WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Wonder Egg Priority Episode 2, “The Terms of Friendship,” now streaming on Funimation.
In Wonder Egg Priority's second episode, the girl that emerges from Ai's second egg is haunted by the abuse she suffered from her former gymnastics coach -- but the way her trauma manifests in the dream world is unusual, to say the least. Minami Suzuhara's dream world manifests itself as a gym, and she is wearing her gymnastics leotard.
This indicates that athleticism is both an important aspect of her personality as well as the source of her personal trauma, which is made evident when her coach arrives on the scene.
Minami's coach first appears as her real-world human self with a pixelated face, but almost immediately morphs into a bizarre hulking monster with extra arms and multiple sets of large breasts. The coach-monster abuses Minami both verbally and physically, and Minami does not fight back, apparently believing that she deserves this "punishment."
Ai fights against the coach-monster using Minami's gymnastics ribbon, and the coach fights back in a distinctly ridiculous way - firing projectile paint from her breasts. As in the first episode, when the monster is defeated, she bloats and explodes into a huge shower of blood. The fight is over-the-top in the way that anime often can be, and while it works naturally with the story, it can be a bit jarring how Wonder Egg Priority returns to a more grounded, serious tone in its very next scene.
Minami praises Ai for winning the fight against the coach, but Ai points out that she could not have done it without Minami's ribbon -- in other words, like Minami. Earlier in the episode, when she first met Ai, Minami had mentioned she had no friends. She now says that she wishes she had met Ai sooner, as she believes they could have been friends and done things like go to burger places together. Before vanishing, Minami asks Ai to remember her, essentially saying that they will never meet again. As with Kurumi in the previous episode, this seems to imply that Minami is no longer alive and likely committed suicide because of her trauma before the events of the episode.
Ai does not forget Minami. The gymnast's words inspire her to reach out and befriend the seemingly unapproachable Neiru, suggesting that they could go to a burger place sometime. Despite the ridiculousness of fighting a huge monster woman who attacks by firing paint from her giant breasts, the encounter was important for both Ai's character development and the progression of Wonder Egg Priority's story.
This combination of ridiculousness and seriousness is a storytelling technique uniquely well-suited to the medium of anime, and it serves Wonder Egg Priority well. By using its bizarre imagery to take on serious themes, the series makes both a visual and an emotional impact, standing out as one of the most interesting new anime of the season.
