This week, we get an episode entirely devoted to Shin’s side of the world; Lena doesn’t appear at all. And, quite honestly, that was needed in order to go through the emotions of their experience with good pacing; the show would not have benefited from either doing it in half the time (losing emotional weight) or from doing it over two episodes (bloating the pace of the plot points).
So, what does happen? Mostly, we see the former Spearhead squad getting used to, or trying to get used to life in the peaceful center of Giad. Raiden has a part-time job, Theo is advancing his sketch work, Anju goes to cooking school, Kurena mostly mopes around the shopping district as she clearly nurses her crush on Shin as well as the emotions the whole group has to go through, and Shin seems to hang out at the library, even making a friend while there.
Along the way, the group (especially Shin) also bonds with the young Empress, who is just as adorably bratty as before, but in this episode shows that she’s also quite aware and insightful. Eventually, Christmas (or at least the in-setting obvious equivalent of it) rolls around. The restlessness that they’re all feeling is expressed quite well, coming to a head when each member of the group bears witness to a military parade in which Giad’s latest mobile weapons (which bear a reasonably distinct resemblance to the Legion mechs) are trotted out.
After that, they come together at home and decide that they’ll make their way back to the battlefield. This leads to a good argument with the President (who wants them to live peaceful lives to make up for the suffering they already endured) and the Empress (who supports their resolve). Seeing their determination and hearing both the reason for it and an indictment of his own excessive paternalism, the President relents, one one condition: rather than simply enlisting, they’ll attend a school for Officers and enter the military with rank, so that they’ll have more doors open to them when the war is finally and truly ended – a situation that they hadn’t even dared to think about.
The Empress also has a request. She possesses a special ability like that of Shin and his brother, but hers is a sort of psychometric, being able to see glimpses of the past (and she claims future) of people she touches. She can prove her ability by knowing about Shin’s brother and how he got his scar. Her request is that she wants to go with them and help them, with the ultimate mission of ‘saving’ someone who was dear to her (her knight, she says) who was taken and incorporated into the Legion like Shin’s brother.
In the end (After the credits, just a stinger but perhaps the show will fall back into its old tricks of running post-credits scenes), we see the group off in what seems to be Spring with new dress uniforms – Empress included – indicating that we’re set to move into a new phase of the story on this side.
On the whole, 86 seems to be navigating the fundamental changes that sprung from Episode 11 very well, retaining its core strengths of excellent deliberate pacing and a portrayal of its subjects with great humanity. There’s not anyone who’s all wrong or all right in the debate towards the end of this episode, much as when there were horrible things going on in the Republic, you could still understand why those things were happening in human terms. When dealing with touchy subjects it’s all too tempting to make things ‘clean’, where people who do right are always right and wise and people who do wrong are just evil, insane, or motivated purely by easy-to-vilify things like hatred and spite. 86 avoids that, understanding both that what motivates someone to hurt other people can be complex and that kindness can also be applied in the wrong way or for bad reasons.
That kind of humanity and emotional complexity was why the show was good before, and it’s still going strong.