Egao no Daika

[Ryllharu]

Description shamelessly borrowed from RandomC: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Princess Yuuki Soleil reigns as the sovereign of her planet kingdom. Although she is but the tender age of 12, prone to emotional outbursts and perhaps somewhat naive, cloistered as she is in the ivory towers of her royal palace, Yuuki is blessed with many competent and loyal retainers. For these retainers, their highest calling in life is protecting their princess’s smile; heavy may be the head that wears the crown, but so long as the princess can smile then it follows that so too will her realm. But one day, Yuuki meets a 17-year-old career soldier and professional mecha pilot from the neighbouring Grantiga Empire, Stella Shining. Stella always smiles. But she never laughs. And Yuuki is about to learn exactly what price for which one smile is purchased — and how many others must be sacrificed for its sake?


AniDB

HorribleSubs - 01


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I have a soft spot for series set on other planets or in space with robots and princesses. This introductory episode met that criteria brilliantly. The young princess is sheltered, but she has the correct attitude about it. She wants to maintain peace and keep relations happy, she shirks her duties only to honor her parents or see what her retainers are up to, and she refrains from reacting poorly to insults, she shrugs them off and maintains her convictions.

But the combat scene did prove a few things about her. She's sheltered, yes. Naïve, yes. But she doesn't hold back when the situation warrants it. She uses the environment, she observes, she reacts decisively, intelligently, and does not hesitate.

But it is true that her retainers don't really respect her. They say they're going to stop treating her like a child now that she's come of age, but they scheme behind her back to end the conflict before she finds out about it.

I definitely appreciated that the combat was a little more strategic than initially hinted at. Let's hope it is kept up. I liked that they had multiple units controlled by a single user, and they used them in a way that takes advantage of that.

The worldbuilding was nice, the characters have a good design, the cast was good, the combat was satisfying and well depicted. There's hints of a deeper series hidden by the fluffy introduction, so it could end up being a fluffy series about creating an armistice through diplomacy, or something else tinged quite a bit darker.

I guess we'll see what kind of series this turns out to be.

[shinta|hikari]

Loli waki. Nuff said.

All aboard!!!

[MFauli]

Nothing about this episode was special, BUT it has a certain classic feel to it, I like that.

However, one major lol-moment: 'I'm now 12, a full adult!' 🐧🙈🐧🙈🐧🙈

[shinta|hikari]

It's a monarchy, so I'm guessing they also kept some medieval age classifications too.

[MFauli]

It's a monarchy, so I'm guessing they also kept some medieval age classifications too.

Lol, I get that they have some in-universe justification ;p Doesn't make it a less hilarious, outrageous line. Not that thos anime will evet be localized for the west.

[Ryllharu]

You realize that this series being HorribleSubs means it is on Crunchyroll or one of the other streaming services and therefore is in fact localized?

[MFauli]

You realize that this series being HorribleSubs means it is on Crunchyroll or one of the other streaming services and therefore is in fact localized?

Oh well. Then let's wait and see if the sjw crowd finds out about this ;p

[shinta|hikari]

For some reason, it wasn't reviewed by ANN like Shield Hero was.

[Ryllharu]

A pre-teen claiming they're now an adult on their birthday is as old as the trinity of drama/comedy/tragedy itself. Not sure why you'd think it was a big deal.

[shinta|hikari]

I don't think it is a big deal. I was just wondering why ANN doesn't review "normal" anime. It's not as if they should just review "controversial" ones for clicks.

[Kraco]

I found it pretty funny they are hiding a whole war from the official ruler of the nation. At least now it makes sense why the secretary is burying the poor girl under a mountain of work, instead of giving some of it to ministers: It will keep Yuuki so busy she doesn't even have the time to watch the news.

[shinta|hikari]

Episode 2.







WTF.

[David75]

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Every line Joshua said had a flag in it... maybe more.

[shinta|hikari]

How is shocking their ruler with the news of her closest friend's death better than informing her about the war? Why the fuck would they even send Joshua out in the first place..?

