Egao no Daika Episode 4: The Choice of Hope

Yikes this was painful to watch. Not because I was totally affected by this episode’s events, but because of how bad the animation was this episode. It took a huge dip where basically every scene and every character looked so bad and clunky that it took out the little enjoyment I got out of this episode.

The first two episodes of the show weren’t enough to convince me that I’d stick with the show, but then the third one really piqued my interest and I ended up liking that episode a lot more. Though I found it concerning that I enjoyed the show more when it wasn’t about Yuki and Soleil and had a feeling that the fourth episode would return to our main group, and it did. And again I wasn’t into the episode.

Princess Yuki is obviously greatly affected by Joshua’s death. She’s very much upset that everyone kept the truth from her and now she has no idea what to do. I’ve seen people complain about Yuki but she was always sheltered and naive, so it’s pretty understandable that she’s being stubborn and confused. She started off a little jaded and angry but as Layla explained and tried cheering her up, Yuki was gaining back her confidence and her old personality back. She eventually joins Harold and Izana and tries to become involved in the war. Soleil is doing pretty poorly with all the casualties and the fall of cities. Yuki approves of evacuations and is glad that the evacuations in Leash are well, a city very important to her as it connects to her parents. But things don’t go as planned as a group of civilians stay behind and try to fight back against Grandiga, stupidly. Yuki doesn’t want anyone else to die so she begs and pleads Harold to send out some forces to protect them. They manage to make it to the civilians and try to transport them away but they were outnumbered and were all killed. This’ll probably be the turning point for Yuki as she saw firsthand that you can’t save everyone. She wanted to save them so there would be anymore deaths, but because Harold listened to her, they lost the civilians anyways as well as more soldiers and theurgears.

It’s a huge blow for Yuki as she feels responsible for that. She still showed that naivete in the end but I think seeing it firsthand will make her realize how awful and cruel war can be. You can’t save everyone, so some sacrifices have to be made. While Yuki put her people over her own feelings when it came to the evacuations, she put her feelings before her people and it ended up costing them even more loss. Though I’m kind of glad that happened. If it were some other show, the civilians may have been saved and all would have been well. But so far this show has shown us how brutal it can be with its war so I liked that things didn’t end well. It’s at least more realistic.

One surprising thing was Layla. I didn’t expect her to be important, but if what we saw in the flashback was true, then Layla is Stella’s mother. The little girl next to her was holding the same fish bowl Stella is holding in the OP, and since they both have the same beauty mark, I think it’s confirmed. The flashback showed the real reason why Soleil and Grandiga’s relations collapsed. They actually worked closely together and had good relations, but after a deadly terrorist attack that took the lives of Yuki’s parents, their bond broke. In the attack, Layla lost her family as well. In the end she ended up serving under Princess Yuki since they had formed a connection when Layla protected her in the van. Maybe because I didn’t expect much from Layla, and probably because I’m not invested in any of the characters so far on Soleil’s side, Layla’s backstory didn’t do too much for me. It kind of came out of nowhere and Layla has always kind of been…there, so I never connected to her. Though now I have an idea how Yuki and Stella are going to meet, but Layla suddenly becoming an important character is strange since she never had much spotlight. It’s hard to care for a backstory when you don’t really care about the character.

I’ll be honest, this episode bored me. This anime is a weird one. When I think I’m ready to drop the show, it does something to pull me in. The first two episodes weren’t that great but meeting Stella and the other soldiers from Grandiga was pretty good. Most of this episode was boring, but the flashback basically revealing that Stella is Layla’s daughter has me slightly interested in maybe wanting to check out more.

But I think my coverage of the show is going to stop here. I don’t want to continue writing for a show I’m not wholeheartedly enjoying. I think I’ll check out Egao no Daika for a little longer until I can’t take it anymore, but as for blogging it, this’ll be my last review. There was a lot of potential for this show but so far it’s not reaching that potential. I might be right in saying that this show is only going to end up as a forgotten mediocre/bad show. Oh well. At least I have other shows from this season I happily look forward to every week.