Wonder Egg Priority #03 — Suicide Girls

January 26th, 2021

 

There's going to be a hole punch weapon girl, isn't there?

Impressions:

This episode is a bit more of a mixed bag than the last two. For one, it's a bit weird that they're introducing some new girl to partner up with when the other 'main' one hasn't even really had an episode for her yet. Whatever thought it was trying to get across with all the idol stuff is also pretty muddled and unclear. The new girl is a self-harming idol who had a super fan who bought her things, which she was fine with until she caught her stealing, so to get her to stop, she told her she hates fat people, which drove the girl to anorexia and death. I understand the guilt, but the girl had already gone of the rails before getting Harry and the Hendersons'ed. And then the episode ends with the monster of the week turning her to stone? I guess that means the story's not over, but other than explaining the cutting herself, which I feel like guilt probably already covers it, I don't know what else there is here. 

Meanwhile, the savees-of-the-week were two other superfans who killed themselves because their favorite idol killed herself. That certainly feeds the theory that they're in some kind of purgatory, saving dead girls from hell. But the two girls here are stark raving lunatics, unrepentant for what they did, or even comprehending that they did anything wrong. They're punchlines that are being mocked. It's hard to muster up sympathy for them or belief that they can or even should be saved as they race straight to the monster in order to taunt it. Which the protagonists also do! Ha ha. You're old and you like idols. What a disgusting freak. Totally not like these innocent girls who are different because they're 16 instead of 40. Even aside from the weird hypocrisy, I question the wisdom of directly attacking some of your core base there.

 

Posted in Wonder Egg | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • ZakuAbumi says:
    January 26, 2021 at 12:18 pm

    >But the two girls here are stark raving lunatics, unrepentant for what they did, or even comprehending that they did anything wrong.
    To be fair, I don’t think the saving part is meant to be redemption for the egg people but much more for the ones doing the saving. I think the show’s point might be that only if you’re alive, you still have a chance to turn things around, as in, emphasizing the value of life. I hope we’ll get some more interesting egg people sooner or later that will bring in some moral dilemmas, like someone who is just downright a bad person who has harmed others in life or someone who lived a life of regret and now doesn’t get a chance for a make-over whereas Ai and the others do. That would be a bit more daring.

    >Ha ha. You’re old and you like idols.
    To be fair, it’s a monster that’s trying to kill them and probably only a manifestation of sorts and not a real person so it’s not like the banter is unwarranted but it does seem rather tone deaf in a show about social issues. Also makes it feel a bit hollow that it’s been nothing but Just School Girl Things so far, I doubt one of the egg people will ever be a salary man who offed himself due to overwork or something. I hope it’s not going to be a TTEEENAAGGEEE GIIRRRRLS AREEE SPEECCCIIAAAL drivel plot device message like with Madoka. It certainly does make me wonder what they put into the teenage girl drinking water in Japan otherwise to cause this kind of Estrogen Disaster Overload.

    The more Shigofumi and the less Persona this ends up being the better.

    • Aroduc says:
      January 26, 2021 at 2:15 pm

      I think I likely worded it fairly poorly above of what rubbed me so wrong with them and the whole idol thing. It’s framed like Rika did wrong because she was personally greedy, but it was at an event specifically for trying to convince fans to spend spend spend on merchandise, so if she had stuck to the script, that would have been fine, even though it would have logically lead to the same conclusion. Same with if she had instead said “I hate criminals. I’m not going to be friends with a thief.” Not acknowledging that the idol industry (not to mention gacha stuff) is built around creating, cultivating, and milking these kinds of obsessive superfans and that the ostensibly guilty people in it were the one using it for personal greed, or the one who was an older woman instead of teenagers who formed a suicide pact is… yeah, tone deaf to say the least.

      • ZakuAbumi says:
        January 27, 2021 at 1:05 pm

        Oh yeah, I agree with that.

        For an anime that starts out with a school girl corpse as a result of bullying, you know, an actually daring statement, the entire third episode ignoring the idol industry’s nature and somehow just going for the generic punchlines of “don’t be too obsessive with being a fan” and “stalking is bad, you know” is really disappointing. It lacks both bite and insight, not to mention ignores the bigger picture and context. What’s the point of ignoring the systematic issue here? You have a girl who starved herself to death and two girls who committed suicide just out of idol obsession and then the ‘villain’ of the episode is this random third-party stalker woman, who, hah-hah, is old. I also find it a bit hard to figure out how the seeno evils fit into this. It works with bullying, was very much a stretch with the gymnast who primarily just blamed herself and with the entire idol angle, they just feel like a tacked on gimmick.

        I genuinely hope they’re gonna recontextualize that a lot with the next episode, directly pointing at the underlying issues and not just the symptoms but I fear it’ll just go down the bland route of “see, these two girls who take the idol obsession too far are the good nutjobs and that woman is the bad nutjob because she hurts other people” or something. Anime loves to blabber about how idols bring smiles and world peace to the populace, much as if they were real life magical girls.

        Maybe there’ll be some sort of twist on how the monster isn’t actually some third party but a part of the two girls instead who just don’t want to accept that they are the problem. Or we’ll get some nice speech on how stupid they are for killing themselves over nothing. One can only hope.