[David75]

She's an adult now, she needs to know there's a war outside her birdcage.
I do not think Joshua's death was part of the plans to deliver that piece of information, but it might be a bonus for those who wish for the birth of a warlord.
Then, flags for Joshua and the princess' smile were everywhere.

[Ryllharu]

It was the most telegraphed death of all time, and I need to go with shinta on this one. The way her retainers handled it was extraordinary bad. They were more or less acting out a military coup during her regency, and tried to clean it up as she was taking official power.

"We've been losing a war without telling you, our people are about to starve while we've been wasting the rare powersource on building better Knight-Mecha for ourselves in an attempt to gain a permanent advantage over the Empire...and oh by the way, your best companion in the entire world is dead."

That would be better than what they did, which was the exact REVERSE of that sentence. Maybe they were trying to drum up her support for the military attack by traumatizing her.

I do like the world-building that was subtly going on. There's some feature of the new planet that prevents flight of any kind, so it has the same technologically superior but medieval tactics that Isekai Monogatari had where ravines and narrow pathways can be turned into bottlenecks. It has a real Earth analog in terms of geography, just smaller, which is super cool.

The planet itself even seems to be poisoned, ever so slightly. Flowers don't grow, crops wither.

I also like that the primary characters the audience has been introduced to thus far, are kinda sorta the bad guys on the planet, and they're also losing the war. Hard to know who to believe about who started it.

[David75]

At this point in time, it's hard to tell if there's really good and bad guys.
There are two opposing sides that fight for scarce resources.
It's a little baffling they can power and manufacture their advandced suits and ships, that they have great VR equipment for games/training but do not seem to have advanced hydroponics and agriculture.

I wonder why they have such a low altitude cap, I can only think of low atmospheric pressure. Something like Mt Evrest summit pressure, where it becomes really hard to get an helicopter to fly. I thought of that because of the way those mech fly and how the propulsion seems to need some fluid to get force back.
But then, most humans can't breathe without assistance in the same conditions atmospheric conditions, so unless they evolved/adapted over generations...
But a thinner than earth atmosphere goes well with a smaller planet with lower gravity... that should help those mechs levitate easier

Another explanation is the tech they have was crafted on earth and most of the science and tech was lost with the many generations needed for the travel.
The first generation arriving on that planet only had enough knowledge to operate a terraforming device.
Then they developped and were faced with needs/problems they can't face with their now limited knowledge, when it would probably have been easy for the ancestors back on earth.

Last but not least, how is it possible to lose science, know-how and technology when you can travel the huge interstellar distances over a very long period of time and still get VR tech working, and probably a terraforming device ?
Keeping knowledge in a computer, even ways of teaching is very low tech compared to most of what we've seen so far.
Or is it that earth was at war and the people sent on the journey could have been caught so they were given the tools with only the most basic directions to use them ?

Phew, wrote that

[Ryllharu]

All good suggestions. I wondered if it was a Super Earth that had the equivalent of our normal atmosphere despite the increased gravity. It would be much harder for things to fly that way. They're using massive amounts of energy just to hover. It might also explain why Earth plants don't grow right:

Plants don't have skeletons.

[David75]

You mean the current planet ?
Ships are too large for a stronger gravity, princess' building too, with those glass structures.
As for plants, even without skeletons, trees and many crops sure can deal with gravity. They might adapt slowly and might not grow as much though, unless there's some research and scientists in agronomics, dna and the likes to speed up the process. But maybe they do and we did not get to know that since the show focused on energy/war/weapons/ and maybe weapons of mass destruction (Princess' parents)

[MFauli]

Episode 2.







WTF.

OMG.
Most unexpected happening ever. Did NOT expect this anime to a serious drama. And here I thought Neverland would fill that spot this season.

Really wondering what's gonna happen now. As you said, the characters we know kinda are bad guys - although I'm undecided whether escorting the princess to her friend's body instead of telling her beforehand is part of a plan or bad writing. This could become a real interesting sjhow now. I'd love if she left the country, joined the enemy, and proved herself to the military dictatorship by her strategic skills. Then taking revenge on her homeland's government, basically like: 'you got the superior mecha? Well, we got strategy!'


On a short note: OMG THE BROKE THE LOLI!