And I don’t really understand the point…I guess? Like it’s about a group of kids who are part of an oppressed caste of people forced to go to war and fight on behalf of the decadent republic that they are not citizens of. They have a “handler” who sympathizes with them but does nothing but cry. Ostensibly the show seems to be about finding happiness despite your lot in life but I find that really unsatisfactory for a few reasons.
First the world they’ve established is extreme. The child soldiers are slaves being sent to die as part of a genocide. Second the republic is pretty much demilitarized except for officers who are in charge of the “86ers” who do the fighting. Third the show is about an elite unit and their politically well connected handler. The republic is losing the war that they are sending the 86ers to die in.
To me this seems like a good setup for a show about a revolution, but instead it’s a show about accepting that you can’t change anything so just try to be happy despite it. I feel like you could get that message across more effectively without making the world so evil. And besides it’s not really that interesting of a message. What is the point of making the viewer angry at the world if the characters do nothing? Why do we care about these characters?
This is different, because there is no existential threat to the west and they know it. In the show, the survival of the human race in its entirety is at stake. In the real world, there aren’t any self-replicating robot zombies of destruction expanding from those on the frontline dying.
The moment any NATO intel shows there is a real counter-threat it will be taken seriously. Hell, even if there isn’t, it’s used as an excuse to respond more harshly to something that doesn’t even exist.