86

86 is an anime based on a light novel of the same name. The central focus of the anime is the ongoing war between humans in various countries and AI trying to destroy all of them. There's two sets of main characters, more or less. First being Lena, a starry-eyed commander who comes from a Totally Not Nazi country and the other set of main characters is the unit she was assigned to command long distance, the Spearhead Squadron. The first part of the anime follows the Spearheads and the commanders experience in the war, the former covering the experience of soldiers that are taught of as lesser and inhuman, the latter covering the experience of someone that's comfortably commanding from the back lines in a country brainwashed by propaganda. The second part of the anime I found to be much, much flimsier due to several factors I'll mention later, but one of the main themes is "what can a child soldier do once they don't have to fight anymore" and the answer we're given is "why, fight some more of course!" - this becomes a battle anime disguised as a war anime.

I'll begin with the things I didn't really like, because I think there were a lot so I'll get them out of the way. First, the setting. I have a big pet peeve for these pseudo-european settings, especially when names are done sloppily. Wtf kind of name is "Vladilena Milizé"? It's either a bunch of names with various origins tacked onto each other, or it's a vaguely european sounding name that doesn't actually exist. And yeah the setting is futuristic but there's something so grating when you have a "Richard Altner" and a "Kurena Kukumila" in the same anime lmao. My biggest annoyance with this is that in most cases - the side characters will have names based on real names, and the main characters will have the bastardized unique sounding ones. At least be like logh that has the balls to reference real history to not keep everything vague and give everyone normal sounding names.

My next gripe is with the artstyle. If you fed all post 2010 anime to some ai, and had it spit out an average artstyle - I think this anime would be it. The animation quality was good but no matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it'll always be a pig!! I'm sorry, that's an insult to cute piggies. I just really dislike generic anime artstyles and I think I have been avoiding them succesfully for the most part. I don't like the glossiness.

Next issue usually comes bundled with the last one, and that's Generic Anime Gestures. We have the one hand reaches out to the sky classic, the immaculate "MC's eyes get obscured by a shadow when he gets serious and becomes edgy", and who could forget the Debby Ryan smirk edgy smirk and eye twitch combo?? When I see these used in excess, I can't fully enjoy the anime anymore, I just can't.

This issue is tied to the second part, and it's the "Anime Child" aka loli trope. Now THIS is something I haven't seen in a while, and I'll be vain and recognize is as an indicator of good taste! What's different about Anime Children compared to just Children in Anime is that they don't act like children at all! Nor sound like children for that matter, they sound like screeching goblins whose main purpose is to damage your eardrums. The loli character completely ruined the second part of the anime. She is somehow around 10 years old even though that does not make sense timeline wise at all, she is somehow extremely mature, well spoken and intelligent even though her royalty background and education would have stopped around the age of.. 3? At most which again timeline wise I don't get (maybe I wasn't paying enough attention tbh), despite her vast knowledge and maturity most of the time she acts like an unapologetic retard. While something like that could work in a silly comedy anime, it is completely out of place in a more serious setting that aims for some kind of realism. Of course she had to join the main characters in the army under a horrible lore excuse magically tailored specifically for her which was to be a "mascot" more or less. Despite being a mascot she somehow aids them in battle? Of course she had to physically join the main characters on their final battle even though she wasn't allowed to, she sneaked in teehee. At the very least the main characters being in their late teens made sense as the country they're from was lacking in soldiers due to treating them as dispensable fodder so there were no adults that could be drafted anymore, but her being a loli in battle is just AUGHHHHHH STOPPP. I was hoping for her to die once her purpose story wise finished (some former knight of hers became a part of the AI enemies and she wanted him to get killed), but sadly I wasn't granted that peace. There's absolutely zero reason for her being a small child really, and in fact it would've made much more sense if she was a couple of years older.

The next thing I didn't like about the second part was how much time was given to the edgy male MC's "muh reason for fighting". Wah wah he's so miserable and emotionless, he doesn't care if he lives or dies you guys! He has nobody left to fight for you guys!!! He's reckless and edgy... Meanwhile all 4 of his teammates, friends he's been with the entire time, friends who went through the same shit he did and friends who also have NOBODY left like he does get 0 screentime nor experience the same existential crisis he does. They're empty pillars of strength whose only purpose is to pull him back to reality. It's just too MC-syndrome like for me to enjoy at that point, and it would have been so much better if they worked together to overcome their trauma, purpose, life meaning - whatever. Instead it's just the one brooding guy and it dragged on for way too long. This whole thing just lacks the emotional depth, and I expected more from an anime that deals with hate crimes kek.

Ok I think that about covers the main things that mostly killed my enjoyment. The first half of the anime was promising, despite its flaws. It seemed to focus more on the horrors of war, hypocrisy of the military, that kind of thing. I wish it had expanded on that, and I wish we got to see what happened to the Totally Not Nazi inspired country when they got rekt. Maybe it'll be shown in the future seasons but I don't think I'll watch it lmao. I didn't even like the main conflict that much in the first season (have to avenge my dead brother grrrr) because it seems as if this anime can't portray a serious war situation - in which child soldiers are thrown into the frontlines obviously without wanting to, instead the MC has to have this strong personal reason to fight, which is the battle anime syndrome I referenced earlier. It kind of removes us from all the bad things that actually happen, makes it seem like all the people (literally all soldiers died) before the MC died because they just didn't have a strong enough reason to fight, and the war has been going on for 10 years. And then in the second part we just have the same conflict repeat again, instead of the dead brother's mind occupying the stronk AI machine it's muh dead knight but oh he comes from the super elite clan the main character comes from so idk, he's actually super speshul and Not Like The Other Soldiers. Zzzz. The second part shows us that different countries do exist, and that they treat their soldiers differently blabla, but it's not expanded on enough, instead we just have the main group fight again and the fight drags on until the end and on top of that we're forced to endure the loli as well. Another thing, once the characters got established as Main Characters, nobody dies or gets hurt anymore! Plot armor doing its best here, although I'll argue it makes sense simply because they're the only group to have survived so far, but still.

What prompted me to watch this anime was the lc thread, also my husband watched it and forgot about it on ep 4 so we decided to pick it up. I expected more honestly lmao. Oh and unrelated to my opinion of this anime but I went to check out the wikia just to confirm some plot things, and the character descriptions cracked me up. Male characters get mostly regular appearance descriptions, but then for the female characters you get this:

Frederica is a small girl with slender limbs, a petite frame, and a delicate, doll-like face. She has the blood-red eyes of a Pyrope and the jet-black hair of an Onyx trailed down to her knees.

The slight horniness in the descriptions is so weird, she's a fucking child of course she's petite, the redundancy makes it sound so horny. And then for the main character:

• Although not frequently commented on, Lena is actually rather well-endowed. Amongst the Strike Package's 1st Armored Group, she is only behind Shiden and Kurena in that department.*

Why does the breast size of a female commander in a war novel matter when the fanservice is barely present usually? Why aren't we discussing rumoured thick dicks and supple juicy pecs of the male characters? It's so out of place. I assume these are based on the authors descriptions and that it's not a horny wiki editors fault, but it's so silly. Male written literature will never be free from the breasts that titted boobily.