86 anime review ep 1–9 spoilers!
Haven’t done theses in a while since nothing really caught my eye in the last few seasons. According to other fans who read the light novel volume 1 is done with theses 9 episodes. And I guess the last two episodes of this season is setting up for the next arc/season.
In short yes I do recommend this anime. While some plot holes which I guess might get addressed later on, it’s pretty solid.
So the basic plot is our gang the 86 are being forced to fight robots for their country. Their said country outed them since they are racist. Our crew gets a new handler Major Milize who together with the gang find out that the empire and the war is not what it seems.
The show while being about racism it’s only a sprinkle with more sci-fi elements being thrown in the later half.
Which brings up a pretty big plot hole, forced conscription. And when the troops are killed off since they don’t really have a large pool to gather from then what? I mean it’s realistic since many governments don’t really think too far ahead once they realize their plans has big flaws. Here in the US we have a tough time taking care of our veterans as is.
But in the anime the stakes seem higher since they are dealing with an autonomous killing robot force known as the legion. I figured they would take the threats more seriously.
It’s also revealed that the robots are able to transplant the brains of dead pilots and make them pilot for them. So a kind of zombie situation. And the final plot point is that Shin “Undertaker” has to kill his dead brother whose brain is in a huge legion which acts like a commander to the little legions.
According to Wiki there are 10 light novels so we are pretty much at the beginning. So many questions and probably won’t get answered in the next few episodes.
What is the Republic fighting? The legion’s tech seemed way out there compared to the Republic. Brain harvesting tech A.I. with autonomous killer robots? And the Republic is using racism to fight them?
It’s kind of revealed that the Republic will replace the 86 with a real force later on but I assume we will focus on our gang the 86 for the entire run. Yes I know the whole scheme was to kill two birds with one stone by sending the 86 to their deaths while killing some of the enemy forces. But that’s like having your cake and eating it. You can’t have it both ways.
I would have hoped Lena would have a bigger role but I assume she will play more in the later parts of the anime. But as of now she is just Waifu material and I guess to pitch the show. It was a good dichotomy to show her life in the capital and the gang’s life in the war zone.
Final thoughts:
While many other anime did it better 86 is still a solid show in it’s own right. I hope the other parts will answer the many questions it raised. I hope we get more fleshed out characters and more development from the Empire. As of now it just seems like the republic and the empire they are fighting are just being evil for evil’s sake.
We got a good set up and the motivations for our main leads but the world just seems kind of stupid. Is there a resource war or land grab? Sure? Maybe? It wasn’t really made clear on why anything is happening. While this anime doesn’t really need to make any of this clear for the story to continue I would imagine it would come up at some point during the novels.