So, to an extent, I was wrong. Shin’s brother got a more detailed address than I was expecting, even if, no, it wasn’t the crux of another transformation. On the other hand, we did in fact get a new movement in the major plot, and it is a hell of a big one.
The episode starts with a flashback to when Lena was shot down in the warzone and Shin’s brother managed to rescue her, getting to see their interaction first hand before she and Shin… actually don’t talk about it all that much. She does find out that he’s apparently dead, and after Shin finishes his tour of duty (insert laugh track here), he’s going to go looking for said brother – that is, presumably his body. That was enough hint for what was coming.
We get a battle scene in this one as well. Shin tries to warn Lena to cut the Para-Raid link and let them fight on their own, citing the presence of more “Black Sheep” than usual. Lena, of course, wants to be of use as much as she can be, and hangs on, only to start hearing phantom voices. Most are screaming, afraid, and in pain, and their presence seems to drive her half mad. Just before Shin cuts the link, she hears the voice of Kaie, the girl from the Spearhead squad who died in episode 3, once again repeating her last words.
This haunts Lena to hell, and as calm as they seem to be about it, the squad seems to miss her presence by that evening, when they expect that she won’t be coming back. However, despite the voices or memory of them continuing to torment her, Lena calls in to ask Shin about the situation.
And that is when we get the hook for what’s probably going to drive the rest of the story: It’s believed that the AI of the Legion will break down in about two years (Which I mentioned being skeptical of in my write-up for Episode 2), resulting in a total victory for the Republic, but based on Shin’s knowledge, that’s not quite true. Perhaps because of a near-death experience, he can hear the voices of the dead echoing from “Black Sheep” within the Legion. Those are Legion units with advanced AIs produced by recording the brains of the dying, and it’s reasonable to expect that even if the central processor breaks down, the Black Sheep will keep fighting, since they’ve evolved and overcome their limits, being more dangerous combatants as well. And, Shin notes, more and more of the Black Sheep are appearing among the enemy, including reproductions of the same mental imprint. Most of them are fragmentary, the degraded digital echo of human thought senselessly repeating the last thoughts of the lost. Shin doesn’t think the real person or any sort of ‘soul’ is there, but the Black Sheep represent an apocalyptic threat.
After all, the Eighty-Six are dying on the front line; most that remain are kids, and are already in battle. If the Legion doesn’t keel over at the two-year timer, what then? Eventually, the defensive war will be lost, and the Alba of the Republic will follow the Eighty-Six to their graves. Worse even than the normal Black Sheep, there are at least a few commander-types that have absorbed relatively intact human brains, and are now making intelligent, strategic calls from the back line. Shin can hear them, and the fact that the current reduction in enemy force seen by the Republic is nothing more than those units holding their reserves and building up for something. Likely, I feel, an onslaught that will form something of a major climax.
This knowledge, of course, horrifies Lena… but she’s not inclined to give into Shin’s relative fatalism, insisting that they’ll simply have to fight their hardest, presumably go on the offense, and defeat the Legion in a decisive manner before the two years for the Republic (or the one year for Shin’s mandatory service, for that matter). Thus, we’re ready to go into further episodes with new resolve.
After the credits we get only a short scene this time, in which Shin, regarding the scar on his neck and momentarily flashing to his near-death experience, says he’ll be seeing his brother soon, implying even more strongly that his brother is the template for one of the Black Sheep commanders and thus likely to be represented somewhat in the form of at least an arc antagonist.
Getting the information on Shin’s ability and the Black Sheep fundamentally transforms 86 as a story. We’re not done with the social drama, I wouldn’t think, but there’s a definite desire in the new setup to actually get the action-war story rather than being satisfied with the story about prejudice and injustice with war as a backdrop. There’s now a lot of work to do, a deadline to do it in, and a foe that could seem fairly indomitable. That said, I think we do have the tools: Lena coordinating, Shin with his unique awareness of the Legion, and the eccentric rest of Spearhead. Even Lena’s friend at home could contribute; she’s a scientist and involved with the Para-Raid system (if memory serves, her father invented it and she continues to work on development), which could be a handy discipline to have when dealing with brain-copying robots.
In any case, there’s still a lot of getting there as we’re only at the halfway point of the first cour of the show. We now have goal for the characters to work towards, beyond simple survival, and will start to see how they go about it and how they can go about it next episode.