Content Warning: Discussions of racism, violence and genocide
This review covers both parts, and contains spoilers for them. This review is also very political, specifically from a left-wing perspective, befitting a highly political show like 86.
Honestly I did somewhat enjoy 86, both on my first watch and rewatch, and there is a lot to like about it. I genuinely do understand, and sometimes agree with the reasons that 86 is so beloved. It's clear that a lot of care has been shown in the making of the anime, and even as someone who has not read the light novel, it's not hard to tell that it's a loving and faithful adaptation of the source material, just from the amount of effort and stellar production of the anime. It also gave me a lot to write about, as evident from the sheer length of this review. This review will mainly focus on the politics of 86, and how it deals with its 2 major overarching themes, namely racism and war, but before that, what I did like from the series.
Shin's character arc is pretty interesting. He is a war veteran with half royal blood who obviously has a massive survivor's guilt from all the battles that he's been through. He tries his best to get himself killed multiple times especially after fulfilling his purpose of killing his brother. He eventually finds a renewed purpose in not letting Lena die (which by extension translates to saving humanity). I've already made all the criticisms of its portrayal of war later on, but if one can suspend their disbelief, which I could, then it’s honestly really compelling. The meeting of Shin and Lena was really heartfelt and perfectly timed in a way that wrapped up Shin’s development. The effect of the very fitting music also cannot be understated. Besides Shin’s first meeting with Lena, the most emotional moments for me personally were those Fido recaps. Fido serves as a memory bank for all the experiences that the 86 went through, and those moments invoked the emotional bittersweetness of going through a photo album of a dead friend/relative.
So first of all, the racism in 86 just exists. This is a lack of explanation of how the racism develops, and what little explanation is given, like Henrietta's backstory with Shin, makes it even more unbelievable. Real life racism does not just exist out of nowhere because people have different skin colours, there are material reasons for racism to exist. Historically, racism was used as justification for the industrialised colonial countries to colonise less industrialised countries and take their resources in the name of “bringing civilization to these savage barbarians”. Today, one of the ways racism shows itself today is through white supremacist American exceptionalism, in which America is seen as this exemplary nation that represents freedom and democracy, and also has a responsibility to uphold these values of freedom and democracy across the world, which in practice usually only applies to non-european, non-white countries that have a lot of natural resources like oil. 86 does not consider the causes for or conditions that racism and politics exist in, the racism there is just taken for granted.
The society in San Magnolia is also such that only the racial divide is highlighted, the Albas are all portrayed as almost monolithic, there's no poverty, inequality, sexism or other kinds of oppression within Alba society. It's the same in the case of the Federacy, barring one small exception being Eugene saying that he could not afford to go to school, never to be brought up again because he dies. It also just absolutely blows my mind how Zimmerman can just steer the whole country based on his lofty “ideals for humanity” (his idea of racial equality is colour-blindness, characteristic of liberal idealism). However countries aren't run solely on a leader’s ideals, and it's a manifestation of the very appealing but incorrect “Great man theory”. Why would Obama, for example, a supposed champion for racial equality and the first and only African-american president of the USA, still go and bomb Libyan civilians? Within 86’s infantile understanding of politics, this would be unexplainable.
Now on the characters themselves, our protagonist, Vladilena Milize is an Alba sympathetic to the plight of the 86. The truth of the matter is that she's politically naive asf, it's a wonder how she has not been killed or disappeared which is what would probably have happened irl, but a combination of connections and plot armour I guess. So Milize represents the “white saviour”, a person from the privileged race who liberates the oppressed for them. The primary issue with the white saviour trope is that it fails to recognise the systemic and institutional nature of racism. So 86 now has a perfect opportunity to critique this white saviour trope, which it kind of does, but also doesn’t. We should also look at other cases where racism in 86 is individualised.
Victims of oppression are not monoliths, so I’m fine with the 86 having different perspectives on the Albas, for example people like Theo and Kurena indiscriminately hate all Albas, while Kaie and Raiden hold the “not all Albas are bad” view. So by the end of ep 3, after Kaie dies, Theo goes on this cathartic rant in which he criticises Lena’s activism as fake because they live in completely different environments, and the establishment Lena is in forces the 86 to go out and die anyway, absolutely correct. This instance is a great example of how a person’s individual beliefs matter little in the face of their societal position. Theo also calls out Lena not even asking for their names, which can be seen as showing how deeply entrenched racism already is within Alba society. Now Lena takes this, and all she does is to ask for their names before continuing on with life. Lena still acts as their handler, so not only is she a beneficiary of the oppressive system as an Alba, but she is also the one actively sending the 86 to die as a handler. This ends up undoing the good critique made by Theo as Lena failed to recognise that it was her societal position in the racist society that made all the difference.
In ep 7, Raiden reveals to Lena that the 86 were meant to die on the battlefield. Lena then questions their motivations for fighting (only now for some reason), to which Raiden responds that he was sheltered by an Alba while growing up. Shin also was helped by an Alba who refused to give up land. Kaie was abused by other 86 because of her skin colour. So sure, all of these do happen irl, but how does any of the above reasons justify being compliant with or fighting for the oppressive system that is exterminating them? This only can make sense if racism is individualised, “There are some good Albas, therefore Im fighting for these good Albas”. To put just how absurd this is into perspective, it’s like if a Jew decided to fight for Nazi Germany, because a german who was opposed to anti-semitism helped shelter their family from Nazi persecution in Shin and Raiden’s case, or its like a gay person fighting for Nazi Germany because they experienced homophobia within a Jewish community in Kaie’s case.
