[Spoiler Alert: Although this is just an analysis of one episode from the anime and it does not go beyond EP4, those who has not seen and wanting to see this anime should be aware that I explain in detail what happens in EP4.]
I: Kirschblüte
The Republic of San Magnolia has been at war with the Empire of Giad for nine years. The Republic suffered a great loss against fighting the enemy’s autonomous mechanized unmanned battle robots called Legions. However, the Republic developed its own autonomous battle robots called Juggarnauts, which are remotely controlled by the military officers called Handler. Each unit of robots has its own callsign and Kirschblüte is one of them.
Since the Republic could now fight the war without any human causalities, people living inside the Republic that is protected by 85 walls, or districts, can continue to live at ease even amidst the war. After all, the war has been being fought by machines from both countries. People living within the 85 districts are protected by the unmanned battle robots that are continuously fighting the war for them. When the unit is broken, it can be replaced with another unit without humans ever worrying about any fatalities. As the flag of the Republic represents, San Magnolia has maintained Freedom, Equality, Humanity, Justice and Nobility since they owned their own AI battle drones. At least, the citizens in the Republic were made to believe that is the case.
The protagonist of the show and an activist, Major Vladilena Milizé, knows that the so-called unmanned Juggarnauts are, in fact, piloted by humans just like her, only difference being the race. People of the Republic are the descendants of Alba race, and the minority group of Colorata race was persecuted years prior and stripped out of their equal rights and thus now seen as sub-human. The Republic has become, unbeknownst to its citizens, an Alba-Supremacist Republic, and the subhuman race of Colorata minority groups were scapegoated and sent off out of the 85 districts, forced to man the battle robots that are still believed to be unmanned by the majority of the population. Soon, the battle ground where “robots” were fighting for the people of the Republic was officially designated as District 86, a non-existent district where minorities thrived to live by fighting for the Republic. The people of Colorata descendants were immured in internment camps, i.e. the 86th District, and they were not allowed to have their own names – the personal identity. Thus, these people were referred to only by their callsigns, which camouflaged their personhood and helped the Handlers see them as mere mechanical units – subhuman. The information of the battlefields and the fact that Jaggernauts were piloted by the human beings of the lesser race were known to the Handlers, whose job was to remotely assist the pilots by speaking to them and giving them commands. However, their callsigns made it easier for the Handlers to think of them as mere machines or as pigs unworthy of being categorized as human. The fact that the Handlers cannot see them but the communication is only conducted by the audio, looking at Green Satin radar of the battleground with the coordinates of each unit of the robots with its callsign, helped the Handlers feel like they were indeed controlling AI robots.
It was in the midst of this long-lasting war, when Major Vladilena Milizé was assigned to handle the combatant unit referred to as Spearhead. She was liberally minded and knew the truth about the military of the Republic. Although she knew she did not have the power to change the systemic racism, as someone who knows the truth about “the unmanned” robots, and what the Republic had done to the Coloratan race, she decides to treat the pilots with utmost respect and tries to establish an equal relationship by constantly checking up on them.
The previous Handlers of this squadron, Spearhead, were often cornered to resign due to the emotional and psychological burdens. They were somehow made acutely aware that the “AIs” were real human beings by the rhetoric used by the leader of the squadron, whose callsign was Undertaker. Amongst many squadrons, this particular unit was notorious among the military. The Handlers who were assigned to supervise this unit were vividly and constantly reminded of the fact that the Republic has essentially eliminated a human race and degraded it into the robots that respond to their masters. The degree to which the psychological burdens imposed upon the Handers of this squadron was so great that some were even driven into committing suicides. Major Vladilena Milizé, who goes by the name of Lena, was fully aware of this fact when she accepted the mission. She was indeed trying to fight for the degraded human race of Coloratan and she wanted to be the voice for the forgotten minorities. As she began to feel like she is establishing an equal relationship with the squadron members and she felt like they saw her as their equal as she saw them as hers, the enemy attack ensued. While being far away, she tried as best as she could to assist the members of the squadron and to treat them as her equal. She even did an extra work and made a newer version of the map so she could be a proud commander of the team. The accident happened in the midst of this collaborative effort in combatting the enemy. One of the members, whose callsign was Kirschblüte, was suddenly ambushed by the enemy. Lena tried to warn her, but it was too late. The signal from the unit name Kirschblüte disappeared from Green Statin radar, leaving her last words “I don’t want to die yet…” Then, the audio from Kirschblüte ceased.
