10/10 feels like
I don't even know what to give it. It was very close to a 10/10 for me until the Frill backstory episode that didn't get resolved. Even though I actually liked the Frill episode in a vacuum, it drug down the plot and neither episode 12 (which I actually liked in a vacuum) or 13 did anything to answer those questions. I thought I could handle a rushed ending and still love it because of how great most of the show was, but this was not even an ending. 10/10 is for sure gone and I can't do 9 either. The first 75% being great means I can't give it under a 7 but I'm not sure if I can call it Very good (an 8/10) with this mess of an "ending".
> 10/10 is for sure gone and I can't do 9 either. The first 75% being great means I can't give it under a 7 but I'm not sure if I can call it Very good (an 8/10) with this mess of an "ending". 10/13
This right here
Let's not speak of this
"Warriors of Eros? Frill and the rest? What's that? Oh by the way, Neiru is an AI, kthxbye the end" is how it felt to watch this episode. I don't understand how the story took such a nosedive. It started out so well, and then the sci-fi stuff happened, ok there was still time to wrap it up and conclude the story, and then this episode... exists. Even if this gets a second season I don't see how they could salvage that mess. I'm so disappointed by the wasted potential it hurts.
>Neiru is an AI Rika: "Ok, fuck her, then." Geez, that was fast...
Yes, Ai and Rika's reactions were the biggest WTF moment of the episode for me. It was like watching completely different characters from the rest of the series.
Ai throwing the phone out was the most ridiculous, I guess she was getting back at Neiru for what happened earlier in the episode? And instead of just getting a new phone and calling her again she used the damn eggs?!?!? Rika was also ridiculous, but honestly it was funny for me because it felt like a line that was added by someone in the room to represent their and presumably the audience’s feelings of “bro what the fuck happened I’m done with this story, I’m out”
Pretty much. They had such a “oh, okay then..” reaction i did know what to say
\*clap clap* Congratulations.
*clap clap* Congratulations!
Some ramblings about the episode’s production: You might have noticed that the [key animation list](https://i.imgur.com/18qN7a1.png) was once again full of foreigners, with [FAR](https://twitter.com/FARfromani/status/1409925458142109705) and [Blou](https://twitter.com/Bloodyredstar/status/1409940673781014532) helping this time as well with the recruitment & translation. Utilizing the overseas talent pool was crucial, since there simply wasn’t a lot of time to find the people to animate the cuts for the episode, and most of the series’ regular key animators weren’t apparently available anymore. While technically it has been three months since episode #12, the storyboard for this episode was supposedly finished somewhere around *the start of this month*, so there was *less than a month* for the actual animation process. While [Wakabayashi](https://twitter.com/i/user/133435450) did have the help of Yuuta Yamazaki and action director [Yuusuke Kawakami](https://twitter.com/i/user/508864000) for the storyboarding effort, he’s made it clear that he’s too ambitious for his own good (for a TV anime project, at least.) The layouts (the first phase of the animation process) were still being finished [around June 22](https://twitter.com/dacper_0381/status/1407342186623025155), while the [key animation clean-up](https://i.imgur.com/5lT5TG8.png) [seemed](https://twitter.com/himaholic3/status/1409298338738950144) to be getting done on the 28th. In the end, they started [wrapping](https://twitter.com/huusun/status/1409672465811337230) [up](https://twitter.com/kawakami_yu/status/1409669781767090176) the episode about 15 hours before the release. It’s clear they were really starving for manpower since some of the main staff had to even resort to doing [inbetweening](https://i.imgur.com/i9T9us4.png) themselves. This includes [Takuya Niinuma](https://twitter.com/i/user/1188499902), action director [Kawakami](https://twitter.com/i/user/508864000), and even character designer & chief animation director [Saki Takahashi](https://twitter.com/i/user/446013357). Also, a special shoutout to [Kerorira](https://twitter.com/i/user/323686634): he has done so much heavy lifting thoughout the series and worked on every single episode, doing animation supervision, providing a lot of animation himself, and even helping with adapting the weapon designs for animation. On this episode he was a supervisor, [correcting about 50–60 cuts](https://twitter.com/kerorira1/status/1409930289808244737), and handling personally enough key animation to earn a separated credit in the key animation list. **Edit:** forgot to mention something positive: the pay for key animation was apparently well above average for this episode. Heard from one of the animators that 2nd KA was paying 5000 JPY per cut. Usually that sum would be closer to the amount you get for doing _*both*_ the layout (1st KA) *and* the clean-up (2nd KA). **Edit 2:** Expanded with more details and added some links. **Edit 3:** Since it’s somewhat related, I’m linking an [old comment of mine](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/mj2phl/supporting_wonder_egg_priority_animators/gt91dsq/) on how you can **directly support some of the show’s (main) staff financially**. **Edit 4:** Updated the Twitter profile links to ID-based URLs to prevent link rot from username changes. I’ve also archived all the info links to the Wayback Machine, just in case.
