Hello everyone and welcome back to Eighty Six! I’ve been a bit positive lately, what with my coverage of Haibane Renmei and gushing over some recent productions. So it’s time to go back to being a bit of a curmudgeon and take shots at someone’s labor of love! Lets dive in.
Now I framed it humorously in the intro but I am legitimately disappointed in Eighty Six this week. From both a production and narrative perspective this episode feels like a step down. And you know what’s so surprising about it? This episode was both Directed and Storyboarded by Satsuki Takahashi, who did episodes 5 and 10 back in the first season. Those were good episodes with incredibly striking imagery! From Shin’s shot in the mirror in episode 5 to the scenic shots of episode 10, I praised them a lot! So it’s really disappointing to see him return this week and not get more of the same beauty. I can only assume the reason is the subject material he had to work with. Those two episodes were much stronger narratively and seemingly more focused in their goal. Meanwhile this episode felt… predictable. More so than Eighty Six usually is.
(Though I will say the CGI looked much better)
By predictable I am of course talking about Eugene. I called this 2 episodes ago when he was first introduced, it was obvious. To be fair when the time came the scene was gorgeous! Eighty Six really didn’t pull any punches with the graphic nature of his death and the way shots were cut communicated how… everywhere he really was. However I can’t help but wish that Eighty Six had subverted my expectations here. Or at least waited on his death so we could really get to know him. As it is there wasn’t any time to build up dramatic tension, to make us care for Eugene as a character. There was no choice or forced action on Shin’s part. It was just a sob story about his sister, a time skip and then BLAM. The kid is dead. There’s no weight to it.
In a sense this follows for Shin’s current arc. He’s getting pushed farther and farther away from everyone around him, from his humanity, to the point where only his fellow 86er’s (And Frederica) really talk to him. He’s become a specter of death who, because of his incredible skill, is time and again the only one to survive every battle. I think this is an interesting direction to explore his character! A conversation about how similar he is becoming to the Legion while fighting against them. Yet it also feels like something we saw in the 1st season. This emotion detachment, the almost clinical way that he looks at life, is just like from before he killed his brother. If we are doing this all over again then we need some kind of change, some reaction from him. Otherwise his time with Lena was sort of wasted.
Speaking of Lena, we haven’t seen much of her this season. That’s a shame. Because to me her dynamic with the squad was one of the best parts of Eighty Six and you can feel its loss this season. There’s no… I don’t want to call her the moral center, maybe more of an emotional center, but there’s no one with any real “hope”. Hope that things will get better, that they will survive, etc. There’s no one to really mourn them or to give stakes to the fights as they happen. I suppose Eugene and the other Giad’s are trying to fill that roll in a way. But none of them stand out as characters. At least… none that are still alive. And as for Frederica? Well… You already know my opinion on her but in for a penny in for a pound.
I still don’t like Frederica. All of my previous issues from previous episodes aside, what Eighty Six introduced in this episode is enough to dislike her. For one, the whole “mascot” thing is just weird and the only person to comment on it is dead now. It feels like a lazy writing attempt to justify bringing a Loli to war, implications of “comfort loli” aside. And then there’s her whole reason for coming to the war in the first place. I complained about Eighty Six rehashing story beats above with Shin but this is even more blatant. Going out to “save” her knight? This is just Shin’s brother all over again except I don’t even know this guys name and I have no emotional attachment to anyone who does. None of this feels like an organic continuation of the story. Just an excuse to add a loli to the party.
Finally we come to Fido and… I’m torn here. Because I do like Fido! Eighty Six did more in a single episode (11) to make me care for this robot dog thing than most shows do their lead characters. So to see him again is sweet. But this also feels like… I hate to say it but its like Eighty Six is pulling a Dragon Ball Z. This character was dead! We had our emotional moment, don’t bring him back to toy with us just because you can’t create new characters to care for! I understand that it’s one more connection to humanity for Shin for Eighty Six to rip away but you can’t expect killing the same character a second time to work. Especially when that character is a voiceless animatronic dog! Hopefully Eighty Six has something planned for him because right now I’m saddened by his return.
So yeah all in all this was a pretty “meh” episode of Eighty Six. It had some pretty shots and they seem to be getting the hang of their CGI mech’s, that looked much better than anything in Season 1. But the narrative content left a lot to be desired. The main draw of Eighty Six isn’t the international war stories or the grand conflict with the Legion. It’s the arcs of the individual characters. Their hopes, their dreams, their interactions and final moments. And doing what it did with Eugene just cheapens those. It draws an invisible line between “Plot Armor” and “Expendable” that didn’t exist in the 1st season, at least not until the end. And that lines very existence is a bane on any war drama. Hopefully Eighty Six has plans to address that. Because if not I won’t be any nicer in this seasons review.
Strangely enough I sort of bought into their explanation as to why Frederica is at the front lines. It kind of adds to the fact that the Giad Empire isn’t all sunshine and hides a cruel reality beneath its shiny surface, deepening the setting somewhat. They could have choosen the easy way out in never bothering to explain at all like many other light novels do so that was a nice surprise, it gets point for that in my book.
But as you already said the whole loli thing is unnecessary to begin with, it is one of the biggest flaws of this new season 2 and just makes this show feel much more “anime” and “tropey” than it needed to be.
The whole Fido thing was a huge dissapointment to me as well. The episode when it died in season 1 actually managed to improve my actual impression of the show somewhat, raising my score from a 4 to a solid 5/10 in the end. I may need to rethink that now, so thanks for that lol.
I’m just catching up on 86 season 2 now (and hence your posts for it). This was a rather disappointing episode for me as well. I groaned when Fido came back. The way Fido went out in the first season was so effective and emotional and to simply bring it back totally undercuts all of that. Frederica is quite annoying and this episode seemed to give her more of us than ever.
86 did surprise me on this front; I expected Shin’s new friend to die, but not this quickly! Poor guy goes out in a mere 2 episodes. Hardly knew the guy. I was wondering if he was an Alba and what was going on with that, if we’d get an explanation later on, but I suppose not since he goes out here.
The lack of Lena thus far I don’t mind that much. It seems like shipping her and Shin is all the rage among the fan community, but I’m fine with it to this point as the 86ers were by far the more interesting and rootable part of the show for me. That said, I hope this episode isn’t the start of Shin being broken off from his comrades as for me its about them as a group, not just Shin himself. That’s part of what makes the previous episode so great for me.
So all in all a disappointment, although the first 2 episodes of the season were quite well done.