There’s an interesting contrast between 86 and another show I’m tracking episode by episode right now, Scarlet Nexus, and it has to do with the pacing.
Specifically, both shows tend to take their time with things, but while Scarlet Nexus often feels bloated or repetitive, 86 is deliberate, using its slower pace to carefully control its tone and tell the story it wants to tell. This is the difference between having writers that are competent and know what they’re doing and having a creative team that’s floundering.
So, this episode in 86, what do we do? In terms of plot motion, the old team is brought back together and briefed on what to expect upcoming. The briefing itself is fairly minimal: On one side, Giad has confirmed the survival of two other nations, while the Republic hasn’t been responding to radio hails. Meanwhile, Federacy intel suggests that there’s a fairly large Legion incoming, but nothing that the main battle line can’t handle. Shin, however, provided a similar warning, but the numbers he gave were “impossible” by being far larger than even the highest bound provided by conventional intelligence. Oh dear.
However, while that’s the “Plot motion” we do get quite a few other notes, like seeing the little empress as a child (wandering the halls half-asleep and calling Shin by the name of that knight she knew and wants to rescue from the Legion) and also coming to grips with the past and present alike.
Specifically on that score, she and Shin have a good conversation, both covering how she got involved with the friend from the previous episode and was thus affected by his death, and what that means for her as a person. She also tells the full story of her and her knight, getting us a better picture of what the last ten years have looked like and more importantly what we may be having to look forward to in terms of her inner turmoil and the character of what’s surely a dangerous Black Sheep out among the Legion.
The basic story is that the Legion was an Empire-Loyal weapon for some time. It was deployed against enemy states and enemies of the state, but after its adoption, the revolution that resulted in the modern Federacy of Giad began. The Legion was used to fight them as well, but wasn’t made to fight alongside humans, meaning that the defense of the royal family was left to their top loyalist guards. The little empress watched the knight dear to her (who would seem to have been an extremely distant relation of Shin, explaining her immediate gravitation towards the otherwise-surly Undertaker) lose just about everything that mattered to him except for her. When at last the fortress finally fell, she was declared dead, her imperial mantle presented to the mob, and that broke him. He wandered out into the field and let the Legion, which was roaming about looking for salvage to recycle, take him.
However, having experienced the much more immediate death of a friend in the last episode, she has an amendment to her former request: if things get dangerous, she wants Shin to disengage, not being willing to sacrifice the life of someone she cares about in the effort to save the soul (more or less) of someone else she cares about. She also implores Shin to think of his future, causing him to recall that someone else (Lena) once told him something similar.
We then get a conversation between Shin and Raiden where they both talk about Shin’s disregarded warning about the Legion numbers (including the fact that Shin’s actual ability is being kept secret to avoid him becoming a lab rat) and wander on to the topic of Lena, indicating that they both kind of miss her (which is something given Shin). The post-credits stinger briefly puts Lena on screen, suggesting that we might get more of her in the coming episode or episodes.