The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

86--EIGHTY-SIX: Operation High School

What's It About? 

The Republic of San Magnolia is enjoying peaceful days, having not been invaded by the neighboring empire's Legion weapons. This is the story of Shin, Lena, and their friends as normal students attending Eighty-Six Private High School, where they'll partake in club activities, the culture festival, a fireworks festival, and more! A story of heartwarming romance and glorious youth that could never have happened in the original 86 unfolds!

86--EIGHTY-SIX: Operation High School is a manga by Suzume Somemiya based on a light novel series by Asato Asato (author), Shirabii (character designer), and I-IV (mecha designer). The English translation is by Roman Lempert. This volume was lettered by Brandon Bovia. Published by Yen Press (November 5, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

Why do readers love 86 so much? It's a wildly successful 13-volume (so far) dystopian military sci-fi following the remnants of humanity who battle via child soldiers against the inhuman, artificially intelligent threat of The Legion, an overwhelmingly powerful mechanical enemy. At turns unbelievably grim, and at others quietly romantic, it spawned an excellent animated adaptation filled with intense battles and emotional angst. Operation High School features none of these things. I don't understand why this manga exists. Its stated purpose is to feature 86's characters in a safe, normal high school environment, doing the normal high school things they aren't able to do in the main series. Attack on Titan did something similar, but it was more of a gag manga. This, to its detriment, takes the assignment more seriously, and oh dear lord is it boring.

It doesn't help that Operation High School's apparent remit is to produce as many painfully generic chapters as possible, while completely failing to add anything uniquely “86” to distinguish it from any number of other bog-standard manga romcoms. Highly-strung Lena is now Student Council President, while the usually tortured, brooding Shin is little more than a slightly gloomy schoolboy. Chapters feature such well-worn cliches as a festival trip with the characters dressed in yukata, summer homework stress, a school festival, and a New Year's temple visit. At least the character art is attractive, even if the backgrounds are very sparse.

Occasionally there are little winks to the audience, such as when Lena wins a white pig plushie at the festival. (“White Pig” is the pejorative term non-”Alba” residents of the Republic's 86th Sector use to refer to their pale-skinned, silver-haired oppressors.) Apart from occasional brief references, there's little here to attract an 86 fan to this book. It's all so painfully generic, and dull. I can get why some readers might want to see their favorite characters in peacetime, but Operation High School does nothing of value to them. At its core, 86 is a story of the oppressed breaking the shackles of their oppressors and continuing to fight for humanity's future. Without their suffering, what's the point?