History Literature / EightySixEightySix

Twelve main volumes and one side story volume have been released in Japanese so far. The web novel side stories can be found [[https://kakuyomu.jp/works/1177354054885551439 here]] (in Japanese). Creator/YenPress has licensed the series for English release beginning March 2019.

* AnachronicOrder: Volume 2 has this a bit early on, where it jumps from the 2-year skip in Volume 1's epilogue to Lena getting demoted and commanding another Processor unit, to Shin doing his job as a Federacy officer, and then back to right after they destroyed [[spoiler: AI Rei's Dinosauria]], where the story continues in normal order.

* MeaningfulName: In American English, to "eighty-six" something is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86_(term) a euphemism]] for "to dispose of" which is exactly what the Republic intends for the denizens of District Eighty-Six. The author confirmed in Volume 2 afterwords that this is a deliberate choice.

* MildlyMilitary: The Eighty-six units tend to be pretty lax in terms of military discipline when not in battle, since the Handlers generally don't care about them enough to worry about that, and they don't come into the field for direct inspection. Spearhead Squadron has some trouble adjusting to the fact that Lena takes her job very seriously, and encounters the same problem when adjusting to the more disciplined Giadian military.

* SpellMyNameWithAnS: There are two major subtitling services for the anime, one provided by Crunchyroll and one provided by Muse Communication, Ltd. (primarily serving Southeast Asia and Hong Kong & Taiwan). These services disagree on whether to refer to the San Magnolian minorities as either "Eighty-Six" or "Eighty-Sixers." The Yen Press official translation of the light novels uses the former.
** Some official translations can't decide whether Lena's last name is "Milizé" or "Mirizé." The official light novel English translation uses the former, further supported by one of the inserted illustrations in Volume 5 which shows a piece of paper that she has signed in cursive, and it's spelled with an l. Then there's the manga adaptation which somehow manages to misspell her full name as [[https://imgbox.com/elvZtzk5 "Vladilenna Meilize."]]
** The AlternativeCalendar used for the series has several names depending on which translation you're looking at. The original Japanese name is 星歴 ''Seireki''[[note]]this is the exact same pronunciation as the name of our real world ''Anno Domini'' calendar 西暦 ''Seireki'', just with different kanji[[/note]]; two different subtitling services for the anime use "Stellar Year" and "Astral Calendar." Another translation is ''Anno Astrum'' (Year of the Star), abbreviated as "AR" which is seen in an insert illustration in Volume 5.

* RoyalBrat: [[spoiler:Frederica shows a shade of this with her haughty yet oddly mature attitude, even after she and the Giadian royal family's dethroned. She does show a lot of care for her adoptive family despite her behavior, however, even acting as Shin's sort-of therapist.]]
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething
** Prince Viktor Idinarohk serves as commander of Roa Gracia's southern front, head developer of several of the nations' technological projects, and on occasion even pilots his own Barushka Matushka unit into the field.
** This applies to Roa Gracia's entire royal family, who see military service as the sacred duty of the ruling class. They also don't seem to mind leading from the front either, as it's mentioned that a number of them have already died in the Legion War.
** [[spoiler:Frederica Rosenfort, or rather Augusta Frederica Adel-Adler, despite her age, joined Shin's unit as mascot, and after that she becomes Lena's aide who used her seer ability to help monitor troops in the field.]]

* RagsToRoyalty: {{Inverted|Trope}} and {{Downplayed|Trope}}: [[spoiler:Frederica was the last Empress of Giad before the government was toppled. Now she's attached to Shin's combat unit as a mascot. However, she is now the adoptive daughter of the Interim President, who's trying to protect her from witchhunt, and her job as the mascot is with his consent.]]

* SuicideMission: Since the Republic never planned to give the Eighty-sixers back their citizenship, any Processors that somehow managed to survive to the end of the service will be sent on a SuicideMission to kill them off. Shin and the rest of Spearhead Squadron only survived due to the intervention by Lena [[spoiler:and later AI Rei]]. As noted by a character, this makes the whole war situation ''even worse'' by basically handing highly skilled soldiers to the Legion.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eighty_six_vol_1.png]]

[[caption-width-right:350:A War Without Casualties[[labelnote:*]]Pictured above: Shinei Nouzen (left) and Vladilena Milizé (right) on the cover of the novel's initial release[[/labelnote]].]]

