Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Price of Smiles
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5876 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Their world doesn't sound very stable ecologically, if the ancient nanomachines are required to be kept running constantly forever. A terraformed world should be stable on its own, with maybe a little tweaking over the ages.
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Luke's Yu-Gi-Oh! Channel
 Posts: 159 Location: Australia |
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Episode 9 Comments/Feedback
Pursue and annihilate, I think Harold made the right decision there, this is war, they lost their homeland and have to strike back at some point. First Izana, now Harold, they are losing their best people one after another. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3712 |
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I thought that the explanation of how the charrs damaged the environment made sense actually (in universe) and didn't mind the more detailed explanation. I just hope this show isn't going from heavy handed "war is bad" to heavy handed "we must save the environment".
It seems odd that they'd dismiss it being used as a weapon so quickly. Unless creating that explosion required an enormous amount of energy (which they didn't say it did), there shouldn't be a reason you can't put that chamber on a truck, switch it on and point it at the enemy army. Only real issue with the episode is this:
Yeah, when you think about it, the planet wasn't really terraformed if those nanites (ancient by this point apparently) are still needed to sustain things. Once a planet has been properly terraformed, it should be earth-like and not need any additional work (unless you want to make it even more like earth), presuming there aren't any ecological disasters. Maybe the charr's interacted with the nanites and prevented the terraforming from properly reaching a self-sustaining point? It's more like they're living on a space station that needs maintenance than a planet |
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Dosmundos
Posts: 41 |
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I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who got a little confused here about the environmental issue.
Mankind made the planet inhabitable through these nanobots, then apparently forgot not only their function, but their whole existence, thinking that the planet was terraformed. This means that there must have been some massive loss of knowledge on a planet-wide scale at some point in the past. This is not unlikely in societies without written history - the Aztecs finding the ruins of the pyramids of Tenochtitlán, thinking they must have been built by gods because they simply could not perceive of humans being able to construct something like it comes to mind. Yet the society in this show seems to be pretty advanced, and I don't remember anybody mentioning anything about any "dark middle ages" in the past. I mean, they still "remember" that the planet was originally made for humans to live on and that they as a race did not origin from it, but rather settled it by moving in from another planet. If they still know the WHY of their existence, then when and why did they lose the knowledge of HOW everything was created (and thus the knowledge of the existence and importance of these nanobots)? |
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1595 |
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A loss of technology was mentioned in episode 1.
If those were top secret archived hosted in very few places, it is likely that most of them were lost after some wars. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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Even with a complete catastrophic loss of technology, they would have easily been able to find the presence of the nanorobots since there technology is superior to ours and in today world we're capable of finding nanoscopic stuff easily, we've been finding them for over a hundred year (things like cell organelle and virus are nanometer size, we can even visual individual molecule and atom) an electron microscope would easily find those nanorobot even if they weren't specifically looking for them just because they would be present as contaminant.
Even assuming that basic research as completely stopped for some reason, the nanorobot would interfere with plenty of industrial machine/technique and might even get stuck in small filter (like for desalination, chromatography and such). So both the idea that the nanorobot were secret and have never been rediscovered until then is pretty ludicrous. So is the idea that people just gave up learning where the energy from the char came from, there would be intense research into figuring out where that energy come from if only just to increase the efficiency (when people found out that radioactive material give off energy they didn't just shrug and ignored it). On top of that the nanorobot need to gather that energy somehow (they can't possibly have been running on battery power for millennia), this would also be detectable. They could have fixed most of those issues pretty easily, instead of saying that nanorobot are everywhere in the air, they could have said they're only present deep underground where they help the terraforming process. The energy come from satellites in orbit/lagrange point, these transmit the energy straight to the nanorobot using some sort wave, the char are made from material that have natural resonance frequency to these wave when process in a specific way. Because so much of the energy is captured by the char the underground nanorobot are being starved of that energy and stop functioning. That energy was detected long ago, but people just assume it was a natural phenomena of the world (say the star just emit intense wave in that specific region). Even with all the problem the show explanation has (including how the idea of using it as a weapon is just dismissed because it can't be done on demand right after she just did it on demand) this is easily the most interesting the show has been since episode 2. Sadly they again focus this on the war aspect, when this is a far bigger problem. There entire civilization depend on the energy of the char for everything, including food. The fact that the char are used in war is pretty irrelevant to the equation. If anything this is an argument for war, not against, a single dominant nation could force the entire world to switch to a different source of energy, but multiple divided nation would find this much harder because one nation switching bear all the disadvantage but the benefit are spread to every nation (whether they switch or not). The nation to switch would also become much weaker and a far easier prey for other nation (whether trough or war or economic attrition) so even if they did switch there military would be the last aspect to switch away from char energy. Once again the show tries so hard to present war as a bad thing that it actually end up building a case for war. |
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HandofBobb
Posts: 81 |
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can't unsee:
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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At this point I just really want to know what the show development was like, it's very clear it had ambition at the start and was trying to do something but all that just vanished... Did they fire some of the original staff mid development or something?
