3 year bump!
Pakuliittus found a way to skip the first electric barrier in Area 12, which is a tremendous time savings! Certainly this would be of use for a TAS as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds22IOCGPOI
I am unsure exactly how it works. Neither of us were able to get it to work on the second barrier, and it doesn't seem to work at all on the Japanese version.
I recorded some videos and looked at them frame-by-frame, and my best guess is that we take damage from two different sources on the same frame. The barrier and the grapple soldier both deal 1 damage, but we take 2 damage on a single frame.
On the second barrier, there is no possible 2nd damage source. We can poke the soldier onto the electric barrier itself, but soldiers cannot deal damage while we're swinging so it doesn't work. I tried baiting one of the two soldiers to fire a bullet and then race the bullet to the other side of the barrier, but I have not been able to make it in time. I cannot confirm if that would work or not.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! This is a pretty huge discovery, and would be even bigger if it worked on the 2nd barrier.