** The afterword of Volume 4 shows that Asato Asato used Hiroki Tokugawa's ''[[https://www.amazon.com/Railway-Corridor-Hiroki-Tokugawa/dp/4408111937 Railway Corridor]]'' artbook as reference when writing the subway battles. It also mentions she used Iori Tomita's ''[[http://gakuran.com/iori-tomitas-new-world-transparent-specimens/ Transparent Silence]]'' artwork, most likely for inspiration when designing the Legion units [[spoiler: specifically the Phönix's bizarre structure]].

** Some official translations can't decide whether Lena's last name is "Milizé" or "Mirizé." The official light novel English translation uses the former, further supported by one of the inserted illustrations in Volume 5 which shows a piece of paper that she has signed in cursive, and it's spelled with an l. Then there's the manga adaptation which somehow manages to misspell her full name as [[https://imgbox.com/elvZtzk5 "Vladilenna Meilize."]]

* TakeThat: The big battle in Volume 4 in the underground terminal of Charité is said in the afterword to be based on the Tokyo metro lines, specifically Shinjuku, Otemachi, and Tokyo Stations, and Asato herself admits to having old feelings of resentment over how frequently she used to get lost in that labyrinth... which is why the terminal is pretty much wrecked to pieces in the battle.

----

to:

*** Epilogue: [[Literature/PeterPan "The Clock Ticks On, Even In The Crocodile's Stomach"]]
** In Volume 10's ''Black Tag Daily Life'' short story, one of the books Shin reads is called ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety Second Variety]]'', a story by Creator/PhilipKDick. The entire basic plot of ''86'' is essentially a reimagination of that novel, which is about a war between the Soviet Union and the United Nations that ended in a worldwide apocalypse when the UN used automated drones to fight back but they went out of control, destroyed them, and then proceeded to rampage across the world. Another book he reads in that same short story is ''Literature/TheMist'', which Kujo thinks is aptly appropriate for their situation being surrounded by enemies on all sides.
** Episode 22 begins with an anime-original nightmare sequence where Shin is haunted by the ghosts of all his dead comrades, who constantly keep saying [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion "Thank you"]] to him.
* ShownTheirWork:
** In the anime Shin's pistol is clearly based off of the SIG Sauer P226, which is a Swiss manufactured pistol used in some parts of the French military. In universe Shin's pistol was produced in the Alliance of Wald and adopted for use in the Republic of San Magnolia, two countries that are cultural dead ringers for Switzerland and France respectively.
** In Episode 3, after Daiya is caught peeping on the girls at the river, [[https://imgur.com/a/YnclGze they all draw guns on him in a split second.]] The girl on the far left is in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp_2ECfbwKo straight Isosceles stance, next to her is Kurena who is in Modified Isosceles stance, while Anju and Lecca are both in Weaver stance.]]
** Lena's notebook in Episode 5 has [[https://www.reddit.com/r/EightySix/comments/nagfbn/lenas_sketches_use_accurate_military_symbols/ diagrams]] drawn up using proper NATO Joint Military Symbology to depict mechanized platoons engaged in combat across bridges.
** Episode 9 shows the ammunition used by the Republic's interception cannons are [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBU-97_Sensor_Fuzed_Weapon CBU-97 cluster bombs]] with explosive formed penetrators ([=EFPs=]) that cut through Legion armor like a hot knife through butter. [=EFPs=] of Iranian manufacture were infamous for inflicting severe casualties on American forces during the occupation of Iraq in the mid-late 2000s.
** Episode 11 shows some expert firearms handling that pays close attention to gun safety, [[https://twitter.com/Kenichi_Kaneko/status/1406273545013850112 especially on Shin's part]], reinforcing his status as the most experienced combatant. He is careful to control the direction of the muzzle of his rifle even when slung and stays in a low ready position when exploring an abandoned building. All the FN FAL rifles that Spearhead uses also have folding stocks on them, which would be expected for them to use considering the cramped conditions of their Juggernaut cockpits.
** Grethe's chart in Episode 15 during her briefing showing the Giadian ORBAT (order of battle) [[https://twitter.com/Kenichi_Kaneko/status/1451933548009590796 is drawn up using the correct Joint NATO Symbology format.]]
** The afterword of Volume 4 shows that Asato Asato used Hiroki Tokugawa's ''[[https://www.amazon.com/Railway-Corridor-Hiroki-Tokugawa/dp/4408111937 Railway Corridor]]'' artbook as reference when writing the subway battles. It also mentions she used Iori Tomita's ''[[http://gakuran.com/iori-tomitas-new-world-transparent-specimens/ Transparent Silence]]'' artwork, most likely for inspiration when designing the Legion units [[spoiler: specifically the Phönix's bizarre structure]].
* SinisterSubway: The plot of volume 4 centers around the attempt to destroy an underground subway station that the Legion had converted into a factory. [[spoiler: Inside the Strike Package is horrified to discover that Legion has been mass-producing Shepherds using captured civilians. The true horror comes when they find a chamber filled with thousands of rotting corpses that the Legion had callously disposed of after removing their brains.]]
