Review of Wonder Egg Priority: My Priority

The Wonder Egg Priority Special is the sequel special episode to the largely successful Wonder Egg Priority, which aired a few seasons ago. For the purposes of this review, I'll assume you've seen the twelve episodes that came before this. Story: As many have already noted, the first half of this ends up being a recap of things that already came, narrated by Ai. What doesn't make this recap completely sink is that Ai does point out a few things that we, as the audience might not have noticed the first time around. The obvious problem is that this was promised to bea sequel special and we basically only got a recap, plus one episode's worth of new content. The recap portion was done well, but I am of the belief that recap episodes don't belong in anime. It's such a waste of time and resources.

As for the new stuff, Ai and friends have cleared their dream worlds, but something seriously went wrong at the end of the previous season. For Rika and Momoe in particular, they were frightened so badly that their desire to return to the dream world was heavily scarred. Soon after, the girls are taken back to the real world... but with a strange twist. It's briefly explained to us what is so special about this change and what happens to the girls that our main cast tried to save, but it was just so brief that they almost made it feel trivial - it's the entire reason for our main cast's involvement here! They introduced a new element that seems slightly misplaced. It feels like they added a plot point with the intention to continue the story, but it doesn't sound like more is coming. It's really strange and obviously is deserving of much criticism.

We are given some minor insight into the girls that our main cast wanted to save, though save for Koito, we don't get to see any of them. One thing that added tension at the end of the last season was the inclusion of Dot, Hyphen and Kirara in the girls' dream worlds and they were all entirely absent here. The dream world and the real world together formed amazing scenes while adding these new threats, and not seeing our characters deal with them at all is really strange. Considering how much of the success the story and the series' fearlessness to jump into controversial topics were, it's very disappointing to see the sequel executed in such a lackluster way. (3/10)

Characters: We still get our fantastic main cast of characters and, while nothing with them has overly changed, the special maintains what made us love them to begin with. Neiru gets some spotlight shone on her, but, again, the execution into portraying her character was lazy. We don't even get to see some of the side characters that we felt were detrimental to our main cast's well being here. At the very least, they could have expanded on the new story element, alluded to above, on a character we are decently familiar with, but they completely left them out here. (6/10)

Art: Consistent with the series, the special keeps all the shine and bright palette. It looks amazing, but with the complete exclusion of the dream world, you're not really seeing much in the way of eye candy. (7/10)

Sound: Also consistent with the series, the OST and VOs were really good here. The OP and ED from the season return here as well. (8/10)

Overall Enjoyment: I have a really hard time saying I enjoyed this sequel special because, while it does add some new elements, the special doesn't capitalize on them at all. There were multiple directions they could have gone with Wonder Egg Priority after a very strong season entry, but it feels like they completely ditched the strong story telling with shallow follow up that doesn't even conclude.

In my review for the Wonder Egg Priority season, I praised it as being unafraid of tackling controversial topics and had faith that the sequel might follow up on those. How would the girls react to "clearing" their Wonder Eggs and what happens to those they tried to save? There was very little satisfaction to answering these questions. Even the inclusion of Dot and etc. at the end of the season made me think we'd get some more fantastic dialogue and action. Nope, absent.

I really don't get what they were going for with this special. Because it certainly wasn't a satisfying ending. I don't think I've ever been this disappointed at the ending to a series that was incredible to watch, for so long. What a shame. (5/10)