Wonder Egg Priority 5 Early Access

Also found it interesting that Neiru is this sort of "girlboss" (*vomits* s o r r y) character who's incredibly wealthy and to some extent buys into what the capitalist pig Wonder Killer says ("give-and-give would just be gross"). I'm not entirely sure but perhaps this somehow ties into her feelings of alienation with other girls, that she considers herself to be independent from the females she considers to be "illogical" (or at least incomprehensible to her) and despite being somewhat friendly to Ai and the others, still prioritizes (haha) herself. Perhaps some commentary on how the "strong, independent woman" combined with the "not like other girls" trope leads to Neiru being seperated from her friends? Idk.

I 100% do not trust Mr. Sawaki and this episode just furthers my suspicion. Momoe's line about "There's no way my uncle could be evil! He's a nice guy who adopts cats :))" strikes me as how people talk about suspected child molesters or just like, terrible abusive people in general. As you've mentioned, this episode is the "uncomfortable truths" episode. People want to believe that abusive people are abusive because of some inherent evil, when in reality most abusers are just like everyone else. Of course I'm not saying this to defend said awful people at all, but rather to demonstrate that every single human has the potential to hurt others. And this potential disturbs people because they don't want to believe they have such capability to harm. "I'm not like those psychopaths and sociopaths (which these categories alone have such gross ableist tones); I'm normal, so I can't be abusive!" This theme of like how people can be and often are both victims and perpetrators of misogynistic and other terrible systems is reflected I think in Rika and the second Egg girl this episode. The fact that Rika often says things that are or sound correct despite being wrong in several ways kinda serves as a reminder that Rika could easily be any of us (and we probably were at one point in our lives, buying into misogynistic myths is inevitable living in our world); that she is not some inhuman creature but rather a flawed person who is trying to figure out how to live, causing pain along the way but also has the potential to change. The Egg girl on the other hand, bought into the myths, has no potential for change, and certainly has some responsibility over her death, but not completely I don't think. If I was held at gunpoint and told I had to answer Rika's question of "should we feel so responsible that we'd risk our own lives" I'd say yes. We're all responsible for each other to a certain extent. Sometimes we have little power to help, but at the very least we can't ignore it (or else it's going to hurt even worse like Nieru's scars) and at least try to not add to the collective trauma humans experience. Even people who willingly take their lives and don't regret it did so because our society has failed them in some way. Maybe they would never have been saved even in a "perfect" world, but just brushing it off and weeping over their tragic deaths certainly seems like a lazy option.

They even nailed the slice of life portion of the show

RJ Legarte