II: Your Real Names
Lena, with great remorse, reports the completion of the mission. She apologized sincerely for her negligence and, as if she had lost her friend, she said she was sorry about the loss of Kirschblüte, when another unit member, Laughing Fox, interrupted her.
“Sorry? Sorry about what?” He continued, “from your perspective, you can easily forget about the deaths of a few Eighty-Six when you leave the control room. We were only listening to you speak to us because we had not much to do around here. We could withstand your hypocrisy when you tell us ‘I will not discriminate against you and I will not treat you as pigs,’ but that is only when there is nothing to do. Understand that we just lost one of our comrades, and we do not have the patience to deal with your idealistic dream. You are the ones who throw us out here on the battlefield and treat us like weapons, while you get to watch us from warm and safe place inside the walls. If that’s not treating us like pigs, then what do you call that!? You say you have never called us Eight-Six? All that means is you’ve left it unsaid! Do you think we are out here fighting because we want to? You locked us out here! You forced us to fight! You let millions of us die here for the last nine years! You do not do anything to stop it, and you just talk to us nicely every day, and you think that counts as treating us as human? You haven’t even asked us our real names, not once!”
Another member cuts him off and tells the Handler to end the monitoring, saying “even though Laughing Fox went too far, it’s not like we are in the mood for a friendly chat with you.”
Lena ends the transmission here, realizing for the first time that they were right – she had been pretending to be an activist but she did not do anything for them – let alone asking for their real human names. She had only been calling them by their callsigns. She realized and accepted that she was being a hypocrite.
Lena talks about this with her best friend, Henrietta Annette Penrose, at the laboratory. To her surprise, Annette remained calm and indifferent, offering Lena a pudding. After telling Annette everything that happened, Annette warns her that she should not get involved too much with them anymore. Lena gets upset hearing her nonchalant mannerism, and asks her why she could keep refusing to accept them as humans, to which her best friend somberly yet sternly responds, “Because there is nothing I can do about it.”
Lena senses the reality of racism, also keenly felt by Annette, and leaves the room to see her uncle who assigned her to this task. He could perhaps be of her assistance, she thought. Her uncle, Jerome, is a friend of her late father, who had shown her the reality of the Republic by taking her to District 86 in the past. Her father also had a strong sense of duty to better the Republic by eliminating this systemic racism and release the people of Colorata and grant them the equal right. Jerome was his sympathizer and someone Lena trusted. Jerome acknowledges that what she was trying to do was right and her ideal noble. Having said that her father was a truly a patriot in having such a strong sense of justice, he went on,
“[b]ut there is something he didn’t realize. Just like the rest of the Republic, he wasn’t doing anymore than watching. In the end, no matter how much you talk about equality, it’s not he who’s fighting. He knew subconsciously that only the Eighty-Six die on the battlefield. That’s why he was able to take you to the battlefield. The fact that he did something so reckless for the sake of his ideals proves his ignorance and stupidity.”
He then asks Lena what the Republic holds as ideal in its flag: Freedom, Equality, Humanity, Justice and Nobility. As soon as she recited this, Jerome asked her once again, “Are you upholding that? Look at the real world. Those beautiful things are nowhere to be found in this Republic.”