Anyway from then on, the 86’s bond with Lena becomes closer, and the harsh criticism of the white saviour trope becomes less and less prominent, and eventually ends up being completely ignored. So I honestly don't know what to make of this, on one hand, the series is clearly aware of how Lena and the 86’s different environments and material conditions make the white saviour thing really absurd, and also how Lena’s identity as the oppressor does not change no matter her beliefs due to her race and position as an Alba handler, but then the series goes on and chooses to just ignore and not address it, and just let her do her thing?
Moving on, there are many false equivalences made between the 86 and the Albas. For some reason, the 86 unfairly morally compare themselves to the Alba despite their vast differences in situations. A few examples, Raiden in Part 1 Ep 7, “Just because scum treats you like scum, doing the same makes you no better”, or Kurena in Part 2 Ep 6, “If we run from the Legion, we are no different from the Albas”. The reasons for the 86 continuing to fight the Legion are vaguely attributed to their pride or something, but this is very unrealistic and idealistic, people fight for material gain, and not for some abstract idea like “pride”, and arguably even more so when facing racial extermination in the 86's case.
This is a recurring theme in which the 86 are expected by the series to be “perfect victims”, they have standards to uphold even as victims, they aren't even allowed to resist and fight against the Albas, or refuse to fight the Legion. This is not only unrealistic, but also harms its critique of racism to try to portray the 86 as perfect victims, and to explain this, its best to bring up a real life example, the ongoing genocide of Gaza by the state of Israel. To keep this brief, the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance has certainly attacked civilians and committed war crimes (the scale of which is exaggerated, but it's still true), and this is obviously wrong. Nevertheless, this requirement for a “perfect victim” has led to a hyperfixation on the violence and war crimes of the palestinian resistance, while the state of Israel is at the same time actively ethnically cleansing Gaza. People literally say “Why can’t the Palestinians protest peacefully?” (they tried, guess what happened), or media interviewers always asking “Do you condemn Hamas”, as if it’s a prerequisite before one is allowed to speak. This has actively harmed the cause for Palestinian liberation, chiefly exemplified by humanitarian aid for civilians being withheld for fears of it “falling into the hands of Hamas”, among other things. To reiterate the point I’m making here, the 86 being perfect victims and fighting for abstract ideas in the face of genocide is divorced from reality, and a very idealistic take on racism. I do wonder, “So what if the 86 out of their hatred, did kill Alba civilians? How would the series deal with it?”, but this would never be answered, and the victims of racism and genocide depicted in 86 do no wrong. They comply with every order given by their handler, never attempting to resist.
Naturally, without a solid understanding of how racism actually works, it cannot really offer good answers, if it even does at all. The 86 first experience genocide at the hands of San Magnolia, before going to the Federacy and also experiencing racism there, albeit on a more individual scale, despite the claims of equality. So at the end of Part 2, we are told that the 86 get free citizenship in the Federacy, but we ourselves saw the hypocrisy of the Federacy earlier in Part 2 where the 86 experienced verbal racial abuse, which never gets addressed. Meanwhile in the case of San Magnolia, the way the 86 were liberated from their shitty conditions was through the destruction of the whole country by autonomous robots bent on destroying humanity, hardly an answer to the question of liberation from racial oppression.
In my view, the primary reason why 86 misunderstands racism on so many levels, is because 86 wants to look at racism in a vacuum, divorced from the material reasons for racism to exist. This, combined with the in-your-face portrayal of racism, and also the lack of a proposed answer or solution to the racism makes me conclude that 86 is a very safe series. It ends up being a very surface-level, platitude spouting “racism bad”, because that is something no one will disagree with, racism is certainly bad, a platitude. But without actually engaging with or correctly analysing racism, it has nothing truly meaningful to say about it.
So first, the fight scenes look really good, the fights are well-animated, hype music plays in the background but is this really a point in its favour considering the anti-war message that it's supposedly trying to send. It’s entertaining definitely, but it's a little jarring to have Shin blasting enemies with Sawano BGM immediately followed up with shots of dead Federacy soldiers. Is there some kind of reconciliation between the tone and its messaging that I’m missing here?
Next, the nature of the war in 86 is such that you have a united humanity of 4 different countries fighting against a completely autonomous AI robot force that is bent on destroying all of humanity. War therefore becomes an absolute necessity. Sure, the series can bombard the viewer with the devastation of war, “I don't want to die” and especially later on “I won’t forget”, but what is anybody supposed to do about it besides fighting war harder? No country could possibly pull out of the war, or everyone just gets overrun. There just is a war that exists that they HAVE to fight, and much like how it deals with racism, war is therefore taken for granted, and the little explanation we’re given (Giad Empire sends Legion before getting revolution’d and losing control) was really vague. There is no differentiation between different kinds of wars, specifically ones that are fought for the gain of the ruling class, and that for the working class, embodied by the Marxist slogan “No war but class war”. To try to claim that all war is bad without differentiating between the different beneficiaries of wars, once again displays 86's shallow understanding of war. Similarly to the case of racism, 86 wants to analyse war in a vacuum, and similar to the case of racism, it ends up having nothing meaningful to say.
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