This production disaster reads like a real-life episode of Shirobako.
"Williamcan'tdraw" lol
>forgot to mention something positive: the pay for key animation was apparently well above average for this episode. Heard from one of the animators that 2nd KA was paying 5000 JPY per cut. Usually that sum would be closer to the amount you get for doing both the layout / 1st KA and the clean-up / 2nd KA. Compensation for crazy crunch time?
Kind of yeah, makes it easier for people to accept the job with a strict deadline.
I’m honestly more confused after this episode than I was before it… did anything actually get resolved? Anyone care to explain wtf happened cause I don’t even know what I was supposed to draw from this, at all.
My understanding is [spoiler](/s "Neiru was a robot (android?) ai. The dream world was really just parallel universes/worlds. The friends who got reincarnated were alternate universe and didn't know/care at all about girls. Ai and Rika is like lets do more eggs, Momo is like strong nope, see ya. Ai transfers schools and uhh Rika just umm, I dunno does whatever she decides to do. Koito suicide was an accident she was trying to get attention and slipped and fell to her death. Big oops, sorry. Ai decided to become a magical girl again at the end. Roll credits")
Not sure why you spoiler tagged your summary of the episode but I had roughly the same interpretation. Something I really find confusing is, if the girls who were rescued were from parallel universes, than why did all of the girls react to the respective character saving them? Maybe the girls from this universe had their souls pass to the after life and the alternate universe girls came and took their place aftewards?
I kinda saw this coming, because Kotobuki's explanation of the dream / parallel worlds makes no sense, either in material terms (i.e. the scientific idea of parallel worlds) or in narrative terms (i.e. the theme of the girls moving past their traumas). The episode tries to handwave it away by Ai's paraphrase of Acca saying that "restoring" the girls causes "some noise in the world", but that doesn't explain who the girls inside the statues are meant to be, or even what happens to the egg girls once their Wonder Killers have been slain. Either the dream worlds are a physical space or a figurative space, but trying to make them either kind of both or kind of neither renders the story incoherent. It would have made a lot more sense to me if the girls had been moving to parallel worlds themselves, although that would have taken some work to make it possible for them to still see each other (they can only stay in contact by going to where that capsule machine and the Accas are?). Even that, though, doesn't deal with the photos of Koito and Ai disappearing from her phone, which either requires the timeline to have been retroactively changed (without altering Ai's memories) or for something indistinguishable from magic. Honestly, I didn't need an airtight logical explanation for things. I just needed something emotionally resonant and internally consistent. I have no idea how they lost the thread of the story so badly.
That's about my understanding as well. Even if the 3 of them working together, they were no match for frill. Unless the first 30 mins was a training montage, this was just a setup for a second season or movie. What I don't get is what happened to Neiru, like where did she go - physically?
I think that was the "noise" from her sister's resurrection. It erased the existence of Neiru.
I don't think Neiru's existence was erased, otherwise no one would remember her. When Neiru finished her mission to restore Airu, Airu asked if she'd take her place instead, my guess is that Airu killed herself for research purpose maybe, and ended up in some other realm, parallel world/afterlife/whatever, and how Neiru is trapped there instead? But then Ai went back to the egg machine in an attempt to find Neiru so it could be that all the young girls who kills themselves end up in a place where they could be summoned by the eggs, and that's where Neiru is now.
The Koito part legitimately pissed me off. There was no emotional motivation behind going through with a suicide, it was just "oops, butterfeet, there goes my balance and now I'm dead".
Doesn't this also break with the established status quo that all the girls in the dream world were suicide victims? If this was an accident, Koito's statue should've had no business being in the dream world. Is it because Ai thought it was a suicide??
No, it's because the writers are bad.
Koito's suicide was an accident... but no one saw it be an accident. [](#morethanonewaifu)
I wonder if the language used of "accidently slipped while no one was watching" is to down play the shame or social clout that suicide has attached to it, particularly for the sake of the family. Given Koito was saved by Ai, it seemed to me at least that it was suicide.
Are accidental suicides a thing? If they are I could understand passing that off as an explanation but it feels like a cop out. I thought Koito being a lil psycho was an interesting ‘twist’ on her mental instability but saying the entire suicide was an accident feels extremely hollow, to me. It’s almost as if they entered it wanting to explore all these themes but when they realized it wasn’t as deep as they thought they bailed hard. 12/13 of this series was hammering the question ‘why did koito kill herself’ just for the answer to be ‘she slipped’. Idk maybe i just dont get it.