* SoWhatDoWeDoNow: The Spearhead Squadron as a whole has this after their survival of the suicide mission: they hadn't planned to actually survive the ordeal. Shin has an especially bad case seeing that he only really plans to die after killing his brother. After Shin successfully did that at the end of Volume 1 ([[spoiler:or rather, he finally gets to chat with his brother in early Volume 2...it's complicated]]), he is at a complete and total loss on what to do after. At certain points, he becomes a full-on DeathSeeker. It takes Volumes 2 and 3 before he finally found his answer.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: There are two major subtitling services for the anime, one provided by Crunchyroll and one provided by Muse Communication, Ltd. (primarily serving Southeast Asia and Hong Kong & Taiwan). These services disagree on whether to refer to the San Magnolian minorities as either "Eighty-Six" or "Eighty-Sixers." The Yen Press official translation of the light novels uses the former.
** Some official translations can't decide whether Lena's last name is "Milizé" or "Mirizé." The official light novel English translation uses the former, further supported by one of the inserted illustrations in Volume 5 which shows a piece of paper that she has signed in cursive, and it's spelled with an l. Then there's the manga adaptation which somehow manages to misspell her full name as [[https://imgbox.com/elvZtzk5 "Vladilenna Meilize."]]
** The AlternativeCalendar used for the series has several names depending on which translation you're looking at. The original Japanese name is 星歴 ''Seireki''[[note]]this is the exact same pronunciation as the name of our real world ''Anno Domini'' calendar 西暦 ''Seireki'', just with different kanji[[/note]]; two different subtitling services for the anime use "Stellar Year" and "Astral Calendar." Another translation is ''Anno Astrum'' (Year of the Star), abbreviated as "AR" which is seen in an insert illustration in Volume 5.
* SpiderTank: Both Legion drones and Juggernauts look like this instead of typical humanoid mecha.
* SteelEardrums: Zigzagged. The light novel tells us that the Reginleifs are fully sealed against chemical and biological attack, so that would provide reasonably good protection against loud noises as well, but the original San Magnolian Juggernauts were nowhere near that level of protective, with many of them even having holes in them. The anime averted this in Episode 22 [[spoiler: when the Morpho's self-destruct temporarily caused Shin to go deaf due to his close proximity to it: he can be seen tapping his ear when he wakes up and not hearing anything.]]
* StopOrIShootMyself: [[spoiler:In order to stop AI Kiriya from pulling a suicide attack on Shin, Frederica willingly exposes herself, then points a gun at her own head, trusting that AI Kiriya would want her to be alive and stop the attack[[note]]This is probably an unnecessary gesture given that she's already in Kiriya's suicide attack killzone, but she wants to get his attention[[/note]]. It works.]]
* SuicideMission: Since the Republic never planned to give the Eighty-sixers back their citizenship, any Processors that somehow managed to survive to the end of the service will be sent on a SuicideMission to kill them off. Shin and the rest of Spearhead Squadron only survived due to the intervention by Lena [[spoiler:and later AI Rei]]. As noted by a character, this makes the whole war situation ''even worse'' by basically handing highly skilled soldiers to the Legion.
* SuperIntelligence: Roa Gracia royalty's bloodline tend to produce people with this trope. Prince Viktor Idinarohk developed the precursor model to AI [[spoiler:using his deceased mother's brain]] that would be eventually developed into Legion AI at the age of ''5''.
* SupernaturalElite: Some nobles' bloodlines tend to develop some supernatural abilities. For example: Pyropes (Shin included) tends to develop telepathic abilities, Giadian royalty develops seer abilities, while Roa Gracia royalty develops SuperIntelligence.
* TakeThat: The big battle in Volume 4 in the underground terminal of Charité is said in the afterword to be based on the Tokyo metro lines, specifically Shinjuku, Otemachi, and Tokyo Stations, and Asato herself admits to having old feelings of resentment over how frequently she used to get lost in that labyrinth... which is why the terminal is pretty much wrecked to pieces in the battle.
