English Dub Review: Wonder Egg Priority “A Story No One Knows”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Neiru makes an unexpected move and invites her egg friends over to her company/house for a play date. They’re amazed that she’s actually acting like a normal teenager, but are quickly reminded that Neiru is no mere mortal — she’s a certified genius who is hiding a dark secret.

Her friend/partner Kotobuki Awano is lying in her room in a vegetative state, and she’s been dreaming about her lately. In her egg dream, Kotobuki told her it was time to end things, but Neiru isn’t sure she can do it all by herself. Not all of her friends support her decision, but Ai sticks through til the end.

Our Take:

Wonder Egg Priority is back for the first time in a while with a new dubbed episode, and boy is it a doozy. A Story No One Knows might be the ninth episode of Wonder Egg, but it’s the first episode to come after the recap episode that originally aired the week before this one premiered, and you can definitely tell it’s at least two episodes worth of story material crammed into a single block.

All of the egg girls have their quirks, but Neiru’s might be the most well hidden. While the three other girls all act more or less like realistic teenagers, Neiru appears on the surface to be a competent and collected adult when it comes to her inner life and personality. As usual, however, there’s more here than at first meets the eye.

We get more facts about Neiru in the first half of this episode than we have in the last eight episodes combined. She’s a genius inducted into the Japan chapter of the official MENSA-copycat society. She’s the product of artificial insemination and has never known what it’s like to have real parents around. Oh, and she’s hiding the dead body of her former best friend behind a curtained off section in her bedroom.

Kotobuki is really at the heart of this episode, and it’s a shame we don’t get to spend more time building her up and developing the dynamic between these two. It’s clear there are a lot of feelings and emotions going on, but it’s hard for us as audience members to process them when everything flashes by so fast. One minute the gang is having a takayuki party and the next we’re thrown into Neiru’s egg dream where she meets back up with Kotobuki, who tells her it’s time to pull the plug on her negative body and that she’s been dead for a while.

An episode that started out with four friends hanging out ends with two friends turning off the life support on an albino genius so that her body won’t be collected and studied for science. It’s certainly one of the strangest outings yet in the show, and unfortunately it’s also the messiest yet from a narrative standpoint. At this point last season, the show was experiencing a bit of a fire storm as the small staff made hitting deadlines impossible, and at this point the series hasn’t even finished yet (it’s due to wrap up with an extra long special episode later this month.) A Story No One Knows is by no means terrible, but it’s story I wish had been given the proper time and pacing necessary to make a bigger impact.