Lena could not say anything back at him. He was right. She did nothing, but watch the Eighty-Six over, just like everyone else. She realizes that she cannot change the world and this systemic racism by herself alone. She was too naïve to think she could change a thing. Annette and Jerome knew better not to act. She should have known better but she was blinded by her ideal and she had convinced herself that she had been upholding her ideals, when in fact all she did was talk to the Eighty-Six in a friendly manner. She was mistaken to think that all it would take to make the world better would have been just that: thinking about them as her equal without even asking for their names. In fact, she had been just like the rest of the Republic, a hypocrite. She was only made aware of this fact by the death of Kirschblüte, which is not even her real name. That is why the last words of Kirschblüte resounded gravely on her: I do not want to die…
III: One Needs to Know What One Does Not Know First
In the evening on that day, Lena could not give up, accepting the fact that she had been a hypocrite, and stay being a hypocrite. Something had to change – her way of thinking. It is not about what Lena as an activist thinks is important that needs to be pushed forward. It is her attitude and way of thinking that needed to be reformed. She had to approach the issue differently, or more humbly, as any ignorant person should. Imposing her ideals upon others is not what is needed. What is needed is to recognize herself as ignorant and stupid and behave as such, i.e. humbly.
She contacted the squadron leader, Undertaker, and once again apologized to him about Kirschblüte and everything before that. Her apology this time had a sense of weight, a conviction. She first introduces herself to him first as Lena, Vladilena Milizé. She then proceeds humbly and asks Undertaker, “[w]ould you please tell me your real names?” Undertaker’s response was very simple. “You do not have to feel bothered by what Laughing Fox said yesterday. You did not create this situation and you cannot fix it on your own. You don’t need to blame yourself for not doing the impossible.” Lena replied to him by saying that it would be cowardly not to feel anything…” when she rephrased, “…I was being a coward. I thought about running away from this job. But I don’t want to stay a coward forever.” Having said that, she continued to repeat what she had earlier asked him – for their real names.
Undertaker sighed for her stubbornness and started telling her the real names of each of his team members, starting with Kirschblüte, who died the day before. Her name was Kaie Taniya, he continued on. “Our sub-commander, Wehrwolf is Raiden Shuga. Laughing Fox is Theoto Rikka…” Lena, with a sense of relief, wrote them down in her note without missing a word he said. Having written all the names down, she noticed some noise in the background. As she asked Undertaker what he was doing, he responded that he was leaving Kaie’s name since there were no graveyards in Eighty-Six. He apparently made a promise in his first unit that whenever someone dies, the others carve the name into the fragment of their Juggarnaut. By doing this, his unit swore that whoever survives would bring all those who perished to wherever they would end up arriving at. It has now been five years since Undertaker joined the unit, and there have been 561 deaths since then. He remembers all of them because he has to take them with him. “All those who died fighting alongside me until I reach my final destination.” Hearing this, Lena realizes once again that she had never faced the people she let die, and she just felt bad about them. She then asked Undertaker to connect with the others so she could once again apologize to each of them. She introduced herself first and apologized for not treating them as humans and even more so she confessed to them that she had not even realized that either. Theo opened up to her first and then Raiden Shuga, repeating what Theo told her. He first apologized to her for judging her as a white pig who just wanted to be a saint, not realizing how much of a pig she was, and how they were laughing at how stupid she was, thinking of her as a hypocrite. Just like Theo, however, he continued, they do not think of her as an equal or as a comrade because she, like others before her, stomped upon their faces while lecturing them with platitudes, and that is how things are going to be. Lena responded to Shuga’s warning that she should quit being a handler, “just so long as she could entertain them in their free time, she would be happy to continue to speak with them.”
This anime truly reflects the current status of the world affairs and how hypocrisy works. This episode especially resonates with those of us who see the wrongs in the systemic racism and the wrongs in the activists who do not realize how flowerly their heads are. Lena, in this episode, transcended what the activists in the real world could not – that is, she recognized herself as an ignorant coward and a hypocrite. Having recognized that, she publicly announces and admits that she had been a hypocrite. This anime teaches us that this is the first step forward to reconciliation. Had she pretended to have been with Eight-Six all along, no one member of the Eight-Six would have accepted her, and she would have sown a further division rather than unity. I conclude this paper with the note and my wish that people would learn something from how Lena reacted to the members of Eighty-Six in this episode. For there is a lot the current wannabe activists who do not even blame for not doing the impossible, like Lena did, could learn.
E4, 86 Eight-Six.
EP3.
