Egao no Daika Final Episode (12): Pushing the giant reset button
Published on March 24, 2019
I think the best I can say about this ending is that it pretty much hit all of the points I expected to resolve the plot. As a result, I'd say it wasn't anything special, effectively hitting the baseline. As a whole, I think this series had issues with justifying a lot of its developments, which made many of those developments seem rushed as a result. The ending isn't too much different in that regard.
As I mentioned last week, I was somewhat hoping Layla would survive in the end. I think she would have bridged that gap between Yuki and Stella in many ways. In the end, her death seemed a bit sad, since Stella never ended up finding out who she really was. It was almost like Layla was killed just because it's the style the show had adopted, not for any particular character reason.
The argument that Yuki and Stella have in the end wasn't too bad, but I still have trouble agreeing with Yuki despite the fact that she ultimately "wins". It's not that I have a problem with her optimism, since I generally agree that people are inherently good as well.
It's just that she ultimately admits that she's gambling on her world-altering solution. Heck, the fact that the chrars drain the nanomachines keeping the world habitable never even comes up, even though it's a perfectly rational justification. On the opposite side, I guess I never got the sense that Stella was truly "convinced" by Yuki.
Along those same lines, I think that the ending ends up working out too well. Yuki acknowledges that people will be upset at the loss of the chrars, but things will ultimately be better because people won't die. And after taking her gambling, that...just happens. For a show that tried to emphasize the gritty nature of war, it's a strange shift. Yet, the crops rebound without an issue.
As I said, this could have been worse. I think a lot of my opinion is colored by a general sense of disappointment. I would have liked to see a relationship build between Yuki and Stella. Additionally, much of the Grandiga side seemed ultimately pointless. We see the emperor appear in person for the first time in the final episode, and what did he even do?
Final Score: 6/10 I respect how the show played with perspectives in order to tell the story of two sides, but it seemed to have trouble making its plot developments feel earned.