It just baffle me that this made it trough every step of production. If it had shown a bit more cleverness in it's writing I'd be thinking that this "everything is perfect" ending was some sort of throw back to the first episode where the princess was kept in the dark because no one around her dared to tell here the reality of the situation (so in this case that her action literally resulted in the death of millions of persons due to lack of electricity causing mass starvation and a collapse of civilization). But there's really nothing that seem to indicate it even has half the writing chops to pull that off. |
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Chrono1000
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I have seen a lot of pacifist endings in anime but the ending to The Price of Smiles feels like it was written by someone that has never read a history book. They were in the middle of a prolonged war so the idea that the soldiers would get out of their broken robots and unanimously decide that the war had ended was incredibly unrealistic. That tower didn't just turn off all the chrars reactors on their planet it apparently eliminated all negative emotions at the same time.
What makes the ending even more unrealistic is that a few months later the people looked happy despite losing their electrical grid while in the real world that would lead to horrific tragedy. I guess the director was so focused on the message that war is bad that he was okay with having a fairy tale ending. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18252 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Yeah, as much as I liked this series (it was usually the first Friday series I checked out each week), I can't argue against Chris's judgment about the finale. It dropped the ball so badly that it's one of the most disappointing story-concluding wraps to a series that I've seen in quite a while. The biggest problem spot for me was the scene with Stella and Layla, but the epilogue made things seem way too painless.
This one had every opportunity to give something more than a very simplistic message about war and completely failed to do it. |
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TheKillerAngel
Posts: 84 |
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FeelsBadMan
The show would have benefited from another episode, since there's still another week left in the season. |
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Squidslinger
Posts: 76 |
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So, if the nanomachines all die then the planet loses it's terraforming and everyone dies...
I must have missed something because why the bloody hell did she take that and decide they all needed to be shut off? It's just...man this is like ivy league level idealistic idiocy. Even more since the planet miraculously becomes stable and crops grow better after? Come on, at least try to follow the rules of your own plot. Terribly written. If it was an all girl main cast it would have been another Last Exile Fam Fam Fan mess where the only sane cast member was Dian. Holy crap...lets just stop all weapons and hug...zomg what idealistic idiots in Japan write this dribble? I'd like to lock them up in a prison for one night and see how fast they gets shanked. Take away weapons, people will always find ways to make more weapons and kill each other. Weapons are only tools. You can't change the heart of people by taking away their tools. Should have known this show would be an idealistic dribblefest the moment I saw that opening theme and credits. |
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Covnam
Posts: 3712 |
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Wasn't expecting too much, but that was still a disappointing ending. The Layla/Stella scene was probably worst of all.
The chrars were causing the nanomachines to stop working, so that is what was shut off, allowing the nanomachines to work properly again. And apparently they could fix the environment in just a few months?!? You'd think things could have been managed better if that's all it took... |
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TexZero
Posts: 585 |
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I mean, it did that however it was poorly executed upon. The central theme being war is harsh and unforgiving doesn't make it the only theme. There was a underlying message there about not only learning from history to not repeat the mistakes of the past but also not being so absorbed in the technological arms race to the point of completely damaging the only ecosystem you have. Again both those lesser points got muddled and lost because this piece failed to pick an identity and stick to it. It wanted to be one part character drama and one part action showcase and failed to manage it properly. I can't say i agree with the reviewer as a whole but on the being rushed i certainly can. With more time and guidance this show could have been good but it's average at best. Thakfully they didn't shoot themselves in the foot like Aldnoah Zero. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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Yeah I think the idea was that the EMP only broke the char, but then that makes another big problem, why wouldn't people just make new Char? It's just a mess all over
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