I’m back with another week of Eighty Six! This is another good week for the show, I think it’s on a roll. From some great direction and lighting to more of the narrative goodness, Eighty Six brings it all. So without further ado lets dive in!
Now I’m sure some of you are getting tired of this, I talk about it every week after all. But I can’t not mention Eighty Six’s continuously stellar editing. Seriously these snap cuts are fantastic! Ripping off the post-it to the sound of a gunshot, cutting to a single falling petal? It’s so quick but so impactful. Or the scenes of Undertakers brother, at the start and end. Not to mention Eighty Six’s lighting or scenery. The green moon, while unrealistic, was haunting. And the way the cherry blossoms glowed in the moonlight, suffusing the scene with a pink glow. When focused anywhere other than the robots this show looks good. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say Eighty Six is one of the best edited and looking shows of the season. Not animation wise but hey, animation ain’t everything.
Now that we are past the break and can move on to the actual narrative: I called it! I knew Undertakers brother had become a Shepherd! It’s not confirmed yet but all the signs are pointing to it, not that it wasn’t obvious. Between Undertaker’s headless sigil, last weeks exposition and the scar around his neck all the context clues were there. This week though Eighty Six reveals what happened to the brother along with what Undertakers quest really is. And you know what? As obvious as it was I liked it. Eighty Six didn’t shy away here at all. We got full frontal headless corpse complete with vertebrae and a nightmarish scene of it “waking up” to haunt Undertaker. It’s not subtle at all but I don’t really care. As an opening scene I think it was a great way to introduce us to the episode.
As for the backstory between the brothers we still don’t know to much. This week we learn that their parents died, which was obvious, and that the elder blames the younger. All pretty standard stuff. It’s really going to come down to how Eighty Six manages to mesh this with the brother Lena saw. It somehow has to reconcile these two people, the violent elder brother and the caring savior, into the same person. Luckily I think this is totally doable because of one specific tidbit we learned: Undertaker is from District 1. His family clearly wasn’t some random dark-haired nobodies, they were important/well off. Whether or not this matters yet we don’t know. Maybe the brother was just going crazy. But I hope there is some connection there. That Undertaker did something, said something, to get them sent out here. A reason for the hate.
Speaking of backstories Undertaker wasn’t the only person to get one this week. A cheap lead in I know but it’s time to talk cherry blossom festivals! I thought this was actually rather cute. A much better “team bonding” than the lake scene we got in episode 2. It was a happiness found on the side of the road, a picnic prepared in the apocalypses, leaning and sitting on rubble. Tinting the good times with the bleakness of the setting but not smothering it, allowing it to shine all the brighter. And by making it a team flashback rather than an individuals Eighty Six did something rather clever: It gave everyone a death flag. And in doing so managed to make totally expected deaths still work. Because while we knew someone would die, we didn’t know who this episode. And I think it payed off.
I liked how sudden the 86ers deaths were. Not because I revel in it, “Oooh death makes anime better”, but because it reinforces the setting. These characters had a b-plot, a side romance between Daiya and Anju, Lecca pining for Undertaker, that now will never be resolved. There won’t be any love triangles or sappy good buy scenes: They just fucking died. And it was brutal. From suicide bombers with human-like faces to the Legion drones stopping their assault to collect Lecca’s head, forcing her suicide. Even showing us all the way up to the muzzle flash without indulging itself by holding the shot after. Eighty Six managed to ratchet up the Legion, to make me truly believe they are a threat and that they terrify the 86ers. So yes, I expected someone to die this episode, the flags were there. Yet it still worked. And that’s pretty cool.
Finally lets talk about more parallels because I’m really liking Lena’s slow change. The way she watches and experience’s Undertaker shooting Daiya despite his offer to let her leave. In her quest to view them as people, to truly accept them, she’s taking the good and the bad. The respect, the joy, the friends… and the loss. And just like Undertaker she has committed herself to remembering them. Making little post-it notes of their faces to better talk with them, storing them in a box when they die just like Undertaker stores the pieces of their sigils. I fully expect that box of post-its to be buried in the military graveyard. And the cool part there is I don’t Undertaker ever told her about that so its something she’s done completely on her own. Organically connecting the two and letting their romance build naturally over the season. It’s good shit.
So yeah, all in all, this was a pretty good episode of Eighty Six. It’s still not some grand commentary of war, this isn’t the next Legend of the Galactic Heroes. But it is a good war drama. I’m invested enough in these characters, this story, this world and its mechanics, that I want to see where it goes. The Legion are interesting like a kind of pre-40k Necrons, complete with Black Archs. The editing manages to elevate basic scenes and narrative beats into legitimately emotional and engaging scenes. And the connection between Lena and Undertaker is actually kind of cute in a “This would never work” sort of way. Basically it’s Muv-Luv if Muv-Luv was good. The only downside here is that the Eighty Six Light Novels are still releasing. So even with 2 cours we won’t be getting an ending anytime soon.
Hopefully we at least get a good cliffhanger right?
