Caught up on some series recently. Although I’ve consumed a lot of media, I never bothered to write reviews about them. Maybe once or twice. For a change of pace, I thought I’d review one of those series: 86. Well, not to shill it or not, but what I got out of it.
Vague spoilers ahead.
Of course I’ll have to set some premises in the event you don’t want to watch this but wouldn’t mind reading this review. The show is about a post-technological singularity world. An AI has a bunch of military arsenal and is exterminating any signs of life. Developed from a destroyed empire.
The themes tackled in the first season had to do with hierarchy, trust, and how technology even fits in-between that. Contrary to what I believe about connections through technology, most of the show buries perseverance within believing the connection is real — for one of the main characters. Foreign concept to me, I wonder if it’d hold up in reality.
The original themes were okay, but I wasn’t thinking much of it otherwise. Just kept watching because scenes were crisp and smooth. And the minor plot details kept me engaged. But again, I wasn’t expecting to get anything else out of it.
Then rolls around second season, which completely switches gears to themes of relationships, survival, painful past, finding reason to go on, feeling like an alien. It was a fresh transition. I mean, at the same time, this is often the theme that is wrapped into every shounen or fighting anime: I… have… friends!!! Friendship is POWER!!!
What makes 86 different? Because one of the MCs just outright refused to lean on anyone. And all of the acts weren’t necessarily about friendship-power, the MC maintained power. And I don’t think he ever did lean on others. He was used to everyone going away, dying, etc. I found this to be accurate to real life, sans mortality. People fade away. That’s life. You get used to keeping a dull affect and coldness toward people, tending to your duties and promises you make. Maintain harmony, which is interesting to maintain considering the backdrop is bloodshed and warfare.
What I like though is that, in the end, he says he’s not sure why he keeps pressing forward. It is vague at best, hard to grasp. Maybe it is to share a memory. An experience. Maybe it is to give that to others. Maybe because he has no reason not to. Maybe he can finally accept what he’s done. And he eventually builds the confidence to go toward what’s next without all of those people he lost haunting him.
I think this is also accurate to living. It’s hard to say why one presses forward in the face of such tragedy. And you can’t boil it down to one reason. It just isn’t that simple, despite the power of friendship :-)
The MC finds will to go on through at least three different vectors: self-acceptance (personal actions and what happened in the past), a sense of responsibility toward others (that, whether they stay around or leave, still they took your path for however long you pave it), and paying heed to the small bits of living. The crux of aimlessness in the MC comes from being left behind after so many deaths he had to witness. So yeah, the whole left behind being proved wrong: that some people can persist in your life, also adds to the matrix of why. Perhaps finding a home in himself, with self acceptance, helps fend off that aimlessness too. It would’ve been nice if it explored these vectors a bit more other than rejoicing in the power of friendship above all else for the final cut, but at least they diverted and made explicit that, yeah, it’s on you to figure out that past. Figure out your strength. Look up occasionally and see what you got. Look what’s next. You’re gonna carry that weight.
Something I’ve extracted out of this was vector 2, sense of responsibility toward others, although not a one for one extraction. Giving thought to the path you leave and how that affects others hides a central reason why anyone goes on: you want to see what happens next. This emotion is all too easily lost in the minutiae of schooling, job, copy-paste friendships and copy-paste hobbies with little input. Copy-paste living, little risk and a silent passing.
When you’re anticipating something to happen — in the case of this MC, he is interested to see what happens next when he realizes there is a lot more variance to living: people stay around, they’re also following you and you want to see how that ends up, where the path leads to, how you’re going to get there, you can pave out something different than anything you’ve ever experienced before, a new world waits — that’s a powerful thought. That’s a better reason than friendship is magic in my opinion. But I will concede that a some well-known amusing and exciting experiences involves multiple people. Not many are built for a silent walk in a different country’s capital.
I think this is what makes some people so attractive, because even if you no longer want to see what happens next, the way they do, the way their eyes light up at what’s next, you want to see their reaction and vicariously feel that. You want to help sustain that. That’s enough to go on.
So the show had a nice bowtie, shuffling in the usual trope, but there was a powerful vector worth contemplating: what happens next. And instead of making that as some desire, where you just desperately want to see what happens next, I think it’s better to treat it as an imperative, a given. Like how the MC does. His partial confusion toward pressing forward is because his emotion is a little flat: he sees going onto the next scene as something that just will and ought to happen, not because he wants the scene itself. If anything the MC now exists to change what happens next, instead of being helpless to watch all his world slowly fade away. He realized he has the power to influence what’s next: a different outcome is possible. That’s the takeaway. No one would want to go through what’s next if they have it all figured out or it’s stuff they have no control over. Accepting the possibility of a different outcome will make you vaguely anticipate what happens next, won’t it?
You have a show you’re tending to in real time: your life. As with every show, we must see what happens next. How else can you leave a scathing review? :-)