Trivia / 86 EIGHTY-SIX

• Acting for Two: Asuna Tomari voices Shiden and young Shin.
• Character Outlives Actor: Billy Kametz (Shin) passed away from colon cancer on June 9, 2022.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Theo is voiced by Natsumi Fujiwara.
• Executive Meddling: In the English release of Volume 7, after Olivia Aegis is revealed to be a man, he is then addressed as "Olivier" until the end of the volume, presumably as a joke at Lena's expense to make it seem like she'd heard his name wrong. This was purely an invention of the English translation, as there was no change in his name in the original Japanese text. The light novels' English translator, Roman Lempert, revealed on the 86 Discord channel in mid-2021 that this had been a decision made by Yen Press's editorial team which he disagreed with and objected to. Starting with Volume 8, the character's name reverted back to "Olivia" with no mention of "Olivier" anymore.
• Lying Creator: In the afterword of Volume 8, Asato Asato promises the appearance of the Leviathan was a one-time occurrence and they will not return in the story. Then in Volume 12, surprise, another Leviathan appears. Two of them, in fact, and they are present throughout the entire story. Asato again promises in the afterword this will not happen again. For real, this time.
• No Export for You: As of February 2023, there are over 80 shorts/side stories written for the main series, and this is not even counting the obvious AU shorts from High School IF and Magical Girl Regina Lena. A fan compiled the list of them all here. The number of these stories that have received officially licensed English translations? Only 18, courtesy of Volume 10 and the short stories included in the English manga's release. And while most of the unlicensed shorts have been fan translated, there are still some that have never gotten any kind of translation, official or otherwise.
  • There are 5 manga adaptations for the franchise, but only the (cancelled) series that adapted the main story was licensed for English release.
• The Other Darrin: Shin's English voice actor Billy Kametz ceased voice acting in April 2022 due to a serious cancer diagnosis, before sadly passing away two months after. Aleks Le was thus cast as his replacement VA for the final two episodes of the show, and possibly for any future seasons.
• Schedule Slip: Several instances with this franchise:
  • The anime experienced many delays, as detailed below.
  • Volume 11 of the light novels was originally meant to publish in December 2021 to coincide with the originally planned season finale. However, due to health issues with Asato Asato, the release was delayed to February 10, 2022.
  • Volume 12 was delayed from November 10, 2022 to February 10, 2023 due to "production problems" per Dengeki Bunko's announcement.
  • Volume 13 was delayed from its originally announced release date of October 6, 2023, to January 10, 2024, with Dengeki Bunko citing issues with production again.
• Troubled Production: The anime was originally meant to debut in Fall 2020 but was delayed to Spring 2021. When the second half of the season aired in Fall 2021, the cracks in the production started developing rapidly. When Episode 17 concluded, it was announced that Episode 18 was delayed a week unexpectedly, with a special commentary episode featuring Shoya Chiba, Seiichirō Yamashita, and Misaki Kuno taking its space in its originally scheduled air date of November 13th. At the end of that episode, another unexpected delay was suddenly announced for Episode 19, with a recap episode taking its place on November 27th. And with December 11th already having been scheduled for a preplanned break due to Japan Day 2021, the show had 3 episodes in a row released on a biweekly schedule. This left the final 2 episodes unable to air, a similar situation that happened to Girls und Panzer. The final two episodes were eventually aired on March 12th and 19th in 2022 (with an additional recap episode preceding them on March 5th).
• What Could Have Been: The afterword for Volume 3 reveals that the "Run Through the Battlefront" story arc was originally planned to have been just a more light-hearted, happier story about Spearhead as they traveled across the unknown territories evading the Legion, but the story quickly expanded and necessitated major world-building and character development. In the end, the only element of the original plot that made it to final publication was a train-mounted artillery cannon. It's possible the anime-original schoolhouse scene in Episode 11 may have been a nod to the original light-hearted concept.
  • A 2019 interview with Dengeki Magazine covering up to Volume 6 revealed some early concepts for the story that didn't come to fruition. The story was originally meant to be a medieval fantasy where a fortress city protected by walls would be guarded by Child Soldiers called Knights. Upon reaching adulthood, they would leave the walls but it was just a ploy to reduce the resource burden on the other people within, a plot reminiscent of Logan's Run. Then the story was changed to become the sci-fi setting it currently is, but humanity was on the move from an enormous cloud of nanomachines that engulfs the world and constantly searching for additional living space. The Legion would have originally been the Hive Mind of this nanomachine cloud, not multi-legged weapons. Asato Asato likened the 2nd concept to being more like Black Bullet, while her editor found it more like Attack on Titan.
  • In Episode 14, Asato Asato's initial image for the Federal Republic of Giad's standard-issue pistols was to be the FN 1910. However, the production staff immediately vetoed the idea and the anime went with a design that somewhat resembled a blockier Glock subcompact model◊ instead.
  • Asato Asato considered writing a short story for Volume 3 covering the Giadian army's top brass all listening to the mission recorder of Shin's Reginleif when he meets Lena in the lycoris field after the Morpho's destruction but decided that was just too cruel to him, particularly in how Willem would "execute" (read: tease the living hell out of) him over such an intimate conversation.
  • One of the series's former editors, Tsuchiya, tweeted that for Volume 9, he considered cutting the scene when Lena tells Shin at the museum that she loves him due to word count limits, which would have stretched out Lena's indecisiveness on responding to Shin's Love Confession out to yet another volume, but Asato Asato had the final say in the matter, so it was kept as it is.
• Word of God: Asato Asato has numerous tweets on her Twitter account delving deeper into the world of 86 as well as dropping tidbits of information regarding the anime, things being cut out of the adaptation, and lots of other small details.
  • One longstanding debate among the fandom was finally put to rest thanks to this: during Volume 3's prologue / Episode 17, as Shin is losing his mind to suicidal despairing madness during the Legion's large scale offensive against Giad, he snaps out of it when he seems to hear Lena's voice. Both the light novel and the anime were vague enough that people argued if this was a hallucination, but a tweet from her in March 2022 outright confirmed it was real.