86 Episode 5 Discussion

Kaguyachinchin said:
While I know the Undertaker wanted to disconnect the Pararaid-- a warning would have been nice.

Kaie's seiyuu gonna give me nightmares no doubt about it. 5/5

imSOunique said:
The anime is not bad, but not great either. I probably had my hopes up too high, I really liked the initial concept of the show, I was expecting better. Or "better" is not the right word, I was expecting something different.

imSOunique said:
But instead, we have Kirito jumping across the battlefield killing dozens of enemies by himself (even though he only has guns, still basically goes melee), and what could make this even "better",,, he has superpowers!
There is no teamwork, tactics, or anything, just Kirito goes brrrr.

imSOunique said:
The robots obviously can copy dead people's brains, cuz why couldn't they (I don't blame the republic for not preparing for this, it is such an asspull thing). Anyway, it is very convenient that the republic doesn't allow the burial of dead 86-s (umm WTF? apart from very basic human right concerns, do they want plagues?). Although why do they even need the 86-s brains? They annihilated an entire country, there were enough people there, why didn't they just show up with people's brains from day one?

imSOunique said:
And in this episode, the kids are apparently "feeling lonely" because their slave driver from the high seat has not called them today. They are getting awfully friendly with someone driving them onto the battlefield to die. So apparently their situation does not seem to bother them that much, wanting to talk to someone who represents the republic, which has basically exterminated their entire race (the dude said it is only the children remaining), treats them as cannon fodder, and does not even allow them to bury their dead.

imSOunique said:
The white-haired girl does an excellent job at making them believe that she cares: "Oh, it is just so awful what has been done to you! Wait, hold on a little, I'm going downtown some for some cake, then we can continue."She is the embodiment of modern "thoughts and prayers" culture.

imSOunique said:
The anime is not bad, but not great either. I probably had my hopes up too high, I really liked the initial concept of the show, I was expecting better. Or "better" is not the right word, I was expecting something different.
I was expecting a relatively down-to-earth utopian story (this time the mechs are not the usual human-shaped ones), where the main or at least any of the story will be about the "enslaved vs enslaver", as the republic is treating the 86-s as their slaves and they will eventually fight back.

But instead, we have Kirito jumping across the battlefield killing dozens of enemies by himself (even though he only has guns, still basically goes melee), and what could make this even "better",,, he has superpowers!
Kirito"s "curse" does not seem too serious, just turn off the "brain link" thingy (or whatever it is called) when he says so (he is so super concerned about his handlers health that he says in advance when), and why do they even need this mysterious "brain link" thing, the others are communicating between each other perfectly fine without it (or if they are using brain link thingy too, why Kirito's curse is not affecting them?).

The robots obviously can copy dead people's brains, cuz why couldn't they (I don't blame the republic for not preparing for this, it is such an asspull thing). Anyway, it is very convenient that the republic doesn't allow the burial of dead 86-s (umm WTF? apart from very basic human right concerns, do they want plagues?). Although why do they even need the 86-s brains? They annihilated an entire country, there were enough people there, why didn't they just show up with people's brains from day one?

And in this episode, the kids are apparently "feeling lonely" because their slave driver from the high seat has not called them today. They are getting awfully friendly with someone driving them onto the battlefield to die. So apparently their situation does not seem to bother them that much, wanting to talk to someone who represents the republic, which has basically exterminated their entire race (the dude said it is only the children remaining), treats them as cannon fodder, and does not even allow them to bury their dead.

The white-haired girl does an excellent job at making them believe that she cares: "Oh, it is just so awful what has been done to you! Wait, hold on a little, I'm going downtown some for some cake, then we can continue."
She is the embodiment of modern "thoughts and prayers" culture.

Fortress_Maximus said:
00:00 “When she awoke, she was surrounded by a sea of flames.”

We're introduced to Rei in full, who really made an impression on Lena.