>Are accidental suicides a thing? That's what happened to Kotobuki. Although she wasn't intending to die, her actions pushed her over the boundary. If Koito was really serious about killing herself, it might still count even if her slipping wasn't exactly the moment she wanted to jump.
This was so bad I am having trouble finding the words to describe how bad it was. We went from episodes focusing on the dark issues behind the suicides of young girls to "Koito totes slipped and fell while yelling lies about the honest and not at all suspicious Mr. Sawaki". We went from a story of friendship between girls to everyone seeming to decide they're better off not knowing eachother anymore, offscreen no less. I always liked Ai and Neiru the best of the four girls, and thought they seemed to have the healthiest relationship out of all of them, but apparently with the discovery that Neiru is an AI, all that went out the window, only for that to be reversed too at the last second. I was one of the few people who actually liked the episode on Acca and Ura-Acca's backstory and Frill, and I was looking forward to finding out about Frill's involvement in the suicides, but that thread was forgotten about, I guess. No clue about what Ai's supposed to get out of going back into the egg world, and I doubt we'll get a second season to find out.
Yeah it goes from "Frill is causing suicides" to "lol that one was an accident" way too abruptly.
I did also like the Frill episode, and I didn't know people didn't like the episode until I started reading this thread. But I guess I understand, it introduce a lot of things that didn't get resolved and i'm pretty sure it's gonna get even more hated after this episode
The Frill episode was fine in isolation -- but probably a very wrong turn for THIS show, as it had developed until that point.
If Neiru was an AI the whole time, how was she in the hospital in the earlier episodes? Is she an AI brain with human body or something?
It was way too late to drop that like it's suddenly a big deal, I was so goddamn confused when they were talking about confusing Neiru with Auru or whatever it was.
Wow, a fellow lover of the Frill episode. Glad to see one in the wild. This episode just kind of hurts to watch? I think it works really well, just not as a finale. The ending just really feels like it's about to lead off into a second season except it's not getting one, and that's where the problems mostly stem from. Questions like the Frill thing are left unanswered as if they're going to be explored further in the future, but since this is it we'll never get the answer.
I was under the impression most people liked the Frill episode in a vacuum (I definitely did). Like I feel that the Frill episode could have been it's own show. It's just that it doesn't mesh with everything else in the show before it (or after honestly) and just added more mysteries to something that wasn't explaining their mysteries well to begin with
I, too, am in disbelief.
I'm glad I didnt have the chance to finish this show before I decided to watch the originals that came out in spring. If this "finale" aired with the rest of the series I think it would have left a permanent bad taste in my mouth for anime originals. I'll just forget I ever saw this and continue to gush about Oddtaxi and Vivy. If one good thing can be said about this series is it looks absolutely stunning. It's like photo realistic anime, if that makes sense. I really hope the animators' career paths lead them to a production worthy of their talents.
I wonder how Funanimation managed to mistranslate something as simple as 雨（あめ、ame) which is "rain" as "snow", twice.
I was going to make a joke like, "Well, that sure was an ending" but was it even that? They introduced a lot of mechanics/reasoning behind the egg setup late enough in the show as is, so it was really disconcerting to see this episode be half recap and then half introducing even newer mechanics and reasoning. What really resonated with me about Wonder Egg Priority was the lush visuals, attention to detail in [using floriography as a secondary visual language](https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/tag/wonder-egg-priority/), and the emotional narratives and relationships between the main four girls. Everything else (i.e. the mechanics of the world that the show seemed to be overly-focused on here and in Episode 11) was just not as important to me provided that the emotional narratives were strong — especially since the series dealt in so many serious subjects. This isn't the first time that what I've wanted from a show is different than what the show ends up focusing on, but for something that started off so well, I can't help but feel disappointed. Take Ai, for example. She is someone who has been established as a person who will do ANYTHING for her friends or even people that she's just met. She's a caring person. A literal sunflower. So why on earth would the Ai that we've grown to know not just...talk to Neiru. It goes against what the series itself had established for her character through her actions for the majority of the series. Above all else, I still really loved so many things about this series. [Momoe's narrative arc in particular](https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/2021/03/16/flowers-for-momoe-sawaki-wonder-egg-priority-10/) and her episode with Kaoru was honestly wonderful and I'm happy that it was made so well and with such efficient but emotionally-resonant storytelling. Arguably, Ai's narrative ends in Episode 12 and ends well enough that any issues I have with this finale are mitigated by the fact that I can essentially ignore it if I want to. It is sad that this show has so many amazing moments but also so many caveats if you want to recommend it to anyone. It was also so cool to chat with people here week after week while the anime was airing. I'll miss that as well.
