Fiction First Take - 'Eighty-Six' (Volume 1) by Asato Asato
A first take review of an edgy light novel.
Author’s Note: This article wasn’t even a thought in my head just a few days ago. But the inspiration struck, and I decided to chase it. If you’re reading or thinking of reading this book, do not worry. This one is free of story spoilers.
UPDATE (8/30/2024): I accidentally refer to ‘light novels’ as ‘visual novels’ in the original version. Apologies for the confusion.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” That’s a very popular saying with some wisdom to it. Just because something is good on the outside, doesn’t mean it’s good on the inside. It applies to a lot of things, including literal books.
However, I’m glad that in this case, I did judge a book by its cover. And by book, I mean the Japanese light novel Eighty-Six by Asato Asato.
Just look at it. I love the set-up for the cover. The contrast between the two main characters; both of them seemingly reaching towards each other but instead they reach past each other.
Maybe I’m just overthinking this. Maybe I just like how the girl on the right looks.
Moving on...
As you know, I have been living in Indonesia for a few months now. One of the things I do to revive my fluency in the Indonesian language is to read in Indonesian. So far, I have done it with nonfiction works. I wrote about it last year in my personal blog:
But fiction is an entirely different beast. In fact, I hadn’t read fiction in Indonesian since I was in high school... over fourteen years ago. That all changed a few months ago when my brother handed me this book at the bookstore. He did it jokingly, since other than my occasional flirting with JRPGs like Trails or Xenoblade Chronicles, I’m not a weeb at all. But I felt like I was in a rut at the time, so I decided to mix things up and actually buy the book.
Now I’ll be honest, I just finished this book yesterday. That means it took me a while to finish it. I’m still not sure why.
Of course there’s the obvious answer: distraction. But that aside, I suspect the most important factor is that I read Eighty-Six in Indonesian. As I said, I hadn’t read fiction in Indonesian in over a decade. So I had to get used to the prose.
Speaking of prose, it could also be how Japanese light novels are written. I haven’t read many of them1, but I notice that they can be very dry reads. Since the medium made use of pictures scattered throughout the books, their texts do a lot of telling over showing. And while I’m not the biggest fan of “show don’t tell” as a writing advice2, I can now see why some people really harp on it.
Another possible factor is the content...
As I said, I jumped into Eighty Six without knowing too much about it. Just the cover and the blurb at the back. And since the blurb I read was in Indonesian, I didn’t fully grasp what it was saying.
And boy was I surprised. If I can use one word to describe Asato’s book, I would be “edgy”. Or maybe “grimdark”.
The story takes place in a war torn world. Our heroes fight for the San Magnolia Republic. And San Magnolia is... a nazi state. And no, I don’t mean it in a leftist “everyone I don’t like is Hitler” kind of way. I mean the society has a racial hierarchy in which one race is at the top, and others are at the bottom. In fact, the author did it in such an over-the-top way wherein only the alba, the pale-skinned, silver-haired folks are considered humans so they live comfortable lives. Meanwhile everyone else, the colored folks, are seen as pigs in human form3; they are herded into concentration camps and sent to fight in the war until they die.
So let’s go back to the cover. Now take a good look at the two characters pictured.
Yeah.
I don’t blame readers who think the author went too far with the edge. As for me, I love it. I love the edge.
So does that mean our heroes are the bad guys? Not at all. In fact, it’s a common trope in fiction to have good guys who fight for an evil system. Why? Because what they’re fighting against is even worse. Gears of War, Warhammer 40,000, and Halo come to mind4.
In this case, our heroes fight against a horde of killer robots known as Legion. Legion, as in Mark 5:9 - “my name is Legion for we are many”. That Legion.
And Legion is hardly the only Biblical/Christian allusion in Eighty-Six. Now I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of Christian allusions in Japanese media. I find that they’re usually shallow and go no further than aesthetics. Now I do not expect otherwise because Japan is not and has never been a Christian nation5. However, Asato weaved in her Christian references so well that I’m impressed. In fact, I wonder she is a Christian herself. At the very least, she must have some significant exposure to Christianity and Western culture in general.
And speaking of the author, she is also interesting in her own way. As readers might tell, Asato Asato is a pen name. By her own admission, it was a play on her real name (Toru Asakura) and the number 886.
I went to Google Translate and here’s what I got:
Why is this significant? Let me explain. In Internet speak, 88 is a code denoting sympathy for Hitler and Nazi Germany. It’s basically a meme on the Internet. To put it simply:
Coincidence? Well... her book has references to World War II, Nazi Germany, and other German references like Erich Maria Remarque7. So I find it hard to believe that she doesn’t know about the connection between 88 and Hitler.
Now I must clarify that this is not a complaint, but an observation. Like I said, I like the edge. In fact, I gave Ms. Asato’s book a four-star on Goodreads and left this review:
This is an interesting read. I just went into it based on the cover alone; I'm glad I gave it a try. A lot of edgy stuff to be sure, but that's war. I like the two main characters, Lena and Shin. Lena is instantly likable, which is good since the narrative starts (and ends) with her. As for Shin, it took me a while for me to warm up to him, but I like his character arc. Very satisfying. All the others with some exception is kind of a blur to me, but they serve their narrative purpose.
Also for some reason, this book has a lot of Biblical/Christian allusions. Not complaining. In fact, I love how well they're weaved in. I honestly didn't expect that from a Japanese author.
Now I'll be honest, it took me a while to finish this. But that's not necessarily on the author since I read this book in Indonesian (and I usually read fiction in English).
I also appreciate that the book doesn't end with a BS cliffhanger. When I first saw that this is a "volume 1", I was afraid that it'll be quite the commitment. Indeed, this was part of a series which last time I check has 13 volumes to its name. Thankfully, the author instead ended this particular volume on a satisfying note while leaving things open for future installments.
As I said in Goodreads, this book is only the first of a series. And I must reiterate my appreciation for the fact that Ms. Asato did not saddle the reader with a cliffhanger at the end to get them to read the next volume. Rather, the first volume of Eighty-Six ended on a rather satisfying note while at the same time leaving things open for future volumes.
And while I don’t see myself reading the next issue any time soon, I will surely consider it.
Just two. This one and another one which I didn’t finish.
Don’t get me started on that, please.
They are literally referred to as such in the book.
The UNSC in Halo lore is kind of evil, lol. Ditto the COG in Gears.
Despite some close calls back in the day.
If Google Translate is to be trusted, eight in Japanese is “hachi” and eighty-eight is “yasohachi”. So I honestly don’t know how the author got “Asato” from those and “Toru Asakura”. But I’ll take her word for it. I assume there’s some Japanese pun I’m not aware of.
The author of All Quiet on the Western Front.