01:42 You can tell how much Lena's been crying with the red patches near her eyes.

02:52 Rei breaks the chocolate bar right after Lena asks him about his brother; broken bonds and separation.

06:22 Smug Annette, Well-drawn food that doesn't get ruined, for once... Annette's wall of suitor photographs can be to compared to the Spearhead Squadron's wall of caricatures of their handlers as pigs.

09:01 Fireworks 💗🎆

10:08 Lena's imagination runs wild...

10:33 A spider on the window when the Legion are mentioned, and we transition to a combat scene (repeated from two perspectives). The voices of the Legion come off frightening, as they should be.

15:15 As we segue into Shin providing as much information to the audience as he does to Lena, Lena shows herself to be unlike the other Handlers... Raiden's "I'm impressed" sums it up.

16:23 A closeup of Shin's scar when he mentions that he thought he had died.

18:23 The caricatures of Alba handlers (Lena's caricature specifically) and rats are shown while Shin explains the beyond grotesque acts that the Legion do to human beings, to so-called "86". Lena's voice actress really delivers the feeling

19:20 “You, he said. Not we.” A flower is selected by an insect among the withered ones as Shin begins to explain the "Legion Shepherds" to Lena.

21:58 “Shin smiled wryly. It had a faint, gentle feeling to it.”

23:20 “Entering the dimly lit space, he looked at his own moonlit image reflected in the window’s glass.”

23:27 “Shin calmly reached out his hand and gently touched the scar on the neck of his reflection.”

SNDT said:

The fuck is this shit lmao?

Reload said:
Studio may have overdid it there considering the two never met each other, so Lena shouldn't really have a mental image of how Kaie looked like. Sure, one could say the Para-RAID may be capable of transferring Shin's image of her to anyone listening in or something, but then it becomes a question of why only Shin. Not sure if the source material wrote this in as well, but it best be explained if so.

Antanaru said:
This is getting trippy. Though, to be honest, until now I somehow didn't register the nature of the Legion. I thought it was an autonomous force of another country, not AI 'ala Skynet. The level of debauchery and incompetence of albinos in this situation is stretching my suspension of disbelief. Also, shame they were hinting at who is one of shepherds so blatantly. Could use some nuance there. Despite that, this show turned out to be a solid surprise od this season.

UTMAN said:


He is so not Kirito and there is teamwork there. He is usually a vanguard getting the enemy's attention while the others cover him and shoot the legion.

UTMAN said:
The only "superpower" he has is hearing the Legion. That's it. He only knows when they'll attack so he can react them way faster. Also it takes a huge toll on him and also on people he is fighting with.

UTMAN said:


Apparently every exposition that any anime gives you is an asspull. In episode 1 ,after Kujo died. Raiden asked Shin about his brother voice. Also on episode 2 there were some noise before the artillery strike. It's quite obvious that the anime was building up for this since the very beginning.
And they don't need 86-ers brain. They need any person's brain.... It''s just convinient that 86ers who are avaliable for them, since they are the one fighting with. They would take Alba brain aswell, but since 99% of them are inside the wall it's difficult. Also there were vocies since day 1, but only very few people can hear them. Like the only person we know can hear it, is Shin.

UTMAN said:


Oh wow. She is doing none of those. She is not the one who bansiehd them, she is not the one who won't let the 86 to collect the fallen. What are you talking about? It's the San Magnolia's government doing this. Lena is all against these decisions. Also this every night talking is happening every single day for like 1-2 months now in the anime. That's why it was weird for them for her not calling in an usual time.

UTMAN said:


Once again she doesn't want to attend. Also against holding a party in a war time. She is even saying this out loud to Shin. He is the one saying that she should go which she eventually gives in. Also she is from a noble family. Nobles have social pressure to attend these, else they'll bring shame to the family name.

addie1998 said:


This is the dumbest thing I've heard so far 🤣

kljy said:
Based on the Republic years of propaganda, they'll get fucked up real, real bad. Annihilated is an understatement of how fucked up the Republic was.

