86 EIGHTY-SIX 1x12 Welcome - GROUP REACTION!!! 

This is a piece of information from the light novel that explains the dream-like scenes that play at the end of the last episode and in the middle of this episode and why the Federacy found the team with a Legion Feldreb (what this series calls the mechs): Shin & friends were saved by Rei, a black sheep with Rei's fragmented memory that wasn’t under the control of the Legion. Rei was telepathically communicating with Shin when he blacked out (I think that's why Shin was silent throughout these scenes), which explains the dream-like scenes with Shin and Rei. Finally being able to be a big brother for Shin, he then carried Shin & friends to the border of the Giad Federacy, where he would be destroyed by Federacy forces, as Legion entering your territory is probably a bad thing. Shin and friends survived and were taken in by the Giad Federacy; however, to the Giad Federacy, it was suspicious that Rei (to them, a random legion Faldreb) was just carrying live humans on its back, prompting many members of its military to believe they were some type of Legion bio-weapon. Luckily, they were stopped by Ernst lol. I actually like what the anime was trying to do with both of the dream-like scenes, as it’s really touching, and I’m aware they have to follow a tight schedule and weren’t able to animate that scene, but it seemed to just confuse people, so I thought I'd just clarify what was going on and give proper context. Love your reactions, guys!

To clarify how Shin and the others survived. In the light novels, it's explained that, after Shin destroyed his brother, Rei's consciousness was transferred to an older model of a Dinosauria, which is the type of Legion Rei was in. In that older model, Rei was secretly stalking Shin and the others to make sure they got to Giad safely. When Shin and the others were about to die, Rei saved them and carried them to Giad. Hence why Ernst said they found them captured by the Legion and saved them by destroying the one Rei was transferred to, not knowing that Rei was actually protecting them. It's portrayed subtly in the anime with the vision Shin has of Rei, with the Dinosauria in the background of their talk.

With the red stripe in her hair and black uniform, Lena is representing all 5 colors of the San Magnolia flag, doubling down on her resolve to follow those ideals. I love the steady crumbling of the fountain since season 1, the cracks and litter building up to mirror San Magnolia slowly losing the war against the Legion. Cyclops got her callsign because of her two different colored eyes. The scene with Shin and his brother was symbolic but also real, he carried Shin and the rest to the Giad border where they were picked up. His destroyed mech is shown right after Shin wakes up when Ernst is walking down the hallway with his advisors.

About Lena and the names, some information from the novel that will not appear in the anime. With Spearhead, she learned about her own ingrained prejudice and how she was not treating them as humans too. She realized after Shin and the others left that she will never be their equal. So...when she took a new group of 86, she decided to not pretend to be their equal. It's something like "I know you're humans, I know your names. But I won't pretend to be friendly and benevolent. I am the oppressor and you're are the oppressed. I'm not pretending otherwise. But I'll make my best and we need eachother to survive this". That's why also she adopts the moniker of the Bloodstained Queen, Bloody Regina. To remind herself and the others that their hands are red with people's blood and that she will continue to do so, to command them and keep the Republic and the Eighty-six alive.

Teppy/tp is short for Thermopylae the entrance ro Hades (idk by but thats his name )

❤