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Can it really be we don't have an eighty-six thread?

So, finished catching up (aside from the commentary episode). Only thing I'm not sure I like is that we shifted so heavily towards what's going on over on Shin's side of the plot, since the snippets of Lena's side we get to see imply that there was some interesting stuff happening there too between said snippets.

Once I have money, definitely picking up the LNs so I don't have to wait for the next season to find out what happens after volume 3.
 
The Sandman said:
So, finished catching up (aside from the commentary episode). Only thing I'm not sure I like is that we shifted so heavily towards what's going on over on Shin's side of the plot, since the snippets of Lena's side we get to see imply that there was some interesting stuff happening there too between said snippets.

Once I have money, definitely picking up the LNs so I don't have to wait for the next season to find out what happens after volume 3.
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I would also like to see more of what's happening on Lena's side of things. I've seen it suggested that the reason we haven't seen much of her this season is to highlight her absence from Shin's life. Not sure whether the novels are the same way or whether that's an adaptation choice.

JevvyPython said:
Then we see there are Alba rear line MP types. The Spearhead members are all brought to the units by Alba guards in that flashback. Someone must have been keeping all the 86 in the concentration camps under guard, especially considering how quickly they intervened when Shin's brother snapped and started to strangle him. I'd expect there are at least a couple of Alba MP armored units around just in case an 86 unit did try to stage a revolt. With all the advantages they'd have it would probably only need to be a small fraction of the total number of 86 units.
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Just a correction.
I don't think the Alba man who intervened when Rei tried to strangle Shin was a MP. I think he's supposed to be the Alba priest who raised Shin. (The subtitles describe said priest as being sent to the camps because he refused to give up his land, but my impression is its more like he refused to leave his home when the other Alba relocated to the safe districts behind the walls.)
 
So apparently Episode 19 is also going to be delayed an extra week as well... and IIRC they already announced there wasn't going to be an episode on December 11 due to a holiday? This show is becoming a biweekly release!

Ultimately it's probably a good thing that production quality is being prioritized, but the combination of multiple episodes of build up and production delays is frustrating.
 
Darthtabby said:
I don't think the Alba man who intervened when Rei tried to strangle Shin was a MP. I think he's supposed to be the Alba priest who raised Shin. (The subtitles describe said priest as being sent to the camps because he refused to give up his land, but my impression is its more like he refused to leave his home when the other Alba relocated to the safe districts behind the walls.)
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I'd forgotten about that entirely. I'll have to rewatch during the production lull. An Alba priest being sent to the 86 camps sounds like a very interesting character in the Republic's narrative, especially a man who would raise an 86 orphan. (I like how the story muddles the simplest oppression narrative by including the likes of Eugene [Shin's Federacy library/war buddy who seems to be an ethnic-Alba] and that secretly-Alba Spearhead mechanic into things.)

Darthtabby said:
So apparently Episode 19 is also going to be delayed an extra week as well... and IIRC they already announced there wasn't going to be an episode on December 11 due to a holiday? This show is becoming a biweekly release!

Ultimately it's probably a good thing that production quality is being prioritized, but the combination of multiple episodes of build up and production delays is frustrating.
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A pity, but 86 is going to be a series people go back to for decades unless it really, really, screws the pooch as bad as Game of Thrones. It's definitely a good thing if they make sure they get it right.
 
@JevvyPython Raiden also mentions that an elderly Alba woman took care of him until he was 12, which is interesting since the timeline indicates he would have been sent to the camps well before reaching that age. A quick peek at his history on the wiki clarifies that
she was hiding him (and several other children) from the authorities. That probably didn't end well for her.

Eugene is Alba, and I think his interactions with Shin help highlight that Giad is very different from San Magnolia. The Alba in the crowd scenes when Shin and co are riding into Sankt Jager in Ernst's car serve a similar purpose. It's probably rather shocking for them to see Alba casually hanging out with other ethnicities. Then again San Magnolia was also a multi-ethnic state until about a decade ago. The Alba mechanic you mentioned originally signed up because he hoped to restore the rights of his wife and child after they were branded 86.

This discussion is reminding me: I think I initially missed that Anju is part Alba. Actually from what I understand Anju's ancestory is mostly Alba, its only the color of her eyes that mark her as an 86.
 
Oh boy, I find this thread just in time for the next episode to be delayed.