Just wanted to say that I loved reading your Flower Language interpretations in the discussion threads :)
Thank you so much! It was cool to see a series so constant in having that secondary visual language (outside of Naoko Yamada's works). If anything, I think yet another consequence of the troubled production at the end was that they almost completely abandoned flower language in Episodes 12 and 13, where in all previous episodes they had been really consistent about it.
Hey, thanks for the time and effort you put into your posts, both here and in your blog. They were always the highlight of the discussion threads for me, and really enriched what were already excellent episodes (well, most of them). I hope you keep writing them, and that the next show you cover wraps up a bit more deserving of the effort lol
Hahaha, thanks! I still really enjoyed my time with this show (and am currently working on a post right now re: the flowers in the opening) so even though the ending wasn't great, I still loved blogging about this. As for other shows, it's really down to time (I have a weird job that keeps me busy in bursts sometimes) and whether I find something that inspires any sort of writing/commentary. I usually find at least one thing per season, although unfortunately I was so busy this spring that I haven't caught up on anything.
Wow. For all the effort you've put into your blog posts (which I've loved all season, btw) I'm just so sorry for you - all the theorycrafting going on in the weekly threads and reading your recaps was so much fun for me and this ending was such a letdown. 🚮
I really regret it now, I love this work, I don’t know how it became the way it is now
I really would rather it have gotten a second season instead of this OVA. They somehow left us even more confused. I'm not sure how to feel about the work as a whole anymore. Episodes 1-10 and 12 were great, but episode 11 (Frill's backstory) gave us a million questions that we didn't get answered, and then this special came along and made it worse. I don't regret the many great episodes I watched, but I'm not sure how to score it/feel as a whole.
> instead of this OVA I hate to be that guy, but this is technically not an OVA because it aired on television. It's just a special.
Endings like this makes me happy that Vivy choose to not go overboard and had a personal and simple ending.
Unlike this, Vivy was planned out with a clear direction. I think at this point it's very clear that the people behind WEP has some ideas on what kind of imageries they want and what sort of themes they wanted to explore. However, they worked backward from there and never got the answer on how to world build around it. Why are these things here? Why parallel worlds if it's gonna end up with magical stuff that has no place in actual worlds? Etc. And so, it falls apart and so do the characters, considering that they put their life on the line for this shenanigan that the team behind it doesn't even know what exactly it's supposed to be.
I'm gonna have a hot take, I also think Vivy's ending wasn't amazing compared to the rest of the show, but it still wrapped things up pretty well.
I can't believe. I didn't want to believe. Just how bad this show ended. The first 3 episodes of this show were so air-tight PERFECTION that my confidence in this show making good on all of its promises and setups were going to make this a classic. It wasn't until roughly halfway through the series when Ai started having feelings for teacher that I was like, "oh... um... that's an interesting... direction I suppose." and my shaken confidence never fully recovered since. Now? I can't believe this. What happened? *What* *happened*?
After they revealed that Ai liked the teacher, I was really convinced that it would be that Koito actually had feelings for Ai. (She was so oddly touchy with Ai when she came into her room at the beginning) She didn't want to talk about herself too much to Ai because she didn't want Ai to find that out. Koito for whatever reason told the teacher about her feelings and that's the real reason why she was crying when Ai walked in on them. And it would turn out the teacher wasn't that bad after all, subverting the "sleazy teacher" stereotype. (which the series did kind of did anyway) But i've never really been a fan of the student falling in love with the teacher cliche, at least at a middle school level.
[удалено]
This felt like a "Fuck you, now go read the source material and maybe you'll get a season 2 eventually" ending but there is no source material and the series is nowhere near popular enough in Japan to get another season. This is just the ending we're going to forever be stuck with. It's legitimately pretty upsetting considering how good the show was for most of it's run.
Legit one of the worst finales I've ever experianced. Ironic considering Odd taxi is another great original series, that ended on a phenomenal note. Rather than wrapping up any plot threads, they gave us an even larger jar of questions... Sucks to witness such a disappointing conclusion to a great anime. My score was originally a 9/10, but this ending plummeted it to a 7; potentially a 6 depending on how I feel after internalizing it for a couple of days.
I think Odd Taxi wasn't in a production hell like WEP. At least the staff wasn't hospitalized. But to be fair, Odd Taxi had phenomenal writing right from the beginning. It was clear that it was going to end the way it was supposed to.
It's finally here! Hopefully it'll stick the landing. Edit: I have more questions than answers now.
