Hot damn, my favorite girl is back with an overall fantastic episode, in fact this is my favorite episode of Wonder Egg. Like Ai last week, at the end of the episode, Rika becomes stronger. But unlike Ai’s development last week (which I’m not that keen about), what she arrives at is emotionally wrenching and wholly rewarding. Out of all the four girls, Rika is the most vulnerable: the disparity between what she appears on the outside and what she feels inside is wide. This week we get to know about her tension with her Mom, and I love every minute of it. Turns out that her father’s advice that she keeps mentioning is the only memory she has of him. She wants to meet him, but her drunken Mother isn’t helpful (in Mamma Mia’s fashion no less). She despises her Mom, but at the same time she afraids to end up like her. At some point, self harm becomes self defense, as she feels cutting herself as an escape. I can see why she turned into an idol to get out of all this – such an achievement in character writing right there.
The structure in this episode in regards to Rika’s personal development is well-planted. The episode starts and finishes with Rika and her Mom alone in their bar, begins with contempt and finishes with some sort of mutual understanding. The part I enjoy the most is how Wonder Egg visually frames Rika and her Mom’s tense relationship. They keep each other at a distance, and rarely do they look straight at one another. The little conversations they have paint us exactly about their dysfunctional dynamic: they just don’t see eye-to-eye to most things. We can all clearly see that both Rika and her Mom are depressed and lost in their own worlds. At least now Rika has friends who she can share her feelings with, and each girl responds in their own ways. Momoe asks her not to say bad things about her Mother, Ai shares her dissatisfaction about Mom, whereas Neiru just slaps it to Rika’s face with her blunt words “codependence” (…ahem… Hachiman…).
And all these set up very well to the Monster she faces this week – a cult leader. To be more exact it’s the Egg girl who she saves this week is the one who nearly swayes her heart. She suffers the same physical pain as Rika, so she can see through what Rika has been going through. And sometimes it’s just like that, in a moment of weakness the suicidal thoughts can tempt you to just stop fighting. Ultimately, it makes sense that she is saved (partly) by her friends who care for her, and by the animal pet who regards her as Mother. Depressing, uncomforting, but ultimately rewarding, this episode offers some raw and resonant moments that I will certainly remember fondly.
It’s the first time we see the real danger of our heroines fighting these Egg Monsters, and I keep holding it until now, but it’s time to address the role of Acca and Ura-Acca in all this. While they are overseeing these girls’ missions, it’s clear to me that they don’t hold the same values with these girls and they don’t have remorse if one of the girls is about to die. Heck, they even withhold certain information until it’s necessary to disclose. While I don’t get the Kyubei’s vibe from them (not yet anyways), I’m pretty sure they are using these girls not for the girls’ benefits.
Lastly, there are many different takes on the tender last moments Rika and her Mom have at the end. I see comments saying that they reach the point where they are okay with “codependency” – they hate each other’s guts but they are fine with that. For me, I choose to think that these conversations at the end are the closest they express their bond to one another.
