Us longtime fans of Yokō Tarō's Drakengard/Nier multiverse have long since become accustomed to the franchise's shenanigans when it comes to media that stretches beyond the main videogames of the canon, but here's a quick primer to get you up to speed: To serve as a prequel/spinoff to NieR:Automata (which is in and of itself a spinoff/sequel-thing to Nier, which was already a spinoff to an alternate gag-ending for the first Drakengard game), Yokō Tarō helped produce a small play called YoRHa. This play served to fill in some of the backstory for one of the game's breakout characters, the badass killer Anrdoid known as A2. Later on, a slightly revised version of the play's story (known as Ver. 1.05) was adapted into prose for the short-story collection NieR:Automata: Short Story Long. Then, when NieR:Automata became a smash hit on account of being one of the greatest video games ever made, Taro and Co. got an even bigger budget to produce an even more revised stage-musical-prequel, called YoRHa Ver. 1.2, which changed certain plot events and even fully deleted characters from the original YoRHA to be more in line with the canon of the games. Finally, years later, in 2021/22, artist Megumu Soramichi adapted that Ver. 1.2 variation of the YoRHA story into YoRHa: Pearl Harbor Descent Record – A NieR:Automata Story, which is the manga that I'm reviewing today.

The point is that even if you have previously read the translated short story adaptation of a stage-play/musical prequel to one of your favorite sequels to a spinoff of an obscure JRPG, this translated manga adaptation of a revised version of that stage-play/musical prequel to one of your favorite sequels to a spinoff of an obscure JRPG is technically a different story from its predecessors. It might be worth investigating even if you've fully read up on your other DrakeNier lore. If nothing else, Megumu Soramichi does an excellent job of capturing the stylish YoRHa designs and fun Nier action scenes with his clean artwork, which isn't something you could expect from either the short story or even the stage version of the Pearl Harbor Descent Record narrative. Fans of just the games might also be interested in digging into this more accessible and visually-appealing version of the events, especially since A2 is one of the characters from NieR:Automata that could be said to be lacking in the development department.

What about completely green newcomers to this whole DrakeNier…”experience”, though? Does Volume One of YoRHa: Pearl Harbor Descent Record – A NieR:Automata Story make for a decent jumping-on point for manga readers who might not be as video-gaming inclined? Given how obsessed I've been with the Nier games for the past five years or so, that's a difficult question to answer, but unfortunately, my gut tells me that new fans will have a hard time getting into this one volume of YoRHA as a standalone story.

The biggest reason for that, I think, would be the pacing and depth of the story. It isn't as if viewers are going to be completely lost or confused; the manga gives plenty of exposition to explain who the YorHA are, what the Android/Machine war is all about in a nutshell, and so on. No, the problem more so lies in how much of the dialogue and storytelling is focused on communicating the immediate events and context of the story versus establishing a well-rounded cast that you care about. As it is arranged, the actual plot of the surviving YoRHa Androids and their Resistance counterparts only gets interesting in the final pages of this first volume.

This would be fine if the characters were interesting enough to hold the story up on their own, but I don't think that is the case. Like a lot of Yokō Tarō stories, the four Androids that we follow as our squad of protagonists are little more than thinly sketched archetypes; No. 2 is the insecure heroine who has suddenly found herself in a command position she isn't ready for, No. 4 is the feisty one, No. 16 is the gruff hard ass who starts trouble whenever she doesn't see eye-to-eye with her fellow soldiers, and No. 21 is the stoic one. The different scenes and scenarios are naturally quite talky, given the story's origins in the theater. Still, all that talking mostly reinforces the familiar characteristics that the Androids all inhabit rather than revealing anything especially unique or compelling about any of them.

This isn't necessarily a complaint, mind you, because a lot of the appeal of Taro's stories is how he takes seemingly straightforward archetypes and clichés and brings them crashing headlong into subversive or surprising scenarios. In a single two-hour play or a short story that you could read in one sitting, it is much easier to patiently bide your time with a tale's more familiar elements if it seems like some surprising twists or complications will eventually shake things up. Still, you only get a hint of those possibilities by the time Volume One of YoRHa: Pearl Harbor Descent Record is finished, and readers will have to wait until March of 2023 to see if the conclusion will even be worth the wait.

Knowing what I know about the general YoRHa story, I think it is one that is worth seeing through, especially if you're interested in seeing where certain characters will be in the game proper. Still, I wouldn't blame newcomers for checking out this one volume only to think, “That's what all of the fuss was about? A bunch of robots dressed in sexy maid outfits shoot things and yell/cry at each other a lot?” Granted, “sad, crying robots in sexy outfits” is what takes up most of NieR:Automata's runtime, but the DrakeNier experience has always been more than the sum of its parts. If this first volume of the YoRHa story doesn't immediately grab you, consider giving the next one a chance when it drops in March. I can't promise that it'll be one of the best stories you've ever read, but I can promise that it will complete the prequel to a videogame that does feature one of the best stories ever. That's not too bad of a deal, eh?