Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: 86 Season 2
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Kelohmello
Posts: 14 |
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Even as you can see the studio struggling to keep up their quality in real time, it's still impressive how good this show is at using its visuals to inspire empathy for its characters.
At its worst so far this show is still fantastic and I'm hoping they can keep it together til the end. |
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AnimeFlyz
Posts: 365 |
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Yeah. I cant say I agree with the review of Ep 17. The episode may not have been as good as the last, but it had a ton of detail in many scenes.
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09jcg
Posts: 523 |
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I didn't really notice a major quality drop this episode as far as the animation is concerned. It still looked nice, but there was far less action to show off. The opening scene was an anime original, and I thought it was well done. I think the silence played well into it being Lena's hopeless last stand. Dialogue would have just gotten in the way, and it's depicting (even if only briefly) something Light Novel fans have been wanting to see. The fall of the republic happening off screen was one of the blemishes of this story arc in the books.
Another anime original scene was how they depicted Shin's decent into depression by showing his former squadmates talk to him. It was a really well done scene that improved on the original. Lastly about the delay, I wonder if its because spoiler[animating the morpho is proving to be a pain. As described, its like a cross between a butterfly and a train with hundreds of legs so it can't be easy to depict] |
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Leviathonlx
Posts: 84 |
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Yea I'm not sure what quality drop the author saw in this episode especially given the fact they didn't give any specifics.
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proper1420
Posts: 32 |
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I agree. My anime-only impression is that the story doesn't want to reveal Lena's fate yet, and learning that the scene was anime original reinforces that impression. So we only got glimpses that confirmed she's in danger. (I also suspect it introduced something to us that we'll see again later.) Same for the montage at the end of the ED. Dialogue would have slowed it down.
This was one of my favorite sequence so far in the cour (I liked the series of dolly-zoom shots in ep13 starting at 6:55 better), but it really kicked in only when Lena walked past Shin as if she was joining his dead squad mates. It seems clear to me that what really got to Shin in this scene was the thought that Lena is dead, starting at the moment when he opened his eyes to see that he was touching Liberte et Egalite on the map. The wipe+match cut to Shin reflected in the window pane that has to cry for him because as an Eighty-Six he doesn't have time for grief (echoing a point from Theo's rant in ep3) was extraordinary. And yet some shots in this sequence look like they could have used more time: Shin looked awkward in the long shot of him after he touched Liberte et Egalite on the map (plus he appeared to be standing at the wrong place in front of the map), the dead Eighty-Six in the field of white looked unfinished, the close-up of Lena walking away from Shin looked awkward, and the shot of Lena and Shin standing on either side of the red spider lilies looked bare. It wouldn't surprise me if someone confirmed that the production of this episode was rushed. |
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b-dragon
Posts: 447 |
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I definitely didn't see an issue either- which isn't to say there wasn't one, I just never had the eye for detail to pick up such things. Since next week seems like a break, animation-wise, I can believe that there are issues. Hopefully they'll be able to get a bit of a head start.
As for the content of the episode- the 86 being defined, shaped, viewed, imprisoned, and empowered by their history, and the Federation not simply being "the Good Guys" continues to be a deft touch. But Shin's breakdown-in-progress is the real draw. He's already on a rapid downhill descent. The tipping point, and its fallout, should be quite the spectacle. |
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Picky33
Posts: 263 |
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I really hope the next episode shows lena's side of the battle, i'm super disappointed they skipped over it in the latest episode.
Honestly because of how slow the episode was i didn't notice a drop in quality but I'm the kind of person where if the story is good and the animation starts out decent i won't notice a drop in quality. |
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Mami-kouga
Posts: 161 |
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The little they did show was apparently anime only and novel readers have expressed massive doubt that anymore more will be shown. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11339 |
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Watched the non-episode this week. It was interesting to see the seiyuu, but nothing to write home about. The best part though was when they brought out the Bandai models of the Reginleif and got super jazzed that they had pile bunkers in the legs, and Theo's had his wires. But then they noticed that each model had Shin, Raiden, and Theo in their respective cockpits, and they just went nuts over it.
