I don't usually let myself be guided by algorithms, but one sleepless night, while aimlessly browsing through Netflix's catalog, I stumbled upon 86. I hadn't heard anything about the series. The title struck me as cold, even technical, but something in the synopsis—or maybe in that understated cover design—made me give it a chance. I wasn’t expecting anything. I just wanted to watch “something else.” What I found was an experience I’m still trying to process.
From the very first episode, I felt a strange tension, as if I were spying on a system I wasn’t supposed to fully understand. The world of 86 unfolds slowly, with a disturbing calm. There’s a war, that much is clear, but also an official lie dressed as order. The narrative plays with the distance between those who fight and those who watch, and in that gap, something more important begins to emerge: the humanity that’s lost when someone is stripped of their name.
What struck me most wasn’t the action—though it’s polished and flawlessly executed—but the silences. The pauses between conversations, the glances that linger just a little too long. The relationship between Lena—who’s only beginning to see what she doesn’t want to know—and the squad she commands from afar becomes a kind of emotional choreography. Shin, the quiet protagonist, doesn’t shout, doesn’t explain. But he’s there, like a haunting presence. And that’s far more powerful.
The aesthetic supports it without showing off: clean, precise, a palette that blends the institutional with the dusky. There’s beauty in the framing, but it’s a sorrowful beauty, as if the world has already accepted its fate. I never felt the series was trying to please me. Rather, it challenges me. It confronts me. As if it doesn’t care whether I keep watching—but it knows I won’t be able to stop.
I don’t know what’s coming next. I’ve only seen three episodes and I already have that strange feeling that only great anime provokes: the certainty that I’m witnessing something important, even if I can’t explain exactly why. And that moves me. Because sometimes, in the middle of so much forgettable content, a story like this finds you when you’re not looking for it. And it changes your inner rhythm. Like when you discover that you can still be moved.
