In the cowbell episode, Nanami sees an item in the social context of “expensive jewellery”, and treats it accordingly as a status symbol - even to the extent that she ignores the opinions and whispers of the people around her.
In the egg episode, Nanami has no social context for finding an egg in her bed - so she obsessively attempts to predict the reactions of others, so she can work out how she is meant to feel about it.
I find this sequence very interesting, partially since the way Nanami reacts upon waking suggests that it was a made-up dream rather than a memory (well, as much as memories aren’t made-up dreams in RGU). Presumably she’s soon going to find the eponymous egg in her bed, making the dream something of a premonition as well. Nanami always has been a little bit more magical than most of the others.
Child Nanami’s initial reactions to the egg tie in well to teenage Nanami’s reactions throughout the episode. She finds a strange item under mysterious circumstances and doesn’t know what it is. The people around her grow concerned about how strangely she’s acting and ask her what’s up. But Nanami’s immediate instinct is to shield the egg from view. Is she protecting it because he might take it away? Or does she not want him to see because she senses that the egg is something strange and even wrong?
At the risk of putting the cart in front of the horse (i.e. doing analysis before I actually get to the bits where that analysis comes from), the egg does a lot of metaphorical work in this episode. It’s a metaphor for motherhood, with all of the protective instincts that implies. It’s a metaphor for menstruation, something that happens to most women as they reach maturity but also something that shouldn’t be discussed or shown openly. It’s a metaphor for struggles of orientation, which are often something that cannot or should not be shared. It stands in for anything that might set you apart from others and make them think you’re weird, and thus must be hidden. I think child Nanami putting the egg behind her back and pretending she never found it is an important prefiguring of all of these themes.
And here’s another thing, years later: even in her early childhood, and even in her dreams, Nanami is supervised. At the slightest indication that she’s acting oddly, someone runs out to check what she’s doing. It’s no wonder that her key neurosis in this episode is that someone will notice her egg and tell her it’s weird and (therefore) wrong.
