Egg mama
"Egg, egg, my little egg, hurry hurry and grow up!"
Nanami wakes up one morning to find an egg in her bed. Thinking that she laid the egg herself, she panics but soon starts nurturing the egg.
"Nanami's Egg" provides examples of:
- Baffled by Own Biology: Nanami is so ill-informed about puberty that she can't rule out the possibility that she laid the egg she finds in her bed, and she is too afraid of getting ridiculed to ask.
- Big "NO!": Nanamio screams "no!" this at least four times during episode, including the Bookends of finding the egg in her bed and when she wakes up to find that the egg has hatched at the end.
- Brick Joke: Nanami gets hit square in the face with a soccer ball, and Utena, dressed in a soccer uniform, runs up apologizing and says, "it flew further than I thought it would!" The exact same thing happened in episode 6 except with baseball.
- The Chain of Harm: Discussed. Utena and Anthy have a brief discussion about the concept of reincarnation and parents passing down things to their children through the ages, exemplified in how they raised said children. Nanami is led to believe she has to abandon her egg, but when she returns for it the egg hatches into something which violently rejects Nanami as its mother and repays her earlier abandonment by leaving.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: It's a puberty metaphor episode, but it takes a multi-purpose approach, using "egg-laying" to represent menstruation, unexpected pregnancy, and becoming sexually active.
- Egg Sitting: Nanami takes care of her egg of her own initiative and thinks of it like a baby pretty much from the start. In a departure from the sort of humor that American media typically builds from this premise, Nanami does not struggle to care for the egg — she seems to enjoy her motherhood test-drive more than viewers might expect she would. The humor derives from Sustained Misunderstandings about what the egg means for Nanami's relationships.
- Family Honor: Touga suggests that any girl who "lays an egg" is betraying her family. Given tall the indicators of wealth and high status that surround the Kiryuu family, it's not surprising that they would place priority of maintaining their dignity and reputation.
- Food Eats You: In the shadow play, A-ko is trying to make some sort of point about accomplishing impossible tasks by propping a large egg up on chopsticks, but then the impossible really happens. The egg wiggles, and with the two-dimensional trickery of the shadow plays running at maximum, the egg is now a monster bacterium and the chopsticks are its flagellae. As the scene fades out, A-ko and B-ko scream and crunching sounds are heard, implying that the "egg" eats them.
- Good-Times Montage: After Nanami convinces herself that people actually do lay eggs and she has nothing to feel bad about, the next day is presented as a montage of scene of Nanami doting on her egg to the tune of Konnichiwa Akachan, an 1960s Japanese pop song about welcoming a new baby.
- Hidden Depths: Juri, of all people, is shown to be an expert bowler.
- Hypocritical Humor: When a misunderstanding makes Touga believe Nanami is attracted to girls, he lectures her about how homosexuality is wrong, when he himself also sleeps with guys.
- Imagine Spot: Nanami has many of those over the course of the episode, where other character discovers that she has laid an egg and makes fun of her for it, calling her a space alien. These imagine spots always end with Nanami being put on a cage together with other animals that lay eggs.
- Insane Troll Logic: Nanami isn't exactly the most logical person in this setting, but her thought processes during this episode are a clear example of this. When she finds the egg, her immediate thought is that someone must've put it there so everyone will think she laid it. She then somehow gets the mistaken idea that all girls lay eggs when Miki explains some mammals do indeed lay them and spends the episode hiding the egg she found because she doesn't want to be mocked for being a late bloomer.
- Kick the Morality Pet: An unintended example. Anthy's despondent expression after Chu-Chu returns implies both that she maybe went too far hurting Nanami and she regrets the harm Chu-Chu experienced while he masqueraded as Nanami's egg.
- Mistaken for Lesbian: When Nanami asks Touga if he prefers boys or girls (she's talking about the gender of whatever is inside the egg), he misinterprets the question and believes that she is talking about his sexuality and answers "Girls, obviously," which then Nanami replies with "Really? Me too."
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Nanami regrets abandoning the egg out of fear it'll be eaten, but when she returns for it's become monstrously big and the thing that hatches out abandons her. While that part seems to be a dream, Nanami screams out in horror when she finds the broken egg shells in her bed.
- The ending of the episode largely implies the egg Nanami was carrying around all this time was Chu-Chu, enchanted by Anthy as yet another attempt to mess with Nanami. However, the very last shot before the end credits shows Anthy appearing to visibly regret something, indicating she feels she went too far to screw with Nanami's head, and Chu-Chu may have been harmed by the experience as well.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Nanami and Touga have a conversation where she asks him if he would prefer a boy or a girl. Nanami means having children, but Touga thinks she's talking about boyfriends and girlfriends, so when she says she would like a girl, Touga ends up thinking she's a lesbian.
- Real-Place Background: At one point in the episode Yokohama Marine Tower
, a recognizable part of the Yokohama downtown skyline, appears in the background. Ikuhara mentioned in liner notes that he wanted to use a song titled "Blue Light Yokohama" in this episode, but was not able to secure the rights. - Running Joke: Nanami has four absurd Imagine Spots that involve her being locked up with various egg-laying animals.
- Stronger Than They Look: Nanami can barely lift Juri's bowling ball of the ground, but Juri can balance the thing on her shoulder with ease.
- Table Space: Touga and Nanami have a meal, seated at opposite ends of a long table. It indicates Symbolic Distance, especially when Touga uses it as an opportunity to repeat his earlier warning that their happiness together depends on her not being "the sort of girl who lays eggs."
- Taken from a Dream: Nanami dreams about about finding a distinctively decorated egg, and when she wakes up that distinctively decorated egg is in her bed.
- You Monster!: Nanami calls Saionji this repeatedly after she finds him cooking eggs over a camp stove, and she even smacks him a few times. For his part, Saionji is surprisingly tolerant of Nanami's eccentricities.