Actually, Republic getting annihilated without any remains was better for humanity.

No spoiler at all ;)

imSOunique said:
Yeah, I deleted the teamwork part as in the 2nd episode there is some sort of, but still, most of the time all we see are guns blazing and Kirito charging forward into dozens of enemies and never getting hit. The anime is being realistic with robots not using swords and all, but apparently Kirito missed this info and still goes melee all the time.

imSOunique said:
Still a superpower, why do they bring superpower into a "realistic" anime.
Idk, I am not seeing any toll on anybody (only the handler).

imSOunique said:
As asspull I meant that it is a "realistic" anime, yet random shit can happen, like why couldn't robots replace their program with literally people's brains somehow converted into a program and Kirito somehow even can hear this program, cuz idk superpower (why can't he hear their basic program, why can't he hear the program of the toaster in the kitchen?). Again it is just personal as I thought, this anime wants to be more realistic and less supernatural.

Why not every single enemy robot has a "brain"? They killed millions of people in their home county.
Or idk, if they figured out this brain copy thing later, when their home county's became unusable, apparently more than one robot can have the same brain why don't they copy the available some brains to all of the robots.

imSOunique said:
I am just saying they are basically slaves, yet they are happily chatting daily with their slave driver. For me, it is just not too realistic.
At least in the beginning they acted pretty hostile (not Kirito, he was always very nice to her). Since then nothing at all changed for them, they are still in the same terrible situation, and apparently, they are now besties.

imSOunique said:
She's always just talking about "oh poor you", yet does nothing about the situation, even continues to partake in exploiting them. That was what I meant by "thoughts and prayers".
I wasn't talking about the party (she didn't even attend it afterall, did she?), but she does not seem to be all that deeply depressed about the terrible fate of the poor 86 children, so she couldn't go for some cake (earlier in the episode).
This is more about the tone of the anime, they are trying to present it as dark as it gets, yet our girl is happily eating cake. This is not like a horrible mistake, but the anime certainly not doing the dark theme flawlessly.

SenseiDaichi said:
Is it bad that i didn't understand what happened this episode?

UTMAN said:


What did you not understand?

SenseiDaichi said:
mostly everything about the black sheeps

SenseiDaichi said:
mostly everything about the black sheeps

imSOunique said:

Thank you for your deep thoughts.

addie1998 said:


There are actually 4 classifications but i will mention only 3 at the moment:

White Sheep: The Legion which had not yet replaced their central processors.

Black Sheep: The Legion that had adopted the decayed brain structure of dead humans, capable of limited human intelligence.

Shepherd: The Legion that had adopted the un-decayed brain structure of living or recently dead humans, capable of full human intelligence and leadership.

UTMAN said:


Okay. Legion is made with a processing unit with the structure of an artificial human brain in mind. However this has a lifespan of 50.000 hours. The war is happeend 9 years ago, so this processing unit is about to expire. So in order to survive the Legion started to look for alternatives: Human Brains. So when they kill a human they collect their bodies/brains and look at it if it's useful enough for them or not. IF the brain is partially damaged (headshot) or decayed it can be copied into legion drones. These called Black Sheeps. They are kinda like commanders for the Legion. If the Brain is in pristine condition and it gets copied into a unit. It will be called a Shepard and it's even more stronger than Black Sheeps. I hope it's more undestandable now.

GoldenDevilGamer said:
We're nearly halfway there through the season and a bit more than halfway done volume 1. Although it seems like the anime can cover volume 1 in 9-10 episodes, I doubt this season will start volume 2. They'll probably add more anime-original stuff, since volume 2 and 3 would work better as its own season.

The novels never had an illustration of Shin's brother, so it's cool to see him in the anime! Wasn't expecting those glasses, lol.

