I’m late I’m late for a very important date, that’s right the Eighty Six post is here! Only… 2 days late but the show must go on. So without further ado lets dive into another episode of Eighty Six!
To start I want to pose to you a question: What the hell was that opening? Did I skip an episode? How much happened off screen between 7 and 8? I understand wanting to start in-media-res but this was to much. The opening felt out of place and I barely understood what they were talking about. It took me rewatching the scene a few time to understand that it was basically a quick time-skip of deaths off-screen, widdling us down to 5. While this was interesting in its brevity I can’t help but feel confused and annoyed as a viewer. It’s not like I don’t understand why they did it either! Without this we would be repeating similar storylines, similar deaths, for the rest of the cour. But Eighty Six took its discontinuous narrative approach that I mentioned last week to far this time.
Much to my dismay the next scene doesn’t get much better. I am of course talking about Anette and her… breakdown? Freakout? Realization that Lena might actually legitimately care about the 86ers? I don’t know how else to describe it other than out of place. I just don’t buy it and it focuses the story on some of the biggest problems left in Eighty Six’s story. Namely the racism and how it seemingly came out of nowhere and pervaded the entire society almost overnight. To it feels like none of this really fits Anette’s character nor is it necessary to the story, the breakdown existing only to push Lena to her Uncle, which we will talk about. I guess some of this was always there with how flippant Anette was when Lena talked about the 86ers before. But going from that to… this was a bit to much to fast.
And of course I haven’t even mentioned the whole “Pararaid” thing yet. Remember a few episodes ago when I said I didn’t want Undertaker’s ability to detect the Legion to be some magical bullshit? And how everyone reassured me that it was probably just the Pararaid or his natural instincts? Well that’s out the window now because it appears the 86ers really do have mind/emotion communication. And that very power is actually the basis for the entire Pararaid technology, not the other way around! I hate it. This doesn’t fit into the world at all. Sure we had mechs and “Purge the humans” AI monstrosities before but those were all based in the “possible but improbably” sphere. They were Sci-Fi. This however is pure fantasy and I can’t but feel it takes away from the setting. Not to mention accidentally reinforcing the whole racism subplot if differences really exist.
With that out of the way, how about we move on to something more positive? Like say… justifying genocide to preserve international relations? No, just me? Jokes aside, I think this scene with Lena’s Uncle is everything the Anette scene wanted to be. It’s interesting and while his justifications for his actions are horrific and a bit… logically unsound, they still hit far better than Anette’s did. This idea that he knows he is a bad person, that he knows what he’s doing is wrong, but has lost hope is compelling! That they are killing the 86ers to avoid international backlash on the slim hope that if there are no 86ers left, who will notice, almost sounds like desperation to me. The desperate hope that there’s a reason, that people at large will forget, anything to avoid culpability for his actions. It’s not perfect but it’s much better.
And finally, as if we haven’t had enough big central character scenes, we come to Undertaker’s conversation with Lena. And I gotta say… It’s alright? His reasoning is sound here. He knows they are going on a suicide mission and that there isn’t anything Lena can do. Having her listen in would accomplish nothing and only distract them. At least this way he can try and spare her sanity and maybe her life. But what I don’t get is him telling her to run. Is he saying that killing a Shepherd is going to throw the Legion into chaos and that will cause an attack? Or is he just telling her to run before the inevitable big attack? Either way I think its a decent setup for the big finale of cour. The only question is if Eighty Six can capitalize on it and do something interesting with Lena now.
So yeah all in all this was a… decent episode? Probably on the lower end. The first half with the weird time-skip opening and Anette’s whole freak-out were definitely lowpoints for me. Even with the questionable narrative beats though the direction was still top notch. I realize it’s probably getting old to hear me say it every week but Eighty Six looks good. Like… Bakuten is probably the best animated of the season but Eighty Six is easily most well shot. It manages to make even dull scenes like Anette’s visually interesting and I think that deserves praise. As for the narrative, well, we just have to hope the last 3 episodes do something exciting wont we?
From the looks of it with the last of the information Shin imparted to Lena, it seems that there is going to be a mass invasion of the Capitol/Republic after Spearhead Squadron is seemingly eliminated, and that’s why Shin told Lena to flee to the Eastern Front. It seems that San Magnolia is going to fall very soon, leaving its citizens helpless against having their brains harvested by Legion. Shin came to this conclusion from the new weapon tested in the previous episode, which can strike from a long distance away. If this is the direction the story is headed, then I think it’d be interesting to see how Shin and Lena survive in the world after their country has fallen. I have to admit I would be pleased to see a racist society that is similar to Nazis get completely destroyed. They would have gotten what they had coming.
Personally, I am not bothered by Annette’s freakout. I think seeing Lena try so hard to help the 86 and how she has not harmed any member of the 86 directly reminded Annette about her past sins and weak character, so much that she decided to tell Annette about the real history behind the development of the Pararaid in an effort to push Lena away, and if Lena managed to not to get the hint, Annette even told Lena that she doesn’t ever want to see her again. Lena is a constant reminder of what Annette could never be and makes her feel guilty about what Annette has done even though she tries to tell herself that there was really nothing that she could do. I believe her telling Lena that she’s just as hypocritical as any other Alba was just Annette trying to make herself feel better about herself because she knows she’s scum, and if she can talk as if Lena is also scum, that means Annette would be no worse than Lena.
Shin telling Lena to run is actually a big translation error.
What he actually says amounts to “We’ll try and get help/disrupt the legion, you (Lena) try to survive”. But the mistranslations makes it seem like he’s telling Lena to leave ie. “You go get help, its your only chance to survive”.
Oooooh Ok, that makes a lot more sense. Telling her to run definitely implied there was an attack coming of some kind. But if it was “Survive while we get help” then that fits a lot better. Thank you for that!
You have no chance to survive make your time