86: Eighty Six – 10 [Thank You]

Welcome all to the penultimate episode of Eighty Six! For this season at least. This is an interesting week as from what I have been told this episode is almost entirely anime original. And yet despite basically being filler, its good. Like really good. So without further ado lets dive in! Oh and before I begin a reminder that I will be away on a business trip until Thursday, so no Nomad post until then. Sorry.

Anyways, on with the show! And what better place to start than with the production? Once again Eighty Six has some of the best editing and shot composition I have seen in ages. The way it takes everything from dull shot-reverse-shot dialogue scenes or simple travel montages and makes them visually engaging is a treat. From the way it emphasized the emotional distance between Shin and Raiden despite their physical closeness or the way Shin’s head turn and the water hitting the leaf were cut to the music. I shouldn’t be surprised by it anymore, Eighty Six has done this consistently from episode 1. However I can’t help but smile when I see editing like this. Toshimasa Ishii is doing a fantastic job with his full series directorial debut and I can’t wait to see more from him. Absolutely Kino.

Moving on to the actual narrative stuff, this week was a bit of a treat. I wasn’t sure what Eighty Six was going to do with these last 2 episodes, I assumed filler epilogues of some kind. The sort that make you wonder why the episode even exists, did we really need it, etc. Or maybe a tease at what is to come in the 2nd cour. But Eighty Six really surprised me with just how much focus it gave the 86ers. How much respect it gave to their story. It’s like Eighty Six used this episode as a transition for both us, the viewer, and them the characters. Shifting us out of their previous lives as soldiers for the Alba into this new one of freedom. Granting us peeks into their old lives and contrasting them with the new.

I found it all rather interesting! How they stumbled around looking for a purpose. They have no fight left to fight, no reason to actively engage the Legion, no reason to not stop and rest. They don’t have to perpetually move forward anymore, allowing them to take time for themselves. This is most prominent in Shin who has lost not only his life’s goal but the one person he seemed to connect with. On the surface he seems fine, better than ever even as he is able to laugh, smile and joke around. He seems more animated and carefree. But how much of that is compensating for what was lost? How much is making up for lost time? It’s clear that Shin needs a goal of some kind and the rest of the group noticed. I’m looking forward to seeing what goal he decides on and how he tackles it.

Meanwhile the actual exploration stuff looked really good this week. I talked about it a bit in the opening paragraph with shot composition but the actual scenery itself looked really good. From the fields of flowers with old, fallen 86ers in the background to the Imperial ghost town. Eighty Six did a damn fine job with its backgrounds this week. It’s kind of odd really, how beautiful and serene the land controlled by the Legion. As if being devoid of humans for so long has been good for it and allowed nature to flourish. The 86ers point this out as well of course! Talking about paradise, how the land is like a Garden of Eden untouched by man. It’s a nice contrast to the havoc and destruction we have seen caused by the Legion until now. Between the racism and the destruction of nature, are the Alba really worth saving?

Of course I can’t not mention the final montage! I just… this montage was great. I never expected to be sad about a robot but I’m pretty sure I care more about Fido’s “death” than I do anyone else’s this season. And I’m pretty sure this montage is responsible for that. The window this gave us into the lives of the 86ers was just… incredible. Showing us the entire squad, how they came together, time before we ever even met them. How it carried on into the main story but showed us scenes behind the scenes. The quiet moments the cast had to themselves. Never thinking or noticing the robot, kind of like how your so used to your pet you don’t notice them in the same room as you. It was like the emotional payoff of all of these random deaths and moments got combined into a single scene.

Seriously, the way it intercut the characters and showed us their progression without ever telling us was great! Like the unexplained “129” drawn on the blackboard, something that remained until their final days. We saw it’s creation, saw it change and then… we saw it stagnate as the man updating it disappeared from the videos. How it intercut scenes of characters being happy, talking to Fido, pondering love and life, with Shin’s “mercy” and the reactions we never quite got during the season. Those moments where characters think they are alone, crying for those they have lost. Never noticing their pet in the background because they have gotten so used to its presence. The way the date changed in the bottom left as a clear progression of time, as if the events on screen weren’t enough. All the way to the zoom out of Fido’s last moment. Fantastic.

Maybe I’m gushing a bit to much here, maybe some will see that as a basic or unassuming montage. But for me it was all the war melodrama that I expected Eighty Six to have throughout the entire series concentrated into a singular moment. However because they had already won, because the war was largely behind them, it didn’t feel like melodrama. Instead it felt like one of those “Lost footage” movies or a documentary made after the fact. There were no twists. We knew what was coming in each scene, this just added context to them. And it worked. Really well. Something like this… It makes me excited for the finale! I’m hoping for a Lena episode that does the same as this. That shows us who she was and who she is now and all the sacrifices made along the way. I hope its good.

So yeah all in all, in case it wasn’t obvious, this was a really good episode of Eighty Six. I honestly can’t believe that this is anime-original, it fits in that well. But that’s sort of the point of good filler I guess, isn’t it? The status quo hasn’t changed, the story can still pick up right where it left off. Now we know more about these characters and where they are at. Now we can appreciate their journeys and what is to come all the more. I only hope that Eighty Six’s finale is as strong as these last to were. If it ends on as strong a note as this I don’t mind totally forgetting episodes 2 and 3 ever existed.