I really liked how they handled the scene with the Para-RAID resonance during the battle. The way they handled the Legion's voice was pretty cool. And Lena's reaction to it was well done. Jumping to the Spearhead's perspective, we can see how accustomed they are to it.

The directing of this episode was really solid. Not just the Para-RAID scene, but I also really like how they directed Shin's conversation with Lena at the end. Interesting shots and good music made the explanation behind the Legion more intense.

We also got to see Shin's scar that he was hiding under his scarf. Seems like it's tied to his brother in some way.

Probably the most amount of content this season has covered in a single episode, and the least amount of anime-original content in an episode. Even then, this episode only covered 1/9th of volume 1, approximately half of what the average LN adaptation episode would cover).

SenseiDaichi said:
thanks for the expaining, but how did they mange to get kaie's brain structure, when the 86 beat them?

SenseiDaichi said:
but how did they mange to get kaie's brain structure, when the 86 beat them?

UTMAN said:

He is going in melee because the enemy is heavily armored. The small enemies can be dealt with, however the bigger enemies you have no chance do deal with them melee wise because they outarmor and outdamage the 86-ers juggernout. They need to think outside of the box.

UTMAN said:


It never was and meant to be a "realistic" anime. It takes toll on handlers and it would take toll on newby teammates aswell. His mates are seasoned weterans who experienced a lot of deaths and misery so they are way more resistant. Also it depends on the synchronization rate. It is set on very low. If it were turned to max it could screw them. For example the handler who suicided, shin turned the rate a lot higher becasue the handler was an ass. Like giving suicidal orders to 86-ers, so yeah....

UTMAN said:


Okay, I said before it's not a realistic anime. It has fiction elements.
He can only hear "ghosts", The legion collected human brains, and copied those into some of the versions of the Legion design. The basic ones don't have these, howver there are types which have this. It's called "Black SHeep" and "SHepard"

Black sheeps are having brains copied into them which are already damaegd/decayed. So it's not quite functional, but still working a bit. Shepards on the other hand have a healthy brain copied into them. Toasters and microwaves don't function like this. And why not every robot has it? Because the older ones are outdated. The legion evolves and developes more advaned versions. So it's possible that later on we will meet a lot more black sheeps.

UTMAN said:


Well they are not really happy with her. They tolerate her, but that's it. Also she is sending useful information regarding enemy composition, positions and useful map locations where they can deploy. THis doesn't mean they respect her or think her an equal. It was said in episode 4. Also it's not shown yet, but some 86-ers still hate Lena no matter what. For example the Gunslinger girl. And it's not true nothing changed. Lena usually provides them with useful support. They would have a lot more casuality if they had no or an idiot handler. She takes her job in a very responsible manner.

UTMAN said:


Because she cannot do anything for them. The best thing she can do is do her job properly and help them in their battles so less of them dies. Also when it comes to supplies she does everything in her power so they get everything they need.
Other than this she is powerless. Any order that would cost 86 lives she cannot overrule because she has supervisor officers who can overrule her command. And the Alba population doesn't really care that 86-ers die, so she cannot really change the peoples mind about this. You saw this in the lecture scene. She is powerless in this situation. She can't do anything to save them from their situation.

imSOunique said:
They can change the "synchronization rate"? Why? All they do is communicate with it, why would they ever set it higher?
Can he separately set the "synchronization" to low for his teammates so they don't go mad and high for the handler so does? Why could a foot solder mess with the handler's synchronization rate?
(My guess was that the "curse" only spreads with this "brain synchronization" and the squad on the battlefield actually communicates somehow else (radio or something), that's why they are not affected. The handlers probably need the "brain synchronization" because they are far af.)

imSOunique said:
Yeah I get the Black Sheep, Sheperd thing. The toaster thing was again from the "realistic" aspect. If they copy a human brain into them it is data on a disk. It is not alive, it is not a ghost, it is an object. By the logic of him hearing that computer program on a disk, he may as well hear the program of a toaster (or every other electric device).

