86: Eighty-Six Volume 12 Review

At the beginning of 2024, it was confirmed that 86 would be entering its final arc beginning in Volume 14 (which has yet to be released in Japan at the time of writing). For those who have been reading along, this came as no real surprise given the recent twists and turns of the narrative. For now, let’s take a look at what Volume 12 has in store for us!

Volume 11 of 86 saw the main cast return to the Republic (their homeland), where they were tasked with evacuating everyone left before they succumbed to a Legion attack. This, of course, wasn’t as easy as it should have been, and the group were put through and witnessed some horrific experiences during the mission.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that when we begin Volume 12, we find a lot of the characters struggling under the mental weight of their last mission. It’s bad enough that Lena is sent away from the front lines for a mental health break, leaving the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package temporarily without their beloved leader.

Naturally, just because Lena is away doesn’t mean the Legion are going to take a break from their assault. So, the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package is sent out on a new mission to destroy a dam and hopefully do some significant damage to the Legion in the process. It’s a simple mission on paper, particularly as the Legion shouldn’t know they’re there, but unfortunately, other problems are brewing in the background…

At the very beginning of this book, we’re introduced to the Hail Mary squad, who are growing increasingly frustrated with the Federacy’s leadership and decide to take things into their own hands. They’re all from a town that had a nuclear power plant and believe that surely a nuclear weapon would be more than enough to wipe out the Legion and win the war. So they steal some radioactive material in the hopes of making a nuclear bomb, which of course does not go to plan at all because they have no idea how that kind of weaponry is made.

The other issue is that they’re unaware that it will have no impact at all on the Legion, while doing irreversible damage to the surrounding land for humans. The group have never had the opportunity to properly learn and instead have just been doing as they’re told with no real understanding of why. It speaks to the many problems the Federacy has when you get into the lower ranks of the army, away from Shin and the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package.

In many ways, I feel this is one of the weakest books in the series. Maybe because Lena is sidelined for the entire run, or because the emphasis is on worldbuilding as opposed to moving the story forward. Despite this book being no longer than any of the others, it felt like it took forever for anything to happen. It does not help that although I can understand why the Hail Mary squad ended up in this situation, I just did not care about their characters at all. Which is a problem when a large portion of the story revolves around them!

I do see the value in having a less intense story here after the events of Volume 11, especially with the knowledge that we’re approaching the final arc. But when we’ve had entries like this before, they’ve been free of battles against the Legion, such as Volume 7, where the whole group took a well-earned vacation. Obviously, given the situation of the world as the war has progressed, it’s understandable why that wasn’t an option for the setting this time, but I would have preferred that to what we’ve got.

Of course, everything else that author Asato Asato excels at writing is still present here. There are some more relaxed moments where we can watch over the cast being able to enjoy some respite and tease one another. And that’s balanced with the unsettled undercurrent of change, with the Federacy having taken in so many of the Republic’s people. Some of them have joined the Federacy army and are struggling, due to the reputation of the horrible things their people put the Eighty-Six through, and others from the Republic continue to freely use and abuse anyone they can. Asato has always been quite good at weaving these kinds of background details into the story, and that remains true here as well.

As previously mentioned, 86 Volume 12 comes to the West thanks to Yen Press and has been translated by Roman Lempert. As always for these releases, it reads well and comes with several colour pages at the beginning. Volume 13 of the series has already been released in English, as well as Volume 1 of 86: Eighty-Six – Alter, which is a compilation of short stories. So there’s certainly still plenty of new content out there to keep you entertained!

Overall, this is one of the weakest books we’ve seen in 86 so far. Of course, in a series as regularly excellent as this, that doesn’t mean it’s an awful read, but it’s not up to the quality we usually see. I’m sure it will pick up again going forward as it always has. And with the final arc in sight, we can rest easy knowing that this won’t be dragged out as long as some other light novel series are.

Our review copy from Yen Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.