 That was fun, and the models were cool too.
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Rogueywon
Posts: 250 |
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You can tell this is adapting the weakest of the light novels in the series, albeit one that is necessary for the stuff that comes later. The first season had me burn through the LNs - something I very rarely do - and the second LN very much feels like a hybrid of a story transition-point and an identity crisis. It has to load in a lot of exposition and activity to spoiler["catch up" with the final scene from the first LN], which leaves less room for character work. The adaptation has actually improved things quite a lot, particularly in those first few episodes, but there's no hiding the quality dip.
That said, I'd still take this somewhat troubled adaptation of the weakest LN in the series over anything else airing this season. I really do hope this gets a continuation - the LN series very much finds its feet again from the third entry. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18179 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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^
Sounds like you're counting the second and third novels as a single novel? The second novel's adaptation ended with the end of episode 16. I would mark the part recently finished (episodes 12-16) at the weakest part of the story, and overall, much of the roughness comes from the second and third novels being retrofitted into the time skip at the end of the first novel (since the first novel was originally written as a standalone as a contest entry). This is maybe only the second episode so far where I've felt that the adaptation is weak, and I agree with complaints that the content is both repetitive and dragging here. Even so, I felt it built up the tension at the end of the episode well enough. |
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Rogueywon
Posts: 250 |
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Yes, sorry, you're right. My memory's blurring a bit there. I think both the second and third LNs felt like a bit of a dip to me. It probably didn't help that the first light novel spoiler[had the timeskip at the end, which it then took the subsequent two novels to catch up to. It took a lot of the tension out of 2 and 3.] Plus I don't think the overall balance works as well with so little Lena involved. |
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b-dragon
Posts: 447 |
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Its repetitive, yes, and the animation isn't quite there, but I still find that 86 is just so good at ratcheting tension up that I don't mind as much- the drama is still present.
I do wonder though, what Ernst's threat meant? Does he have something specific in mind if not all the squadron makes it back? Or perhaps more of a political/idealogical scorched earth tactic- "This is what our glorious Federation did to the desperate. This is what we allowed and encouraged." Maybe sacrifice his own career to take out much of the military brass, leaving them open to Legion forces. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 11138 |
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I'm glad Grethe is still trying to reach through to the kids even after what happened to Shin. She still wants to believe they can find happiness and a life outside of the battlefield, and that's colored by her own loss from the war that she still carries with her in that wedding ring and dog tags.
Poor Frederica seems like the only one of the core group who actually care whether they come back from this mission or not. In fact the Eighty-Six seem more annoyed or mad whenever someone brings it up or is concerned about it. She wanted to put Kiriya to rest but she didn't want to lose her new family, especially her new big brother. And Shin just doing the same thing Rei did to him was enough to break his stoicism for a second. Welp, not only does Ernst want the kids to survive but it seems like his faith in humanity hinges on said survival. No pressure. The Eighty-Six can at least respect the Frederacy's guts even when the Frederacy is insulting them. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11339 |
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I'm not sure what you're saying here. That the reflection shows their true feelings as opposed to diplomatic platitudes when seeing them head on? If that's the case, then Ernst comes off less protective of them than he professes to be. While he does stand up for them prior, his lines in the reflection are "I'm responsible for executing my duties with pride and dignity." That's not the heartfelt sentiment of a man whose motives are purely altruistic. He may truly want to protect them (and I personally think he does), but if the reflection speaks the truth, then perhaps that's only because he's an ideologue and he has to, in order to uphold the nominal values of his country, which he sees as his job. (ha, when I skipped over to google to check the spelling of "ideologue" one of the top hits was "86 Synonyms and Antonyms of Ideologue.") |
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