imSOunique said:
People don't feel lonely if someone they only tolerate, don't call them. (Yes, it is only one line, so it is not the biggest plothole ever, but still..)
And why on Earth are Kirito and his brother are so damn nice to the "silver folk"? From the very moment, he is as nice as possible to her, and it is said before that he does not want to break the handlers. And his brother saves her from the battlefield and talks like a true patriot.
"It's a citizen's duty to fight to protect his county.
It is something to be proud of."

imSOunique said:
Character is deeply concerned with the situation of 86-s and the fact that every day hundreds of people die out on the battlefield, and nobody even recognizes them. Then we are not showing her having the time of her life enjoying a cake with outbursting joy.
(Again this is not a huge issue, and might be personal preference, but makes me feel like they could be doing a better job with setting the tone of the anime)

imSOunique said:
Anyway, thanks for putting up with me :D

SenseiDaichi said:
thanks for the expaining, but how did they mange to get kaie's brain structure, when the 86 beat them?

UTMAN said:
Legion is made with a processing unit with the structure of an artificial human brain in mind. However this has a lifespan of 50.000 hours. The war is happeend 9 years ago, so this processing unit is about to expire.

UTMAN said:
It can be set higher yes. I only read LN volume 1, so it might get expanded later. But it can be used more than just communication. It can share all 5 senses. They just use the hearing part for communication.

Thrasher96 said:

Also, why the voices of "ghosts" showed up only now and not in previous fights?

imSOunique said:
So it is like an SSD. It is produced in a way that it has a life expectancy for example 150 TBW (Terabytes Written). This means no matter what, after you have written 150 terabytes data on it, it will break.

But wouldn't that make newly manufactured robots also have a fix 50.000 hours (5,7 years) to live? But it is from now, so they won't expire in the next 2 years. All they need to do is to always toss away the old ones, that are about to expire. They are doing something like this, or in the 9-year war they would have expired 1.5 times already.
So apparently they don't really need the human brains after all. They just fancy it: Matrix x Promised Neverland.

DamnThatsTheSpot said:

From what I understood from the episode it's because in previous fights they weren't engaging Black Sheep directly, unlike this time. Shin can always hear their voices but unless he's near them physically he can't transmit them to the others via Para-RAID.

DamnThatsTheSpot said:

The rest of your questions are things I think are yet to be revealed imo. Though Lena not asking more can be seen as just her not wishing to intrude in private matters too deeply.

futureviewer said:
tatakae tatakae tatakae

UTMAN said:
Let's say you have an oiriginal SSD in your HQ. It has a life expectancy of 50.000 hours (let's stick with the anime's number). How you build your droids is copying this SSD but the copy is going to be as old as the original one. So after 10.000 hours, the original has 40.000 hours left, this means all the copy you make is going to have 40.000 hours left aswell. And once that original SSD dies you cannot make any more copy of it.

imSOunique said:

that's an awfully bad design :D
the robots are so smart they are copying friggin brains, cannot they just edit the code, not to make themselves expire?
I already know how the anime will end, someone hacks into their network and DDOS-es them :D
or someone memorizes a computer virus, goes out, dies, they read his brain and all get infected

imSOunique said:

As asspull I meant that it is a "realistic" anime, yet random shit can happen, like why couldn't robots replace their program with literally people's brains somehow converted into a program and Kirito somehow even can hear this program, cuz idk superpower (why can't he hear their basic program, why can't he hear the program of the toaster in the kitchen?). Again it is just personal as I thought, this anime wants to be more realistic and less supernatural.

Why not every single enemy robot has a "brain"? They killed millions of people in their home county.
Or idk, if they figured out this brain copy thing later, when their home county's became unusable, apparently more than one robot can have the same brain why don't they copy the available some brains to all of the robots.

BetaMaleUltra said:
Alternative title: Lena talking on the phone with shin and getting dumped with exposition 24/7