Welcome back everyone to another season of Eighty Six! If you’re reading this post you already know what you’re getting into so lets skip the preamble and jump right into it!
Right off the bat I want to, again, praise Director Toshimasa Ishii for Eighty Six’s visuals. The animation and compositing aren’t the best, Heike takes the cake in raw production values probably. But Eighty Six is making a fair go at the title for “Best Shot”. I just really love how it frames and cuts between scenes, imbuing meaning in even the smallest gestures. One of my favorites for the episode for example had to be around 7 minutes in. After being introduced to the now calm and peaceful daily lives of the 86’ers, something novel for them, we then get a short sequence of back shots. Fading between each of them as these days drag on into monotony, the music steady and unchanging but purposefully dull, without bite. It conveys what they are feeling really well! Now if only Eighty Six didn’t feel the need to verbalize it to.