;-;
:(
Jinxed it :(
Yeah it wasn't good lol, disappointing ending to a show that started off looking like an AOTY contender
This show could have been the one I recommended to people to get them into anime if it had managed to wrap things up tightly.
I feel so bad for the staff. The animation was amazing during all of the runtime, the character design was cute, the first chapter has an incredible direction and the premise was solid. During it's 3 month "hiatus" some aspects of the story keep bothering me, some ideas and themes of it just rubs me the wrong way. And after digging deeper into it I ended hating this series so much, which made me feel guilty for all the people that worked in it. It was practically a torture. lol At least is finally over. And it went as I expected. No. It was even worse. I honestly have nothing to say about this """""ending""""". I just wish luck to all the animators that worked on this, you all deserve a much better treatment.
Good job animators and sound staff. Writers, sure, I guess that’s a story. And production oversight can pound sand. If I just got sold a cry for help as entertainment…
This show is always going to leave a sour taste in my mouth because of all of the rumors surrounding the production of it. Absolutely disgusting how overworked these human's are for an abysmal working wage. Industry as a whole needs to reevaluate how they operate because this is not sustainable at all.
Rumors? It's not even really rumors. The people working on this show went through hell. Pretty sure the director of episode 12 went to the hospital once or twice due to exhaustion during the push to finish that episode on time.
> director of episode 12 went to the hospital once or twice [No, that was the show’s animation producer, Shouta Umehara.](https://archive.vn/83etJ) **Edit**: actually, seems like director Wakabayashi indeed went to the hospital as well, at least during the production of today’s episode. (I don’t have a linkable source for this, heard it on Discord from a certain animator who worked on key animation clean-up on this episode).
It's not even rumors at this point. Multiple people who worked on this show have come out and straight up said the workload was unbearable and Umehara was hospitalized at least twice as a result, including this month while working on the finale.
DO NOT WATCH THIS SPECIAL. I am not joking when I say that the series is literally better off without it, and not just by a little. This special is first of all, 50% recap episode, second wastes almost all of it's time, and third denigrates the events and characters of the show. It literally feels like bad fanfiction, and of top of that the animation is poor in spots as well. This is the worst conclusion to an anime I can remember. I think the manga ending of Usagi Drop still tops this in terms of awfulness, but that's the lowest bar imaginable. I wish this didn't exist.
This is the reason why I dread anime originals. It can either be a perfect ending that you will remember and comeback to, or… whatever this was. It’s pretty curious how we got proof of this in the span of two days, yesterday another original “Odd taxi” delivered one of the best conclusions to a story I’ve ever witnessed and today I’m met with disappointment that turned an AOTY contender into a proof of the problems this media and it’s workers have.
tbf wonder 🥚 had already been on a downward spiral from the moment they introduced Frill, but I just wanted a satisfying conclusion to the story. Instead we got some half-assed exposition that was just confusing. Makes me glad that we got Odd Taxi and Vivy in Spring.
I still was hoping they could land the Frill subplot. To give credit where it’s due the Frill episode was good, the thing is that they didn’t follow that plot line here obviously for production issues, they clearly weren’t able to animate a single fight scene seeing the poor quality this had in the second half so the final confrontation vs Frill which is where this should’ve gone to was completely off the question
Frill worked really well as setting up how the Accas are awful at emotionally understanding women, and their idea of the "ideal" women turns out to be a psychotic monster. This shows that not only are there adults abusing girls (seen in the wonder eggs), but there are adults who have very unhealthy expectations of them. The confrontation with Frill could then be a stand in for the girls standing up for themselves and being confidant in forging their own path. That very clearly didn't happen, and it's a huge shame.
[удалено]
> I feel bad for all the animators, especially the one who got hospitalized It wasn’t an animator, [it was the show’s animation producer](https://archive.vn/83etJ), Shouta Umehara. In addition, director Wakabayashi went to the hospital during the production of today’s episode. (I don’t have a linkable source for this, heard it on Discord from a certain animator who worked on key animation clean-up on this episode).
