#the 86

[s3znl-gr3znl]

Fuuuuck i really wanna rewatch The 86 for this song alone

The series climax was so special and this like the PERFECT song for it

Psych, this just became a review post.

I love this series. It has its shortcoming with somewhat tired tropes and predictable deaths.

It suffers slightly from what I would call Second Season Syndrome (think 7 Deadly Sins) where they add some shit no one asked for instead of developing our already large and complex cast of characters any further. They introduce a new mcguffin character whose really just an annoying tag-a-long until the finale.

For context, our new mcguffin character is a child that tags along as moral support. Thats their whole bit.

Aside from that its a really solid series with solid themes and characters with a phenomenal ending, so dont let my tiny criticisms dissuade you from watching it!

The mech design is unique, interesting, well thought out, and really fun to watch!

[diepod-stuff]

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[s3znl-gr3znl]

Skibidi toilet gang listen up. Armored core is lying to you!!! Theres a whole anime abt handler walter right before he transitioned.

[shroudofnerscylla]

I got into mecha anime because of the giant robots, but I stayed for the poignant social commentary. And I'm not just talking about Gundam (though obviously I am also talking about Gundam).

I think the first mecha anime I ever watched was Evangelion, which I would say is definitely jumping into the deep end in terms of being a mecha anime that is actually about society, not giant robots. This was in high school, and even my depressed, non-self-actualized, pretransition, media illiterate ass could latch on to at least a few of the core themes (because Eva hits you over the head with them).

It took a while longer for me to really delve into mecha as a genre. Even now I'm still just wading in, but every work so far has just immersed me further.

Mobile Suit Gundam and Zeta Gundam are my top picks so far, and I'll definitely write more about those in the future. What I've been thinking about today, though, are The 86 and Iron Blooded Orphans. These works really stand out to me as examples of a larger theme present in many mecha shows: personhood, and how it can be obscured.

Today I listened to an old episode of the TRASHFUTURE podcast, and they spoke about how modern robotics are less advanced than many people are aware of, and that the companies selling this "automation" are often patching over the human labor that goes into it. Thing is, robots are good at a few specific kinds of tasks. Moving objects from one position to another, dispensing things, making a predetermined cut or weld, and so on. What robots aren't very good at is thinking like a human. This was in 2019, before the explosion of large language models replaced basically every call center, but the issue still remains - LLMs are just another case of poorly done automation that fails to fully replace human labor.

The 86 is a mecha anime that focuses on the relationship between a military officer who commands "drones" in their battle against an invading force. I won't get too deep into the plot, but the reason I connect this with the above ideas is because the "drones" arent drones at all, but rather the human mecha pilots of an underclass deemed to be disposable and anonymized to protect the emotions of their oppressors as they send the pilots to battle. This is, obviously, a thematically rich text, but the part I want to pull out is about how keenly observed the commentary on human labor is. I can't say for certain that the writers were thinking specifically about how capitalism exploits the labor of the poorest people on earth in a way that is invisible to the beneficiaries of thag labor, because this phenomenon is so deeply ingrained in the project of capitalism that even looking directly at it, it is impossible to see straight past it. Whether it's cheap manufacturing in factories abroad, call centers for domestic companies outsourcing labor, robotics companies disguising the inputs of humans as advanced robotics (yes, this is more than just a hypothetical I came up with - robotics companies have suggested this many times. I do not know how broadly it has been implemented), or the labor of Amazon warehouse workers here at home, capitalism has long sought to use human labor as augmented mechanized labor. Tying that directly into one of the other major outcomes of capitalism - the endless wars in service of maintaining the instability of a global underclass who can be exploited for labor and other resources - really nails the social commentary imo. That's without even getting into the story's exploration of eugenics.

I had something to include here about Iron Blooded Orphans, but I don't feel like trying to figure it out right now. Maybe I'll add to this later or make a new post. Anyway, watch The 86.

[gavindna]

If i had a nickel for every time i started a series and a red haired older sibling hit/beat up their younger sibling and called them a curse upon their family id have two nickels which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice

[wheretotonightmelbourne]

Where to Celebrate Christmas in July in Melbourne (2016)

Where to Celebrate Christmas in July in Melbourne (2016)

To us Aussies, there’s something magical (or at the very least, intriguing) about a winter Christmas – with ugly Christmas sweaters and mulled wine replacing the sunshine, backyard cricket and BBQ seafood of our own Australian childhoods. Which is why Christmas in July gets a big thumbs up from all of us Southern Hemisphere folk. This month, bars and pubs across the city are serving up their own…

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Pinks in Preston, VIC. Summer, 2015.