* {{Telepathy}}:
** Para-RAID allows those connected together to communicate via what's essentially artificial telepathy by tapping into the human collective unconscious. Depending on synchronization level, the amount of info that can be shared can range from just simple voices to sharing images from each other's eyeballs. Turning the synchronization level to maximum is [[TooMuchForManToHandle ill-advised]]. It also has limitations that it require recipients to be conscious in order to establish connection, so if the recipient is sleeping or fell unconscious, you cannot yet at them to try wake them up. Since it's unjammable, and the prevalence of Legion's signal jamming, it's one of the only technological edge the Republic has.
** Volume 3 says that a natural version of this tends to develop in those with Pyrope bloodline, and they tend to be hired by the military for reconnaissance or interrogation work. Shin's ability is a specialized version of this.
* TeenageWasteland: The 86th sector works as a small scale version of this, as almost all the Eighty-Six are teenagers since their parents and adult relatives have all been killed off by the Republic throwing them into the meat grinder against the Legion over the past 9 years.
** [[spoiler: Noiryanaruse is this on a much larger scale.]] The past 11 years of war have seen nearly every adult die, and Lena realizes with some shock after she spends some time there that the oldest people still alive are only in their early twenties.
* ThisIsReality: In the short story ''Brand'', which takes place during Shin's first year on the Eastern Front, he asks the mechanic Seiya to disable the safety limiters on his Juggernaut. Seiya then proceeds to lecture him that safeties exist for a reason and that life is not a SuperRobot anime or manga where you get more power by removing the safeties. Shin still insists though, since he wants more mobility to use the high-frequency blades on his machine, and Seiya reluctantly acquiesces.
* UndyingLoyalty: Fido is an AI created by Shin's father and is absolutely loyal to Shin, even wandering the battlefield by itself trying to search for Shin after he and his family is taken away due to Presidential Order 6609 being passed. After the scavenger unit it's housed in is destroyed and the AI core is recovered and reactivated by Giadian engineers, Fido won't respond to external stimuli until Shin's name is mentioned.
* UriahGambit: [[spoiler: When veteran 86 reach the end of their five-year service career they are sent on a "long-range scouting mission" deep behind enemy lines. In reality this a suicide mission they are not expected to return from. The Republic does this in order to hide the fact that they never intended to restore the citizenship of the 86 in return for their service. It also prevents these veteran 86 from becoming a symbol of hope and possible rebellion for the rest of the 86.]]
* {{Vibroweapon}}: Juggernaut (and later Reginleif) pilots can choose to equip themselves with high-frequency blades instead of machine guns for melee combat. Very few pilots take them due to how risky it is to use them. The Legion has them equipped on the Grauwolf.
* WarIsHell: Most of the main characters of the story are essentially disposable shock troops tasked with fighting an HopelessWar against an army of unstoppable machines by a government that has stripped them of any and all basic human rights.
* WeatherControlMachine: By Volume 5 (after [[spoiler:Legion's successful Sheepdog project]]), Legion is getting creative on how to prosecute the war. In that volume, it's using a jammer swarm to deflect sunlight away from Roa Gracia, prolonging winter and straining the nation's already poor food production to breaking point. [[spoiler:And even that, it turns out, is a ploy to draw Roa Gracia's elite troops into counterattacking, so that Legion can draw them into a trap and annihilate them.]]
* WeHaveReserves: The main reason the Legion is winning the war is due to its ability to rapidly replace its losses. It doesn't need to train its troops and can deploy new units as soon as they roll out of the factory. In contrast, it takes months to train human soldiers in order for them to be combat-capable. As a result many of the victories won by human forces have been Pyrrhic in nature, as the Legion just replaced any losses they took in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile, their opponents are left struggling to fill in gaps in their manpower. So despite the success of recent operations to retake territory by the Federacy, United Kingdom, and Alliance the outlook of the war looks grim as the Legion will likely win by attrition alone if something doesn't change.
* YouDidntAsk: [[spoiler:Shiden realized that the pilot Lena's talking to near the end of Volume 3 is Shin due to her being able to see Shin's personal mark on the side of his mech. She chose not to mention this to Lena after realizing that Lena never saw the mark before.]]
[[/folder]]