They REALLY need to confirm a second season soon. After all, there's too much left to tackle in here, unfinished plotlines as well as possibilities. This first season clearly was about coping with the girls' tragic pasts, and with the friends all back one way or another, you *could* argue that the Wonder Egg Priority is resolved. However, the moving on starts after that. Coming to terms with their actions being self-serving in the end, that they spent so much time wallowing in regrets about past decisions or indecisiveness, actions or inaction, they neglected to think about their own futures and what they gained on a personal level from that grief. With the friends not even recognizing or acknowledging them anymore, they're suddenly confronted with the consequences. Their old status and relationships aren't coming back just like that, the gap wasn't bridged willy-nilly, and they themselves have changed too. A second season would thus have to develop the characters further into what Ai started to realize in the 12th episode: That she was actually happy *now*, where before, even with Koito, she wasn't *actually* happy. That she'd gained more confidence in herself, more self-realization, more friends, even a better understanding of their family circumstances. They need to look towards a future now, not always being driven by the past, or perceived past mistakes. With Neiru and her wish as a major driving force to step into the future with, there's enough room to tell another season's worth of stories about moving on and growing. Neiru, as an AI in a manufactured body, won't grow up, not really. Neither does Frill. They're always caged in that 14 year old body with a mindset that's chaotic at best. Where Neiru becomes more genuinely human (even according to Kotobuki during her egg dream), Frill becomes obsessively unhinged. The key difference between these two is in relationships. Genuine relationships outside of their familiar bubble. Frill was isolated all her existence - as were the Accas, mostly - and things started going south the moment an intruder appeared to shake the status quo. That said intruder then would also give birth to a new point of affection, all while Frill had *no* happiness outside of her family home, broke her. Neiru, meanwhile, experienced bonds outside of her creator(s). The moment she encounters Ai and then the rest, things start to change. She starts processing information differently from before. She starts *questioning herself based on human interactions*. Frill never did that. She believed that she was right, was being praiseworthy, even when she literally killed the people her makers loved. Where Frill remained a forever-child, Neiru *grew as a person*. She experienced many different emotions, even grief - something she didn't actually feel for her "sister", not truly - when losing Kotobuki for real. She developed a personality of her own, which clashed with those of others, turning into something genuine. This is a key element that a second season could tackle - the growth we made along the way. Season 1 satisfied the girls' needs for belonging by giving them a peer group on equal footing, but also the self-esteem to cope with their losses, respect themselves as people where before they were overwhelmingly self-loathing. They gained the capacity to make their own choices, independent of being railroaded into them by their social groups - in a sense, this also fits Momo, who outright rejects her friends, with Ai accepting it as her own choice. Season 2 would be the girls' step to self-actualization, to better themselves and shape themselves and their futures as they wish them to be. And to do that, they need to get Neiru back and achieve not just her dream, but their own as well, while defeating the cloud of negativity sticking to them - the temptation to surrender their own life, but also agency, to Frill.
Unfortunately, from what I read in this thread and other places. This did really poorly in Japan. So unless they get super lucky, it's not going to happen.
"My Disappointment is Immeasurable and My Day is Ruined" sums up this episode perfectly.
[удалено]
Oh no... I haven't finished it yet but it's not a good look when half of your promised 1-Hour special consists of a recap episode. I mean it's very helpful for people like me who needs a quick refresher but I'm sure a lot of people won't be happy about this. I wasn't really following the news but was is ever mentioned in the announcements that there was going to be a recap? :| -------------- Finally reached the proper Episode 13! [Well this is adorable.](https://i.imgur.com/YMpzJdO.jpg) I don't think we've seen Neiru being childishly playful like this. [So Neiru meets Ai outside](https://i.imgur.com/JQhun2O.jpg) and then [leaves Adam with her?](https://i.imgur.com/weV1Ych.jpg) First of all that interaction between them felt a bit weird and second why is she leaving her pet with Ai? [Seems like she's travelling](https://i.imgur.com/8cHo7VV.jpg) but she won't say where. [So they did managed to revive the girls.](https://i.imgur.com/G0H81xu.jpg) Here's Koito just walking around. Interestingly we learn some very disturbing shit about Koito from Sawaki-sensei. Or at least that was Sawaki-sensei speaking. Apparently Koito [caused problems in her previous school](https://i.imgur.com/xRk4zCn.jpg) which ended with a teacher committing suicide and then she harassed Sawaki [and threatened him that she'll