86: Eighty-Six Alter Volume 1: The Reaper’s Occasional Adolescence Review

We’re eagerly awaiting the start of the final arc with Volume 14 of 86: Eighty-Six, but in the meantime I moved on to the first volume of Alter, which should prove a much more light-hearted read than the main series has been lately. Does it prove entertaining? Let’s take a closer look!

Reading the main series volumes for 86 always leaves you wishing for the cast to enjoy some happiness and not have to worry about the war they’re fighting. And while we do occasionally get that reprieve, it’s not as often as anyone would like. So in enters Alter, which brings us a collection of vignettes focused entirely on the small slices of happiness the characters have got to enjoy over the course of the series.

The collection is broken down into five sections overall, four of which take place in chronological order across the series’ timeline. We start off in the 86th sector, where our cast were still living their lives, wondering if every day would be their last due to the abysmal treatment of the Republic of San Magnolia. But even here, they find peace in their ordinary everyday lives. This section gives us a glimpse at our group prior to the start of the series, as well as shortly after Lena came in as their handler.

Then we move to when the group had reached the Giadian Federacy, where they began to live in a way that better fit their teenage ages. But before long, we’re back on the battlefield, set during the Roa Gracia arc where we met the prince, Vika. This brings in a lot of the characters we’ve gotten to know and love as the series has gone on, as opposed to the group we started with.

In general this collection contains the exclusive short stories that were released for Volumes 1 through 6 in Japan; we’ve never had the chance to read most (if not all) in English before. In the afterword, author Asato Asato also confirms that several of the stories were previously unpublished and the final chapter has been expanded on, so there’s something for even those who might have read some of these stories before.

Generally speaking, as the term ‘vignettes’ suggests, these are all very short pieces. But there are enough to make this a 170-page collection, which feels like a good amount of material for this sort of release. Alter offers a nice reprieve from the tension of the main series, and it’s genuinely a lot of fun getting to see the cast in a variety of different situations, including celebrating their birthdays or teasing Lena and Shin, who are clearly into each other but still not at the point of revealing their feelings to one another. I especially enjoyed the story where Vika and Shin are playing chess, only for Vika to be losing despite Shin’s inexperience and the fact that chess is considered a game that royalty should be good at.

And of course, with this only going through to Volume 6 in the timeline, you don’t need to be completely up-to-date in order to enjoy this collection, which will be a major plus for fans who might have gotten into the series with the anime adaptation a few years ago and not gotten themselves caught up with the source material.

Like the main series, Alter comes to the West thanks to Yen Press under the Yen On imprint and has been translated by Roman Lempert, who also works on the main story so there’s consistency in terms of names, terms, etc., so it reads well. There’s a fold-out colour page at the beginning, which has a character sheet on one side, which I always appreciate for a series with as many characters as 86 has (even at the time of several volumes ago!).

There is also a second volume of Alter, which Yen Press released in March. However, rather than a short story collection, this one is an alternate-universe story where Lena is a magical girl fighting evil in space. Having read the manga adaptation (unlicensed currently) of this particular story, it’s a lot of fun, so well worth looking into grabbing for your collections.

Overall, 86: Eighty-Six Alter. is an entertaining collection of short stories that give us some time away from the high tension of the battlefield. Here we get to see the cast acting their ages and enjoying some peaceful downtime between battles, which proves very rewarding.

Our review copy was provided by the publisher Yen Press.