*** Epilogue: [[Literature/PeterPan "The Clock Ticks On,

[[caption-width-right:350:A War Without Casualties[[labelnote:*]]Pictured above: Shinei Nouzen (left) and Vladilena Milize (right) on the cover of the novel's initial release[[/labelnote]].]]

*** Epilogue: [[Literature/PeterPan "The Clock Ticks On, Even In The Crocodile's Stomach"]]
** In Volume 10's ''Black Tag Daily Life'' short story, one of the books Shin reads is called ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety Second Variety]]'', a story by Creator/PhilipKDick. The entire basic plot of ''86'' is essentially a reimagination of that novel, which is about a war between the Soviet Union and the United Nations that ended in a worldwide apocalypse when the UN used automated drones to fight back but they went out of control, destroyed them, and then proceeded to rampage across the world. Another book he reads in that same short story is ''Literature/TheMist'', which Kujo thinks is aptly appropriate for their situation being surrounded by enemies on all sides.
** Episode 22 begins with an anime-original nightmare sequence where Shin is haunted by the ghosts of all his dead comrades, who constantly keep saying [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion "Thank you"]] to him.
* ShownTheirWork:
** In the anime Shin's pistol is clearly based off of the SIG Sauer P226, which is a Swiss manufactured pistol used in some parts of the French military. In universe Shin's pistol was produced in the Alliance of Wald and adopted for use in the Republic of San Magnolia, two countries that are cultural dead ringers for Switzerland and France respectively.
** In Episode 3, after Daiya is caught peeping on the girls at the river, [[https://imgur.com/a/YnclGze they all draw guns on him in a split second.]] The girl on the far left is in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp_2ECfbwKo straight Isosceles stance, next to her is Kurena who is in Modified Isosceles stance, while Anju and Lecca are both in Weaver stance.]]
** Lena's notebook in Episode 5 has [[https://www.reddit.com/r/EightySix/comments/nagfbn/lenas_sketches_use_accurate_military_symbols/ diagrams]] drawn up using proper NATO Joint Military Symbology to depict mechanized platoons engaged in combat across bridges.
** Episode 9 shows the ammunition used by the Republic's interception cannons are [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBU-97_Sensor_Fuzed_Weapon CBU-97 cluster bombs]] with explosive formed penetrators ([=EFPs=]) that cut through Legion armor like a hot knife through butter. [=EFPs=] of Iranian manufacture were infamous for inflicting severe casualties on American forces during the occupation of Iraq in the mid-late 2000s.
** Episode 11 shows some expert firearms handling that pays close attention to gun safety, [[https://twitter.com/Kenichi_Kaneko/status/1406273545013850112 especially on Shin's part]], reinforcing his status as the most experienced combatant. He is careful to control the direction of the muzzle of his rifle even when slung and stays in a low ready position when exploring an abandoned building. All the FN FAL rifles that Spearhead uses also have folding stocks on them, which would be expected for them to use considering the cramped conditions of their Juggernaut cockpits.
** Grethe's chart in Episode 15 during her briefing showing the Giadian ORBAT (order of battle) [[https://twitter.com/Kenichi_Kaneko/status/1451933548009590796 is drawn up using the correct Joint NATO Symbology format.]]
** The afterword of Volume 4 shows that Asato Asato used Hiroki Tokugawa's ''[[https://www.amazon.com/Railway-Corridor-Hiroki-Tokugawa/dp/4408111937 Railway Corridor]]'' artbook as reference when writing the subway battles. It also mentions she used Iori Tomita's ''[[http://gakuran.com/iori-tomitas-new-world-transparent-specimens/ Transparent Silence]]'' artwork, most likely for inspiration when designing the Legion units [[spoiler: specifically the Phönix's bizarre structure]].
* SinisterSubway: The plot of volume 4 centers around the attempt to destroy an underground subway station that the Legion had converted into a factory. [[spoiler: Inside the Strike Package is horrified to discover that Legion has been mass-producing Shepherds using captured civilians. The true horror comes when they find a chamber filled with thousands of rotting corpses that the Legion had callously disposed of after removing their brains.]]
