Reviews

This is for both parts of 86. War with huge robots and racism , an anime classic. Only realised that it was a sob story a few episodes in of Season 1 , but because it used very good and interesting ideas at the start, confused me into thinking it was trying to be something more meaningful. The ideas used were good but just barely touched upon, mostly used to create a convincing world. Emotional scenes had some breathtaking directing reminiscent of a music video—movement synchronous to the music, symbolism to convey emotion, the timing when the music comes in. This is probably the only reason why I'm giving it a high score , because it was a good visual experiece. Would have given it a 9 if the action had better CGI. A 10 if it had aforementioned plus decent antagonists.

86 was essentially Shinei and Lena. Every development revolved around these two. Lena didn't make sense as a character at the start , felt like a SJW from Twitter was inserted into the show. Preaching ethics to others like a social media movement #FreeThe86. Her backstory later justifies this , but because shes already a decent person , I can't help but feel robbed of a great character arc of realising racism is bad after being raised in institutional racism. Shinei's behavior is pretty realistic given what he's gone through, and so are many other characters of this show. Liked how they portrayed his mental state later on as well. But because I am not a teenage girl, and that he doesn't really evolve much from the broody boy archetype, personally wasn't a very captivating protagonist. Like I mentioned, other characters have their moments , but ultimately just tools for Shinei and Lena's development and to build empathy.