The Sandman said:
So, finished catching up (aside from the commentary episode). Only thing I'm not sure I like is that we shifted so heavily towards what's going on over on Shin's side of the plot, since the snippets of Lena's side we get to see imply that there was some interesting stuff happening there too between said snippets.
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Darthtabby said:
I would also like to see more of what's happening on Lena's side of things. I've seen it suggested that the reason we haven't seen much of her this season is to highlight her absence from Shin's life. Not sure whether the novels are the same way or whether that's an adaptation choice.
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There's not much that could've been done on that front, if anything Lena's plot was expanded upon. On top of Season 2 adapting both novels 2 & 3, Lena was deliberately out of focus because 2 & 3 were about what happened to Spearhead after the "Special Reconnaissance Mission".
 
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@chriswriter90 I was already aware of a certain upcoming event you mentioned, but for the sake of those who've done a better job of remaining spoiler free then I have maybe you could put a spoiler tag on that last sentence?
 
Some speculation regarding a development from back at the beginning of the second cour/season: Ernst mentions that the Federacy rescued Shin and company when they were captured by the Legion. Assuming that's not a translation error, it seems rather strange since the Legion is usually interested in
harvesting heads/brains
rather then capturing people. But what if the group's capture was not a mere contrivance to ensure the group's survival, but a hint that some intelligence operating within/behind the Legion is actively interested in them (or at least in Shin)? I still find it a little questionable that Shin's comrades were merely knocked unconscious by those self propelled mines, but it would address one of my nitpicks about the group's survival...
 
Darthtabby said:
Ernst mentions that the Federacy rescued Shin and company when they were captured by the Legion. Assuming that's not a translation error, it seems rather strange
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The anime has gotten past this by now, so it should be fine to say unspoiled. Anyway, they use the word captured as the Dino robot Shin's brother was piloting had 'captured' them and helped get them to human territory before dying of its wounds.

This just looked like one of the mecha herding the human mecha somewhere to the republic, of course.
 
Wait, what?

I guess that would explain why Giad recovered the wreckage of that one Dinosauria along with Shin's juggernaught, and also Shin's vision/hallucination of Rei carrying him, but didn't Spearhead leave the burning remains of
the Dinosauria Rei was uploaded to
behind two weeks beforehand?

Is this something that's better explained by the novels? I plan to read Volume 2 once I get a hold of a copy and the anime finishes airing.
 
Darthtabby said:
Is this something that's better explained by the novels? I plan to read Volume 2 once I get a hold of a copy and the anime finishes airing
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Very much so. I haven't read much of vol2 yet myself so the above is a vague understand from wiki walks, but iirc Rei got downloaded into a backup body by the Legion after his Dino mech got destroyed. This was a rush job and accidentally freed him from the Legion programming, so before he implodes from code error he tries his best to get Shin & co to safety.
 
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Darthtabby said:
This discussion is reminding me: I think I initially missed that Anju is part Alba. Actually from what I understand Anju's ancestory is mostly Alba, its only the color of her eyes that mark her as an 86.
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As I recall Anju and her mother have a single Caerula in their fairly distant heritage. It would actually be most accurate to simply say that Anju is an Alba, which really highlights precisely how narrowly San Magnolia executed it's ethnic cleansing.
 
Ford Prefect said:
As I recall Anju and her mother have a single Caerula in their fairly distant heritage. It would actually be most accurate to simply say that Anju is an Alba, which really highlights precisely how narrowly San Magnolia executed it's ethnic cleansing.
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Yeah Anju's an example of things like the US "one drop rule" in my eyes. Goes to show how completely made up and arbitrary race as a concept is.
 
Ford Prefect said:
As I recall Anju and her mother have a single Caerula in their fairly distant heritage. It would actually be most accurate to simply say that Anju is an Alba, which really highlights precisely how narrowly San Magnolia executed it's ethnic cleansing.
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Assuming that's from the light novel what did you make of the english translation? I don't think that ever came up in the anime so might be worth picking them up for more backstory.

(In the anime I was assuming something quite different from the scars on Anji's back.)
 
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JevvyPython said:
Assuming that's from the light novel what did you make of the english translation? I don't think that ever came up in the anime so might be worth picking them up for more backstory.

(In the anime I was assuming something quite different from the scars on Anji's back.)
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I also assumed that Anju was the daughter of a mixed race couple (with an Alba father) after I found out what her scars say. But her introduction in the novel paints a different picture (I'm holding back on later volumes until the anime is finished but I decided to read the first).

Volume 1 P.45 (Yen Press) said:
Anju, who had been rinsing her long silvery-blue hair until now, scopped up water with both hands and splashed it at Kaie. [...] As her hair color suggested, she had thick Adularia blood, but her pale-blue Celesta eyes were inherited from her great grand-mother's grandmother. This alone would make her as an Eighty-Six by the Republic, which placed utmost importance on purity of blood.
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(Adularia are apparently a sub grouping of Alba -wiki suggests the name is a reference to Adularesence, an optical illusion famous for producing a blue glow in moonstones.)