* SoWhatDoWeDoNow: The Spearhead Squadron as a whole has this after their survival of the suicide mission: they hadn't planned to actually survive the ordeal. Shin has an especially bad case seeing that he only really plans to die after killing his brother. After Shin successfully did that at the end of Volume 1 ([[spoiler:or rather, he finally gets to chat with his brother in early Volume 2...it's complicated]]), he is at a complete and total loss on what to do after. At certain points, he becomes a full-on DeathSeeker. It takes Volumes 2 and 3 before he finally found his answer.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: There are two major subtitling services for the anime, one provided by Crunchyroll and one provided by Muse Communication, Ltd. (primarily serving Southeast Asia and Hong Kong & Taiwan). These services disagree on whether to refer to the San Magnolian minorities as either "Eighty-Six" or "Eighty-Sixers." The Yen Press official translation of the light novels uses the former.
** Some official translations can't decide whether Lena's last name is "Milizé" or "Mirizé." The official light novel English translation uses the former, further supported by one of the inserted illustrations in Volume 5 which shows a piece of paper that she has signed in cursive, and it's spelled with an l. Then there's the manga adaptation which somehow manages to misspell her full name as [[https://imgbox.com/elvZtzk5 "Vladilenna Meilize."]]
** The AlternativeCalendar used for the series has several names depending on which translation you're looking at. The original Japanese name is 星歴 ''Seireki''[[note]]this is the exact same pronunciation as the name of our real world ''Anno Domini'' calendar 西暦 ''Seireki'', just with different kanji[[/note]]; two different subtitling services for the anime use "Stellar Year" and "Astral Calendar." Another translation is ''Anno Astrum'' (Year of the Star), abbreviated as "AR" which is seen in an insert illustration in Volume 5.
* SpiderTank: Both Legion drones and Juggernauts look like this instead of typical humanoid mecha.
* SteelEardrums: Zigzagged. The light novel tells us that the Reginleifs are fully sealed against chemical and biological attack, so that would provide reasonably good protection against loud noises as well, but the original San Magnolian Juggernauts were nowhere near that level of protective, with many of them even having holes in them. The anime averted this in Episode 22 [[spoiler: when the Morpho's self-destruct temporarily caused Shin to go deaf due to his close proximity to it: he can be seen tapping his ear when he wakes up and not hearing anything.]]
* StopOrIShootMyself: [[spoiler:In order to stop AI Kiriya from pulling a suicide attack on Shin, Frederica willingly exposes herself, then points a gun at her own head, trusting that AI Kiriya would want her to be alive and stop the attack[[note]]This is probably an unnecessary gesture given that she's already in Kiriya's suicide attack killzone, but she wants to get his attention[[/note]]. It works.]]
* SuicideMission: Since the Republic never planned to give the Eighty-sixers back their citizenship, any Processors that somehow managed to survive to the end of the service will be sent on a SuicideMission to kill them off. Shin and the rest of Spearhead Squadron only survived due to the intervention by Lena [[spoiler:and later AI Rei]]. As noted by a character, this makes the whole war situation ''even worse'' by basically handing highly skilled soldiers to the Legion.
* SuperIntelligence: Roa Gracia royalty's bloodline tend to produce people with this trope. Prince Viktor Idinarohk developed the precursor model to AI [[spoiler:using his deceased mother's brain]] that would be eventually developed into Legion AI at the age of ''5''.
* SupernaturalElite: Some nobles' bloodlines tend to develop some supernatural abilities. For example: Pyropes (Shin included) tends to develop telepathic abilities, Giadian royalty develops seer abilities, while Roa Gracia royalty develops SuperIntelligence.
* TakeThat: The big battle in Volume 4 in the underground terminal of Charité is said in the afterword to be based on the Tokyo metro lines, specifically Shinjuku, Otemachi, and Tokyo Stations, and Asato herself admits to having old feelings of resentment over how frequently she used to get lost in that labyrinth... which is why the terminal is pretty much wrecked to pieces in the battle.
* {{Telepathy}}:
** Para-RAID allows those connected together to communicate via what's essentially artificial telepathy by tapping into the human collective unconscious. Depending on synchronization level, the amount of info that can be shared can range from just simple voices to sharing images from each other's eyeballs. Turning the synchronization level to maximum is [[TooMuchForManToHandle ill-advised]]. It also has limitations that it require recipients to be conscious in order to establish connection, so if the recipient is sleeping or fell unconscious, you cannot yet at them to try wake them up. Since it's unjammable, and the prevalence of Legion's signal jamming, it's one of the only technological edge the Republic has.
** Volume 3 says that a natural version of this tends to develop in those with Pyrope bloodline, and they tend to be hired by the military for reconnaissance or interrogation work. Shin's ability is a specialized version of this.
* TeenageWasteland: The 86th sector works as a small scale version of this, as almost all the Eighty-Six are teenagers since their parents and adult relatives have all been killed off by the Republic throwing them into the meat grinder against the Legion over the past 9 years.
** [[spoiler: Noiryanaruse is this on a much larger scale.]] The past 11 years of war have seen nearly every adult die, and Lena realizes with some shock after she spends some time there that the oldest people still alive are only in their early twenties.
* ThisIsReality: In the short story ''Brand'', which takes place during Shin's first year on the Eastern Front, he asks the mechanic Seiya to disable the safety limiters on his Juggernaut. Seiya then proceeds to lecture him that safeties exist for a reason and that life is not a SuperRobot anime or manga where you get more power by removing the safeties. Shin still insists though, since he wants more mobility to use the high-frequency blades on his machine, and Seiya reluctantly acquiesces.
* UndyingLoyalty: Fido is an AI created by Shin's father and is absolutely loyal to Shin, even wandering the battlefield by itself trying to search for Shin after he and his family is taken away due to Presidential Order 6609 being passed. After the scavenger unit it's housed in is destroyed and the AI core is recovered and reactivated by Giadian engineers, Fido won't respond to external stimuli until Shin's name is mentioned.
* UriahGambit: [[spoiler: When veteran 86 reach the end of their five-year service career they are sent on a "long-range scouting mission" deep behind enemy lines. In reality this a suicide mission they are not expected to return from. The Republic does this in order to hide the fact that they never intended to restore the citizenship of the 86 in return for their service. It also prevents these veteran 86 from becoming a symbol of hope and possible rebellion for the rest of the 86.]]
* {{Vibroweapon}}: Juggernaut (and later Reginleif) pilots can choose to equip themselves with high-frequency blades instead of machine guns for melee combat. Very few pilots take them due to how risky it is to use them. The Legion has them equipped on the Grauwolf.
* WarIsHell: Most of the main characters of the story are essentially disposable shock troops tasked with fighting an HopelessWar against an army of unstoppable machines by a government that has stripped them of any and all basic human rights.
* WeatherControlMachine: By Volume 5 (after [[spoiler:Legion's successful Sheepdog project]]), Legion is getting creative on how to prosecute the war. In that volume, it's using a jammer swarm to deflect sunlight away from Roa Gracia, prolonging winter and straining the nation's already poor food production to breaking point. [[spoiler:And even that, it turns out, is a ploy to draw Roa Gracia's elite troops into counterattacking, so that Legion can draw them into a trap and annihilate them.]]
* WeHaveReserves: The main reason the Legion is winning the war is due to its ability to rapidly replace its losses. It doesn't need to train its troops and can deploy new units as soon as they roll out of the factory. In contrast, it takes months to train human soldiers in order for them to be combat-capable. As a result many of the victories won by human forces have been Pyrrhic in nature, as the Legion just replaced any losses they took in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile, their opponents are left struggling to fill in gaps in their manpower. So despite the success of recent operations to retake territory by the Federacy, United Kingdom, and Alliance the outlook of the war looks grim as the Legion will likely win by attrition alone if something doesn't change.
* YouDidntAsk: [[spoiler:Shiden realized that the pilot Lena's talking to near the end of Volume 3 is Shin due to her being able to see Shin's personal mark on the side of his mech. She chose not to mention this to Lena after realizing that Lena never saw the mark before.]]
[[/folder]]
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[[caption-width-right:350:A War Without Casualties]]

