Egao no Daika

Egao no Daika is pretty falsely advertised, and I mean that in a good way. From the key visual, the first episode, and the OP, I'd thought that this would be a series with a hopeful, albeit somber tone, telling the story of two girls from opposing nations learning to put aside their differences to end a war with the power of friendship and all that goodness.

What ensues is instead is a show with a consistently bleak and dismal outlook on war and it's consequences. There are no grand heroic actions, no hero in a super prototype to swoop in and mow down hordes of ... enemies in the name of plot convenience. This is a show about two girls on opposite sides of a war, going through their own separate journeys.

Egao no Daika (which I'll refer to as EnD from here on) is a show that somehow completely went under my radar when it aired in the Winter 2019 season. I try to keep an eye on every mecha anime that comes out, as it's such a rare genre to see nowadays, aside from your occasional new Gundam installment. EnD was the only new Mecha of it's season, yet somehow I completely missed it, and ended up picking it up out of curiosity during that weeklong break between the Spring and Summer 2019 seasons.

Now not only is there a lack of mecha anime coming out nowadays, most of it simply isn't all that great. I recently watched a few shows from this past decade, including Knights & Magic, Eureka Seven AO, Heavy Object, and Macross Delta, and the majority of them didn't give me any real reaction other than "yeah this might be kinda cool in Super Robot Wars." The first episode of EnD led me to believe that this would be another one of such animes.

I was wrong.

Our two main characters are Yuki and Stella, the former of which is the young princess of a kingdom, and the latter a regular soldier in the opposing empire. In the first episode we're introduced to Yuki, who is young, naive, and hopeful. As the series progresses, she becomes more hardened as she comes to grips with the reality of war. On the other side we have Stella, a soldier traumatized by her past, who unsettlingly wears a smile almost all the time.

Both characters aren’t exactly the most original archetypes, but the show does a good job of making the viewer empathize with them, and understand their hardships. It’s genuinely heartbreaking and disturbing to watch as Yuki’s hopeful outlooks on the conflict are shattered throughout the first few episodes. Stella’s outlook is reminiscent of Chirico’s in the first few episodes of VOTOMS. The two have stories mostly separate from one another, allowing for the viewer to witness two completely different and disconnected viewpoints of the same series of events. I will say however, that I found the episodes focusing on Stella much more compelling and interesting than the episodes focused on Yuki. There’s a large ensemble of side characters, but not many of them stand out too much. Gail and Lily were the most memorable side characters for Stella’s episodes, while Layla was the most interesting by far in Yuki’s.

Now let’s talk about the robots themselves. The mechs in this series are referred to as Theurgears, and they’re treated as just tools of war. Similar to VOTOMS or Gundam The 08th MS Team, the mechs are treated as just another weapon to be utilized on the battlefield. They’re uniform, mass produced, and basically used as a replacement for infantry on foot in large scale battles. EnD has often been compared to Code Geass due to it’s focus on political machinations, but you won’t see any of the overblown bombastic speeches or over the top ace custom machines that Geass is so well known for here. The CGI for the machines is decent, it’s not anything standout but it’s not terrible either.

All in all, EnD is a show I unexpectedly came to enjoy. Maybe having my expectations caused me to like it more than it deserves. To be honest, it’s not anything standout or new to the genre, but because of my own personal enjoyment of it, I’ve given it a higher rating. It probably could’ve helped for this show to have had a bit of a longer run, to give more screentime to the combat, and more characterization for the assorted side characters. While its no classic, I definitely enjoyed this much more than the majority of other mecha from this past decade that I’ve watched (the only exceptions being a few of Sunrise’s productions, Full Metal Panic IV, Suisei no Gargantia, and Rinne no Lagrange). This was one of the few animes I’ve watched recently to truly satisfy me with it’s ending, and leave me content to take a break from watching stuff for a while, rather than immediately picking up the next show.

The Price of Smiles focuses on two young women living on a distant planet with both their kingdoms at war. The first, Yuki, is the princess of the kingdom of Soleil and national symbol following the loss of her parents, who has an idealistic belief in wanting the best for everyone while oblivious to the true reality of war. The second, Stella Shining, is a soldier within the Grandiga Army attempting to find purpose in her life after having been raised as an orphan and has difficulty expressing her true emotions to others due to her rough upbringing.

To start things, I'll just say first impressions ... with this series can be a bit misassuming. The first episode has you believe this may be a light-hearted mecha series with the typical story setup it establishes with Yuki's character and I've read that this has led some folks to not watch the series beyond this point as a result. The Price of Smiles isn't afraid to explore how harsh the realities of war can be. While the series explores how both kingdoms have justification to fight in their war, it shows both sides committing morally questionable acts to accomplish their goals and the series isn't afraid to kill off major characters to emphasize this. It also shows that having the more capable mecha within the series can mean squat as Grandiga's greater numbers for their armies are occasionally shown to overwhelm Soleil in spite of their superior technology. Plus, idealism isn't always a good thing to have in a brutal conflict such as war, which Yuki is painfully shown to realize throughout this anime's 12-episode run.

As far as the storytelling for the series goes, it has its ups and downs. Yuki and Stella serve as the focus characters for each side of the war to explore how their kingdoms are faring. The series does a solid job showing off the justifications both sides have in their conflict and that the characters focused on in both factions are not irredeemable. Stella's character focus was largely solid in exploring her rough upbringing and shown to undergo gradual development as she comes to develop bonds with her brigade members and finds purpose for herself. Yuki's character focus is more weaker as the series chooses to still have her stick to her idealist beliefs throughout the series in spite of the hardships of war she is confronted with and makes her feel quite out of place in the story that Price of Smiles is going for. The ending for the series also felt both a bit rushed and rather anti-climactic in how it addresses both a certain element of Stella's past and how the war gets ultimately resolved in spite of hints to this direction being alluded to. In addition, the series can get fairly heavy-handed in how it expresses its themes at points and this could potentially turn off viewers who hate this approach to storytelling.

In short, Price of Smiles offers a mostly solid, though somewhat flawed, series that takes some creative risks with bucking a number of the typical cliches of a mecha war series in exploring the realities of war and exploring how the focus characters withing both kingdoms cope with these realities. Personally, I felt Stella's developments with the series were better handled than Yuki's and I do realize this series is likely to not be everyone's cup of tea with the rather mediocre first episode and the heavy-handed approach to handling its themes. Still, I'd at least recommend sampling the first few episodes of the series to see if it's something you may have interest in watching the entirety of.

Generic Shounen-ish feels this time, embodied in female mc in a fantasy-sci-fi and military genre. Contains cliche moments where triggers are not pulled at crucial moments. Heck the only reason I finished till the end is cuz it's one of the very few sci-fi genre not focused much on mecha ace 1v1/showcase fights and has giant battleships that uses artillery weapons (fire sounds) instead of plasma/lasers.

For story setting, it did well on portraying each sides (kinda the feels of there's no necessarily good or bad sides in war just bunch of jerks and terrible decisions

Overall some may find it to their liking but ... to those who hates too much "let's pick flowers and sing kumbaya together" ideals, you might find yourself wanting to punch the characters on the screen. You will either find it not bad if you're still into typical fantasy/shounen-ish genre like Is it wrong to pick up girls in a Dungeon (sorry, was not able to find similar feels with female mc), or very terrible (reads as annoying) if your taste is contemporary fantasy like Kumo desu ga and Kuma Kuma (29-5-22)