On a related note, I sometimes wonder if Anju ever resents having been given Snow Witch as a call sign.
 
Darthtabby said:
I also assumed that Anju was the daughter of a mixed race couple (with an Alba father) after I found out what her scars say. But her introduction in the novel paints a different picture (I'm holding back on later volumes until the anime is finished but I decided to read the first).

(Adularia are apparently a sub grouping of Alba -wiki suggests the name is a reference to Adularesence, an optical illusion famous for producing a blue glow in moonstones.)

On a related note, I sometimes wonder if Anju ever resents having been given Snow Witch as a call sign.
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It was only on screen for a moment so am I wrong in thinking the scar was 'Whore's Daughter'? Looking at the screencap we do see '..ore's ...aught...'. I'd assumed that meant her mother was an 86 that the others saw as a traitor for marrying/having a relationship with/being raped by an Alba to have Anju. Obviously the type of person who would take a knife and carve anything into a child's back is not a rational thinking being but if Anju's mother was also ethnically Alba I don't know if that makes sense. I'd assume they'd have carved 'white pig' or something else.
 
Claudette Savagely said:
The social politics are great but the robot action is...kind of bland so far.

Does it get better?
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Season 2's action is more animated than Season 1's but the mech that moves closest to it's book counterpart is still Shin's Undertaker.

On the other hand, if every single mech on screen at once moved like spiders on caffeine then the action would be difficult to track & watch or to animate in the first place.
 
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chriswriter90 said:
Season 2's action is more animated than Season 1's but the mech that moves closest to it's book counterpart is still Shin's Undertaker.

On the other hand, if every single mech on screen at once moved like spiders on caffeine then the action would be difficult to track & watch or to animate in the first place.
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Clearly the solution is spiders on LSD!

Also duly noted, will continue watching.
 
JevvyPython said:
Assuming that's from the light novel what did you make of the english translation?
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It's quite good overall. The first volume has a prominent and somewhat funny mistake around the Grand Mur, but otherwise no complaints.

Depending on how quickly you read, I would hold off on reading volume 1 until the anime has finished. As the original book was written while it was unclear that Asato would get to continue, she included an epilogue intended to create some closure, and it's a bit spoilery.
 
Giving second opinions on a couple matters:

@JevvyPython Yen Press' translation of Volume 1 of the light novels is generally quite good though it could have benefitted from a little more polishing by an editor. There's the occasional missing word or awkwardly phrased sentence.

@Claudette Savagely Aside from the fifth episode, the second cour has actually been relatively light on mecha action. Though given the rumblings I've been hearing I expect that to change drastically in the last remaining episodes.

Personally I actually liked the style of combat in cour one. There was use of the environment, and as one commentator pointed out the staff did a good job of conveying how fragile the Juggernaughts are.
 
So, the latest episode is in the usual places. I'll keep this first spoiler in place for a couple days before taking it down.
Spoiler = Temporary Spoiler Spoiler Tag Begone!

1. The Action was short but decently animated. The Morpho looked great, I can actually wrap my head around it's design now that I have effectively a 3D image rather than a sketch. I didn't have that problem with the other Legion units we have sketches for.

2. Seeing Kiri in happier times with Frederica, that was hard to watch.

3. Seeing Shin slip deeper into his suicidal mindset was even harder to watch. That boy needs a hug.

4. There are no breaks on the Ernst Zimmerman Train. He will see his ideals succeed or burn everything down with him.


When the subtitles said there were "United Kingdom observers" I was hoping for a sneak peak at the Alkonosts and their pilots but I was disappointed.


And finally... Wait? What? I think I need to go back and re-read the novels.
Isn't No Face's decision to spare Shin from Kiri completely at odds with his later orders to kill Shin rather than capture and assimilate him?

Or did No Face change his mind after the Phoenix Fight "confirmed?" that Shin was a potential assimilation candidate to take over and replace No Face?

Actually, having thought about it and put my thoughts into text, that sounds about right.
 
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I thought the thing about the child mascots having historically having served the role of hostages was just some background worldbuilding, but
Frederica really is using herself as a hostage against the 86 here. Though as she herself notes, with the intention of getting them to come back alive. (Raiden says they're not going to die, but Shin also said something similar about the Special Reconnaissance back in season one and it seems pretty clear they didn't expect to survive that.)

On a related note I'm a bit disappointed that we haven't gotten much interaction between Frederica and the other members of Spearhead aside from Shin. I guess it makes sense given the way the story is going with the parallels between Shin and Kiriya, but its something I would have liked to have seen.
 
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