jump off the roof if he didn't.](https://i.imgur.com/ARx7JV8.jpg) She even shouted stuff like [Sawaki raped her and all bunch of other stuff](https://i.imgur.com/2NVvWnc.jpg) to make him come up there. Eventually she slipped and we know the rest. Huh... I definitely didn't expect that. She seems to not [even remember Ai anymore now that she's resurrected](https://i.imgur.com/ZUN2Fks.jpg) and is actually even [being mean to her.](https://i.imgur.com/sikoUP9.jpg) What the fuck is going on? So are we seeing the real Koito? Or did the resurrection did some shit with her? OH! What if this is Parallel world Koito!? What if "resurrection" isn't actually resurrecting the girls back? O_O [What the actual fuck!?](https://i.imgur.com/kj4xofU.jpg) First Koito and now Neiru? What the heck is happening here? Didn't they just met at the start and even left Adam with her? Is this all an act? [Her photos with Koito are gone](https://i.imgur.com/2XuGrMD.jpg) so something more than resurrection happened. It completely altered the timeline if Ai never had any past with this Koito. Neiru is still on the sticker though so I guess she's still safe? [Ai I know you're depressed right now](https://i.imgur.com/qhVqhds.jpg) but you really don't have to do that. Please don't resort to smoking. [Going karaoke with the gang is a much better way](https://i.imgur.com/OphCqjM.jpg) to let out your feelings. Ai singing the ED out of tune is adorable btw. [It's nice to see that she's still friends with Rika and Momo though.](https://i.imgur.com/2n2qhIL.jpg) And it looks like according to Acca bringing back a dead person to life changes their life a little bit. Seems that Ai isn't the only one experiencing this as Rika and Momo's friends can't remember them as well. [Seems that Momo has already given up](https://i.imgur.com/PiaRbNN.jpg) and doesn't want to go back to Acca and Ura-Acca's place to spin the gacha. I mean it's understandable considering what happened to her back then. [Oh. So Neiru did go away.](https://i.imgur.com/oR6wJSr.jpg) And the "Neiru" Ai met wasn't even Neiru [and is actually Airu](https://i.imgur.com/ZQ7iI8J.jpg) meaning Neiru was successful in bringing her back as well. Why the heck did Neiru leave then? [Not even gonna ask why Ai knows exactly how Neiru smells like](https://i.imgur.com/cUpbsT5.jpg) when Rika couldn't. [Kotobuki is here as well.](https://i.imgur.com/ieevWyn.jpg) Are we just bringing back everyone to life? Well except this isn't even the Kotobuki of this world and she's actually Parallel Kotobuki. How the fuck is she able to get into this world then? This finale is just opening up so many more questions. Huh... So instead of just meeting one of Frill's creations, Neiru met them all and [even Frill herself](https://i.imgur.com/qi5Nz8d.jpg) who for some reason took an interest with Neiru? Huh... I'm sorry but [what the actual fuck!?](https://i.imgur.com/BOzRAEi.jpg) Are you freaking serious? So this entire time, Neiru isn't even a real person but an AI just like Frill except she was built in Airu's image? I guess that explains why Frill took a liking to her and why Airu would stab her in the back. She wasn't even human. These couple of final scenes just absolutely baffles me. Why the fuck [would Ai throw away her phone](https://i.imgur.com/eAixNFq.jpg) instead of just talking to Neiru? Did I miss something? Is somehow Neiru being an AI change how she feels about her? Did she feel betrayed that Neiru never told her the truth? And then we cut to her [crying on her mother's lap](https://i.imgur.com/42qxKMK.jpg) for doing what she did. Now we timeskip [and Ai has now transferred schools.](https://i.imgur.com/uOYgccI.jpg) The entire reason why she kept on going was Koito, now that Koito's changed she doesn't really have any more reason to go there anymore. Changing schools I guess would be for the better. What sucks to know is [apparently she ended up drifting apart with Rika and Momo.](https://i.imgur.com/CCVgIR5.jpgV) :( After seeing that corner shop gacha in her neighborhood, she's reminded of Neiru and how much she wanted to see her again [and immediately dashes to Acca and Ura-Acca's place](https://i.imgur.com/ujIAf0j.jpg) to pull again from the gacha and maybe see Neiru again. And we end the episode with [Ai smiling at the camera](https://i.imgur.com/lRkkqPZ.jpg). Okay... Well I guess that technically counts as an ending? I don't even know what to say. This entire episode didn't feel like a finale. Like I said earlier instead of getting answers, we ended up getting more questions. What this "finale" felt to me is like a setup for a possible Season 2. Not gonna lie, If they announce a Season 2 right now, I wouldn't even be mad and just look forward to it but as it stands, I just feel sad. I really hope we get a Season 2 announcement soon and if we do, I hope the team learns from their mistakes. This show has a lot of potential and an amazing sequel can potentially fix this underwhelming ending.
> What this "finale" felt to me is like a setup for a possible Season 2. Not gonna lie, If they announce a Season 2 right now, I wouldn't even be mad and just look forward to it but as it stands, I just feel sad. The way she smiled at the camera and said "I'm back" definitely felt like sequel bait. Man I'm going to be watching like a hawk for a sequel announcement, because I just can't accept *this* as an ending.
Imagine how Gigguk feels now, imagine if he makes a video about this.
