There’s a trick to San Magnolia’s automated drones: they are not automated. Yeah, instead they are piloted by second-class citizens who aren’t even classified as humans. The heart of the republic is completely inhabited by albans, humans with silver hair and eyes who have won a recent revolution and persecuted any non-alban to be sent to imprisonment fields to serve as pilots for their drones and fight off the Legion.

This obscene truth is omitted from the average citizen, who thinks their nation is being protected by advanced technology and with minimal military casualties. Our protagonist, Major Milize, knows the truth though, and she is ready to clash against her superiors to spread consciousness about the issue and perhaps make albans treat the non-albans, known as 86 (named for their district), as the humans they are.

It offers interesting ideas

In a way, 86 approaches a multitude of traditional warfare topics of the last century: the alban-86 relationship is a mimicry to nazi-jew of the World War II; the fighting drones, and the fact that alban enforce combat in zones distant to their heartland is akin to modern day United States proxy warfare in the Middle East; the Empire of Giad losing to its own combat machines eludes to the dangers of automated weaponry; and so on.

It’s a collection of interesting topics, and 86 does approach them with decent execution. Major Milize may look a bit too much of an idealist at first, but she is cracked down when she takes command of the Spearhead unit, where our co-protagonist Shin, also known as the Undertaker, leads a special group. Even this “special” group is by no means special because of superpowers or skills, as shown later in the show. It’s an intriguing approach to war-related topics that I haven’t seen since the Gundams of old. I mean, not even Iron Blooded Orphans could explore such an array of interesting ideas.

It’s not all glory though

86, however, starts to lose momentum in a few areas. The co-protagonist and its troupe are one of those. Instead of traumatized enslaved children, of people seeking a way out, of fighting off the system, every person in this unit seems fine with their ultimate fate: die in the battlefield of a war they were forced to participate in. They are too happy, spending a lot of time having fun and joking around and never plotting a way out or clashing with authorities. It’s only rarely when someone lashes out at Major Milize, but when this happens the reasoning is more about her ingenuity than about the horrors of being enslaved and forced to battle until death. It’s a pretty colorful take on such a heavy topic…

Oh…

Colorful happy characters and dark premise… well, well, well. It’s A-1 Pictures. Once again, the studio chosen for the animation is the worst possible for the theme. It’s pretty, alright, but that’s not the best way to give form to this story. This time, however, a larger part of the carefree attitude of characters can be attributed to the plot and character writing instead of just the presentation.

It’s disconnected too

When not being too happy and forgetting the horrors of its premise, 86 fails in being a decent action flick. The arachnid-like mechas feel disconnected from the rest of the show, lifeless CGI with too much detail to match the rest, much like what happened in Code Geass Agito. There’s also a big problem in making you feel as if the pilots are… piloting. Scenes where the characters are inside the mechas don’t connect to other scenes, making fights feel too robotic and not really presenting the stakes. There’s nothing to help you understand who is fighting who, no animation to relate to a mecha’s movement, and a lot of missing cues that are well known to the mecha genre. At least the music is of incredible quality.

86 could’ve been more. In a way, it tries what Aldnoah.Zero tried a few years ago. The premise is much more interesting, the ideas are much more tangible and well explored, but it suffers from similar issues with a colorful cast and a much worse mecha aspect when it comes to combat. It does boast a better duo of protagonists, although they are still far from being as charming as needed.

It’s setting could work for the future though. Yes, this is yet another first season that paves the way to something in the future. It’s also strikingly similar to the ending of Aldnoah.Zero’s first season, meaning it can create a new beginning to strengthen the interesting setting and perhaps fix the problems with the lifeless combat and carefree cast. However, considering the past shows that had this opportunity and completely botched it, I wouldn’t raise my expectations.

Anyway, a decent warfare shounen in a time where they are strangely rare. It’s refreshing to watch it in this horde of isekais and shitty super-power shounens, so that’s something.