Eleven volumes have been released in Japanese so far. The web novel side stories can be found [[https://kakuyomu.jp/works/1177354054885551439 here]] (in Japanese). Creator/YenPress has licensed the series for English release beginning March 2019.

* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: The whole "chain of command" of Eighty-Sixers being extremely lax, generally who is considered as the leader is decided through unarmed combat or agreement by most parties present. Shiden tried and failed to usurp Shin's position in Volume 4 for field leader position (despite the fact that they were now under a formal chain of command in Giad's military) and ended up in a FriendlyRival position instead.

* ArmorPiercingSlap: [[spoiler: During his battle with Shin, Rei's guilty conscience manifests as a young Lena who slaps him in the face for trying to kill his brother a second time. This occurs right as Rei's Dinosauria receives a literal ArmorPiercingSlap from the dud artillery shells launched by the actual Lena.]]

** The light novels make many, many [[BiblicalMotifs Biblical allusions in the story, with the most obvious being [[IAmLegion the very name of the Legion]], to more subtle references such as Lena comparing Annette's hesitation to help Shin with [[Literature/TheFourGospels the Apostle Peter's three denials of Christ]], the Legion large-scale offensive being like [[Literature/BookOfRevelation the seven seals of Revelation broken]], and the offensive itself initially expected to take seven days explicitly compared to [[Literature/BookOfGenesis the creation account of Genesis.]] All of this is dropped from the anime.

** San Magnolia is an unholy combination of World War II United States, the Confederate States, France, and Nazi Germany. More details revealed about the government's hatred of organized religion due to monarchs claiming a divine right to rule in later volumes also give it similar parallels to Maoist-era Communist China as well. The country's flag also has a heavy similarity to the pre-war Beiyang government's "5 Races Under One Flag" standard of Republican-era China. They also bear a disturbing resemblance to modern day Russia, which has recently begun recruiting prisoners with promises of freedom in exchange for military service, only to use them as expendable cannon fodder before their term of service is up in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

** San Magnolia is an unholy combination of World War II United States, the Confederate States, France, and Nazi Germany. More details revealed about the government's hatred of organized religion due to monarchs claiming a divine right to rule in later volumes also give it similar parallels to Maoist-era Communist China as well. The country's flag also has a heavy similarity to the pre-war Beiyang government's "5 Races Under One Flag" standard of Republican-era China.