The final episode of the cour (special pending) and if you told me this was the absolute final episode of the show and anything related to 86, I would believe you. In fact, if I wasn’t damn certain that the story goes on from here, what with a second cour announced and a whole bunch of novels past anything we could have possibly gotten to, I would question the sanity of someone who told me that this wasn’t just the bitter end.
We start off with where we had to leave Fido, a skirmish with the Legion that disables the robot (which threw itself in the way of an attack) and all but one of the team’s Juggernauts – Shin’s, of course – forcing them to carry on driving in shifts as they continue through the Post-apocalyptic pastoral. Enjoy the scenery, dodge Legion patrols, spend the evening in a ruined school miming the day-to-day experience they’d either lost or never had… you know, indulging in the kind of feel that this would be a fun road trip if not for all the death both past and impending implicit in everything about it.
That smiling melancholy comes to an end when, moving along a narrow cliff-side road, Shin asks to switch into the driver seat. He then cuts the line attaching the cart with the others to the Juggernaut and uses his tow cables to tear down a section of rock face, blocking the road. Because, of course, he’s heard the voice of the Legion, knows they won’t be able to dodge the group, and is up to fight them to the death in order to give the rest of Spearhead the chance to push onward, past where the voice of the Legion can be heard.
Naturally, Shin’s friends don’t want to accept this. While delayed, they make their way past his barrier and head out on foot to support Shin until the end. We see his battle with the patrol, in which he’s actually able to hold out pretty well until one of those ultra-long-range artillery pieces from before fires from over the horizon and leaves him disabled at the edge of a crater. Shin’s friends show up, taking it to the legion with their rifles, but such small arms have little hope of hurting one of the Legion juggernauts, and the Legion infantry that we see for the first time, while able to be taken down, comes in waves and has a habit of exploding when shot. Soon enough, they’re all on the ground, as Shin, unable to get his sidearm to end his own life, faces down a Legion unit and wonders, when his head is taken and he’s one of them, what name he’ll call out.
Cut to Lena, who’s paying a visit to Spearhead’s old base.
Technically, its revealed, she’s under house arrest for that stunt earlier, but apparently she’s well enough positioned that if she wants to visit hell’s gate while under “house arrest”, they’ll let her. She meets the old tech who had supported Spearhead, finding out that he’s an Alba who willingly enlisted when his wife and daughter were to be taken, and hears his woes about having to see off squad after squad of Spearhead. Lena is then permitted to poke around the old base before the new Spearhead starts making themselves at home, and finds a little something left behind by her friends who are now gone.
All in all, they leave her a note (written on the initial sketch of her as a pig in a dress), their cat, and a photo of the whole squad together with a who’s-who key, allowing her to finally put real faces to all the people she tried to care for. This sparks a deep, determined bitterness in her, and our last shot has her marching along a train track, declaring that as they believed in her until the end, they’re not the only ones who can keep on walking forward – indicating, I suppose, that Lena isn’t about to give up her quest to actually reform how the Republic does things, no matter what else it might cost her.
As final notes go, it’s tragic but entirely real… but it’s not quite our final note. After the credits, we’re given one last little dream-vision in which Shin meets his older brother, who apologizes for calling out to him, and they (the older brother taking on a knightly image and shin appearing to be a kid) walk onward before we pan down to the image of Shin’s body with red crayon covering where his head would be, suggesting that he’s been claimed by the Legion and his mind dragged into that fantasy along with his head. Obviously, if we’re going on with this show and these characters (and Shin’s face is on all the book covers, so…), that doesn’t happen and something manages to actually get at least Shin out of the doom we left him in. Perhaps it has to do with the last Legion voice he heard before being downed, a new voice babbling about ‘the princess’… or maybe it’s something else entirely. Unless the special announced at the end of the episode explains, we’ll have to wait to the second cour or read the books to find out.
So, if I had to judge 86 right now like it was a finished thing, which doesn’t seem entirely inappropriate? It’s worth an honest A+. I’m glad to have watched this show. It had a good story, great visuals, and strong emotions. It reached into places you don’t usually see addressed with much reality or grace, and yet remained fairly uncompromising in its portrayal. It rejects the normal excess and glorification you see in military fantasy and despite that also avoids falling into the pits of miserable darkness that swallow all too many efforts who think “more suffering is more real.” It’s a show that follows characters in a horrible situation, and shows that they can still smile and feel without letting those smiles detract from the awfulness of the scenario. At the absolute worst, it has some melodramatic or pretentious moments, when the fancy filter goes on and the music swells, but most of those moments are carefully earned, and the few that aren’t fully excused are hardly enough to tarnish the show’s record on the whole. It’s a rare piece that I both like and respect, and I’m really looking forward to when we get a chance to see where they go from here.