86 (Eighty-Six) is one of the Dark Horse this Spring 2021. People are not paying much attention to this anime. I'm not happy about this cause 86 is one of the best Sci-Fi stories out there. It tackles the issue about discrimination and racism that the world still facing right now. It is a bold issue they tackle so I'm really happy about what the story turns out to be. It portrays how people treat races which they believe inferior to them. It often results to violence and treat them inhumane. It is a great anime and people should know more about this.
Aside from the message and story, 86 also excell in the quality of animation especially the character designs. The fights are also great although I'm not a big fan of CGI, still they manage to give us a decent actions. But despite of this why do people aren't hyping this one? Here's my opinion about this.
Anime Ruined the Mood of the Story
86 is actually very sad story. It is full of tragedy and death but somehow it feels very lacking in anime adaptation. Maybe they focus more on character development that they forgot the true mood of the story. The death of their comrades become underwhelming that you can't even grief at all. You wouldn't even know who died unless you rewatch the scenes or search the names. Unlike in manga or light novel that they give most of the scenes to the person who died.
It's not that actually worse but with this slight underwhelming feels it ruined the mood of the story.
Too Much Censorship
I don't know why they have to censor it too much. It is actually much better if they add a little more gore to this anime to improve the quality of the story. People like that kind of anime nowadays and too much censorship is killing a good anime. For example people like bloody tragedy anime like Attack on Titan, Tokyo Ghoul and Jujutsu Kaisen. But why they can't do it in 86.
It is actually a kind of disappointing since the story is tragedy but they can't put their full potential at the anime just because of censorship. The manga is a little bit better so I can recommend you that. But I would definitely like to see more gore stuff later on. It is a good anime so adding a little bit of spice in it can improve it a thousand times better.
Slow Progression of Story
This is what I notice especially in Volume 1 of the light novel. The story started very slowly and almost all unnecessary twists just happened at the last 3 chapters of the story. Just like what I said, they focus more on character build-up especially on their relationship that they mostly forgot what are their objectives.
This should be a heavy drama that the death of a character must be painful. Just like on Attack on Titan where even the a single character that you rarely seen died it is heartbreaking while in this anime it's just normal. They give most of the scene to Shin and Lena that they forgot how to build the foundation of other character. The slow progression is really killing this anime. You can't even know what their real objectives is. It will be revealed probably on the second season.
It is so sad that because of these reasons the anime become so average and underwhelming. I'm liking the light novel so far especially the 2nd volume. So I'm really hoping that the anime continues. The second season of anime is already announced and I think it will be the second half of volume 1. It will be a fierce battle and more of them dies. We will also know what the real objective of Shin is.
You can understand why it is so underappreciated but still you can't deny that 86 still has a very beautiful story. You can't just see it in anime yet because of the poor in direction. But trust me, the second season and more in the future has much better in terms of story. It may still be underappreciated in season one but people will love this later on. I just hope that they will improve the quality than what they did to season 1.
