Eighty Six S2 – 4 [Welcome Back]

Hello everyone and welcome to what is perhaps the dullest episode of Eighty Six yet! Think I’m exaggerating? Then you clearly haven’t watched the episode before reading this. And if you have but still disagree? Give me until the end of this post to prove it to you. So without further ado lets dive in!

Obviously the place we have to start is with Frederica. I know that this is becoming a weekly segment at this point but I have to get this out somewhere: She is the worst part of Eighty Six. From the blatant and pointless sexualization to taking over the conversations between the 86ers and making them about herself, she’s bringing down everything that made Eighty Six good. What’s worse though is that she also isn’t bringing anything new to the table to make up for what she’s ruining. A 10 year old waxing philosophical in her little “moe” voice about life and death, am I supposed to not laugh?! How am I supposed to take this whole knight and fallen kingdom plot seriously when it’s being delivered by fucking Moe Moe Kyun? And actually now that I mention it lets talk about this “Knight” plot because it’s incredibly lazy.

The whole premise of the “Knight and the Legion” is just a repeat of Shin and his brother. A kindly brother figure who was driven to extremes through adversity, eventually falling to and becoming one of the Legion. Thus prompting our leads to go out of there way to hunt him down and kill him, “freeing” him from their service. Eighty Six is even giving this new “antagonist” a relationship with Lena’s replacement, Frederica, leading to the exact same scenario. And the worst part? Eighty Six isn’t even trying to hide it. They even go so far as to give the Knight the last name “Nouzen” tying him to both Shin and his brother. Like… what are the odds? Can Eighty Six not be bothered to even come up with new names? Not to mention new reasons to go to war.

That said, credit where it’s due, the whole expository scene did look good. I really liked the red light flashing through the window, the perpetual reminder not only of what is out there and coming towards them but of what Shin is slowly becoming more akin to. The way it blinked and bathed the whole room in red light, something only Shin noticed. It took a scene that I otherwise didn’t care about and made it memorable. And this is something Eighty Six is, like usual, pretty good about. Another example being Shin’s walk through the hallway with his second in command. Listing things off while he stares into the distance outside, walking into people and forcing them to yield to him, etc. These small details make the world of Eighty Six feel alive and the scenes stand out, even if I don’t care for the subject of said scenes.

Sadly though beyond the visuals being pretty good, like usual, this was a pretty nothing burger episode. Beyond Frederica’s rehashed plot with the knight the only other stuff we got were Giad politics. But all this really did was sow doubt into the Colonel and the Giad Federation itself. For the Colonel I suppose this might be new, we are introduced to the idea that she doesn’t really care and is using the 86ers for her position. However anyone that was paying attention would have already gotten similar vibes from the President as well as the Federation at large. So this idea that the 86ers are being used for others benefit has been around for awhile. We are just waiting for the other shoe to drop in Giad’s corruption at this point.

Don’t get me wrong, Eighty Six tries to compare Giad to San Magnolia. It has Raiden and others comment how little has changed for them, how they are still taking orders, being ignored and fighting in steel coffins. Having a character tell us that though isn’t the same as showing us. And we can’t really see any of it from the frontline of the war, not with Frederica distracting us at least. It feels like Eighty Six has this really ambitious idea about comparing the extremes of Capitalism and Fascism but it has no idea how to go about it so it defaults to just “Look war is bad”. Compare that to the first season and how it explored what it means to turn a blind eye to your governments actions, however basic that exploration was, and it just doesn’t match up.

So yeah all in all I think this was a pretty wasted week for Eighty Six and I hope we get to see Lena soon. I miss her, I miss her struggles, I miss her interactions with the 86ers and I honestly just want to get away from Frederica. This loli is sucking the life out of the show and really dragging this season down. And sure, not all of these issues are related directly to Frederica as a character. But they are a part of what Frederica’s addition to the show represents: Blatant audience appeal. It feels like Eighty Six figured out that the first season, the first story, was a success and is trying to recreate that success in the 2nd story by doing the exact same thing again. Maybe that works for some. But it won’t work for me. Lets hope that changes moving forward.