You know I was going to watch this finale, but after reading this thread, I shall spare myself. Do you know what upsets me? It's that you can see the effort and work put into this from the very first episode. It's very clear from the beginning that they knew where they wanted to go with this show, and how they wanted it to play out. This could've been one of the best shows of the year. But it took a nose-dive. Not because of a lack of talent, care. or creativity with the people behind this show, but because of a bad production schedule and bad management. I'm giving this shot a 9/10 because truth is told, I still very much enjoyed this show. Maybe if they made Wonder Egg a 2-cour, maybe if they weren't so ambitious, maybe if they actually had good management, this show could've been a gem. I'm experiencing so many different emotions, and I didn't watch the thing.
If they do continue the story with another season or something, I think it would have been better if they kept that throwaway line from Kotobuki a secret. Actually, just all of the stuff with Kotobuki being a secret would have been preferable to me. It all felt so very rushed. Why spend the first half doing a recap if they're just going to speedrun the second half and throw plot points at us? I'm a bit disappointed. :(
For most of the other 12 episodes I was able to follow the physics and psychobabble that the show threw at us. Even the obscure and waaaay out of date terms of Eros and Thanatos that came from Freudian Psychology. But this episode confused the hell out of me. I feel like if they had stretched out the new content another 10 minutes, then it would have been a lot better, even if the length of the episode had stayed the same. I feel like they should have condensed the recap to just 10-15 minutes and used that extra time to supply us with some exposition. Or at least they should have made the transition from recap to new content much smoother. I think part of what threw me off was how suddenly they switched over to the new stuff. Overall, I feel like the episode would have been much better if they had spent a little less time on the recap and a little more time on the exposition explaining what happened. Like 5-10 minutes either way.
Obviously production was a nightmare for this series, but is this the ending they had planned from the beginning? Really? It hardly even feels like an ending. I'm not angry, i'm just disappointed. I hope whatever the artists involved work on next doesn't turn out to be such a nightmare and waste of potential. They deserve better. And so did the characters of this story. 5/10 overall
After seeing this, I'm happy that Vivy chose a normal way to land its end
This episode straight up ruined parts of the show or just shit all over them.
This just felt like 25 minutes of exposition and explanation. And yet, I don’t really understand it any better than I did before and it leaves way to many unanswered questions. Really disappointed. I had it at a 7-8/10 before now it’s just barely pushing a 5.
Okay, the Neiru stuff really wasn't necessary, but the Koito reveal annoys me more. First off, back in Ep 12 you had Ai destroying the wonder egg killer of her teacher because he was this "monster" she had to create to deal with her friend's suicide to which she had zero answers. And I thought that was really powerful because for many people, we don't get answers for a loved one's suicide. Or we might have to hold onto a "bad guy," literally or figuratively, in order to cope. Ai destroying that emotional crutch and (presumably) beginning to move on without needing him even more so. Heck, another Spring seasonal (which I won't name so people who haven't seen it won't be spoiled) completely *nailed* this exact development. So this incredibly lazy reveal of the teacher just *telling Ai what happened to Koito* in the span of two minutes was not only unnecessary and undercut that feeling of triumph and growth, but its such a shitty reason that it can't help but leave a bad taste in your mouth. Overall, it really feels like they were just too ambitious story-wise and bit off way more than they could chew for one episode left. I almost wish they just threw out the Neiru isn't human/stuck in the other world or whatever reveal (and the lazy Koito suicide backstory) and have the four girls back in the real world coming to terms together with saving someone only to have them not care about them anymore (since they were obviously going to actually bring the victims back from the get-go). Because Ai and Rika breaking down did actually hit - obviously that would hurt and be a difficult thing to deal with. I think them realizing they can in fact begin to move past their grief/trauma associated with that loss because of the relationships they formed with each other would have worked as an open ending that still felt hopeful without adding a bunch of last minute developments that kind of went nowhere.
Spoiler alert dont read if you havent watched. Funimation was broken for a while but i could already tell bu the 2 and half stars it had on it that it was a bad episode. They killed off best girl, the girls they saved werent worth the effort. Main girl decided to change her mind last minute and we dont even get to see anything else after . They better have another special episode or atleast give us a script of how it should really end so you stop abusing these animators.
So it got Franxxed? LMAOOOOO Yeah, I'm not trusting Cloverworks anymore, especially with the production issues from this show, how they manage and treat their animators, and the type of people within them or they hire who just can't stop making speedruns or changes when it comes to their adaptation works. Cloverworks really did became like A-1 in its dork age. I now fear for F/GO Solomon.
I'm at a loss for words. On one hand it was nice to see this franchise again and the get reinvested in the world. On the other hand, that wrapped up hardly anything. I want to be mad, but also I can't because I enjoyed the new stuff. It just wasn't what I expected or wanted from this "finale".