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86 has a lot of potential. Potential that it certainly uses to its fullest at points, and squanders at others. I've decided to be more gentle to this because I just love edgy mechas and the heavy Code Geass influences 86 has. If that hadn't swayed me and if it weren't so entertaining, I'd have given it less points. Is 86 worth watching? Yes. It is certainly not without flaws, some less problematic than others, but it is worth a watch.

My issues with 86 are with the way the plot was set up. To say they copied Code Geass would be obvious, but at the ... very least it could have copied it well. There's one very large flaw with the way 86 executes this kind of story. It takes itself far, far too seriously for its own good. As far as a genuine story about discrimination would go, 86 falls absolutely flat because it is purely fantasy. Mustache-twirling fantasy albinos hating fantasy Japanese(and Europeans, and whatever Kujo was meant to be for the 5 minutes he was in the show). I don't know anyone above the age of 12 who would take such a plot seriously, and given how seriously it takes itself, that only works against it, and heavily so. Parts of it are written in such an immature and self-serving way that I question if this wasn't just a mecha romance drama with the plot about discrimination being thrown in later to make it all more interesting.

In one episode, a character goes on the most childish tirade to the protagonist that I unironically wanted to shut it off. Essentially, he personally blamed her for all the oppression that the 86ers had faced throughout history. Not only is that incredibly reductive, it's blatantly false and childish. At that point, she was the only Alba who was nice to them. She risked her job and her freedom just to make things better for them. She never called them 86 or pigs. And yet, she was called a killer and oppressor because... a character broke down over their comrade dying. The comrade in question wasn't the only comrade they had lost up until that point, and the protagonist was their fifth handler. This insane ramble could've been aimed at one of the handlers who actually had called them slurs, rather than the one who was actually trying to make things better for them. Luckily, this entire monologue was called out as immature by the other characters, but that certainly didn't make it feel less like a forced attempt to make the protagonist cry.

All of this has made me realise one thing - 86 is incredibly cheesy and melodramatic. This is not an anime you should take all that seriously. So I did exactly that and started looking at 86 like the box-standard, vaguely romantic mecha slop that it is, and I ended up enjoying it a lot as a result. When you stop taking the story seriously, you find that 86 is a very fun watch, surprisingly full of pretty good emotional moments which I won't spoil here for the people who ignore spoiler warnings on reviews. The dramatic scenes are legitimately beautiful.

86 also has very good production value. I, for one, really like the sound design, even if it is a little overbearing. The mech guns sound powerful and impacts on armour actually have an auditory impact. That aside, the voice acting is really good. Emotion is conveyed very well except for Shin's incredibly fake laugh in the later episodes. The character designs, art and animation are wonderful, but due to how sparse the mech fights are, you won't get to see too many moments where the animation gets to shine. The soundtrack is Sawano slop, so the action music all sounds the exact same, but the more gentle and emotional songs are genuinely beautiful and fit the show's somber moments perfectly.

Here's hoping Part 2 will be as good as it is hyped to be. Even if it isn't, I know I'll still probably enjoy this edgy drama.