NieR:Automata Ver 1.1a Season 2

Episodes 13-15

After a long wait, NieR:Automata Ver 1.1a is back with its second season, which means the story is set to depict the most shocking and explosive moments of the video game's C, D, and E story routes. What's more, as I discussed in my Preview Guide coverage of the season premiere, the show is continuing to demonstrate a willingness to deviate from its source material and/or add stuff from other NieR:Automata-related source material to improve the story. The show has rearranged and imported details to reveal 2B's true role as 9S' monitor and executioner before things go well and truly haywire. And even more importantly, Emil has finally been introduced—which means that this new season might include one of the game's best (and weirdest) side quests.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though, and I'll save the more game-specific musings for the notes below. What matters now, especially for viewers that are coming to the anime without any prior knowledge of NieR:Automata's wider universe, is that things are going very badly for our Android heroes. Episodes 2 and 3 of this season depict the beginning of the “Route C” campaign—and at first, I was surprised that the show is spending at least 4 episodes getting through Route C's opening act. Even when you factor in how often the anime feels the need to recreate the game's cutscenes shot for shot, I had a hard time imagining how we were going to get a full third of a season out of the part of the route that is just the beginning of the shit hitting the fan for 2B, 9S, and every other poor Android caught up in the sudden spread of the accursed Logic Virus.

Thankfully, NieR:Automata Ver 1.1a manages to make great use of all that extra time by removing us from the immediate experiences of its protagonists to get a wider look at the battlefield. This is supposed to be the Machine's great final assault on the Android's defenses, after all; whoever emerges victorious should be able to consider themselves the victors of this millennia-old conflict. The stakes are as high as they could be, and one of the nitpicks I've always held with the original game is the way that it sometimes struggled to make it feel like 2B and 9S were two cogs in the middle of an impossibly huge and unending war. The bonus short stories, stage plays, manga, and so on did a good job of helping with that issue. Still, Ver1.1a takes advantage of its position as an adaptation to actually improve on the game's version of events—at least in my opinion. The inclusion of Lily and her backstory from last season means that we have a better connection with the Resistance troops that have been stuck on Earth (while the YoRHa forces can retreat to the safety of the Bunker) and we get several cutaways to other S and B units who meet gruesome ends at each others' hands because of the virus. It sets an appropriately grim and apocalyptic tone that works very well in the anime's favor—especially since it can't pause every episode for 5-10 minutes to let players slice up enemies.

That said, I do want to give credit where it is due with the plentiful action we get because I feel like A-1 Pictures has stepped up their game with the time they've had to get started on this season. The action sequences feel tighter and more focused; the characters look more consistently on-model, even when the fighting gets especially hectic; and best of all, the use of CGI models for things like the YoRHa Flight Units is much less distracting. The aerial combat can still look a bit floaty and weightless, to me, but it's nowhere near as stiff and plastic-looking as back in the first season. While I'm on the topic of improvements to Ver 1.1a's presentation, I have to shout out the new opening and ending themes. Season 1 had some good tunes to showcase during its credits, too, but the new LiSA track, “Black Box”, is just excellent, and I adore the glitchy and melancholy ending theme, “Ai to Inori.”

Overall, while there's still plenty of time left for the production to start collapsing again, what we've seen so far makes me feel like the second season of NieR:Automata Ver1.1a is a step up from its first in practically every way. That's a good thing, too, because we're plunging headfirst into the best material the game has to offer, and anything less than a stellar execution would be worse than disappointing. It would be a downright tragedy.

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• The puppets are back!!!! I am so happy to once again have a reason to keep on living now that the real best part of the NieR:Automata experience has returned to grace us with its puppety blessings. Of the three, I think my favorite of these “Bad Endings” is the one where 9S dooms the world by accidentally hiding in a locker with the wrong YoRHa gal, leaving 2B to get consumed by the Logic Virus and wander the planet until her battery dies. It's a typical 9S Goof-'em-Up, I'll tell ya!

• Another way that this anime is potentially improving on the game? I prefer the way that the Commander's fate plays out here in the anime. The mysterious hacker that is destroying YoRHa comes across as creepier when the Commander isn't also being played up as being unnecessarily antagonistic and the focus on drama over action helps sell just how truly screwed everything is.

NieR:Automata Ver 1.1a Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.