NieR:Automata Ver 1.1a

Episode 6

In a very pleasant turn of events for Nier fans, this week's episode of Ver1.1a gives us a (partial) adaptation of the stage play YoRHa, the prequel story to NieR:Automata that has undergone many revisions and cross-media adaptations before making its way to this anime, including appearing as a novella of sorts in the Short Story Long anthology and also as a two-volume manga called YoRHa: Pearl Harbor Descent Record. The story provides some interesting world-building and a lot of backstory for a certain No. 2 Type YoRHa Android that doesn't get her name from a famous monologue in Hamlet, but what makes it even cooler to see the Pearl Harbor story told in the anime is in how it ties directly to this series' “original” character, Lily.

I use “original” in quotes here, because while most of these details about the YoRHa/Resistance team-up that we get here technically showed up as text-logs in the original NieR:Automata, Lily's circumstances in that version of events was…let's just say that they were different. She definitely was not the leader of the entire Resistance movement, and since the Ver1.1a anime has made such a point of treating Lily as almost a tertiary protagonist in her own right, it's very fun to see the anime once again take elements that will be familiar to longtime fans and twist them into something just unfamiliar enough to make the viewing experience nearly as fresh as it might be for newcomers. Given how episodic and fragmented the plot of the anime has been so far, Lily's character arc has been one of the most tangible through-lines for us to latch onto: When 2B and 9S arrived on Earth she was clearly disturbed by their presence, but now that Lily has come to trust her new allies enough to open up about old wounds, we can learn about the complicated and tragic history that has colored both the Resistance and YorHA's memories of the war.

Now, I don't want to pretend that we've suddenly been given the definitive version of the YoRHA/Pearl Harbor Descent Record story in “[L]one wolf”. Seeing as the episode only gets about 15 minutes to skim through a tale that originally was meant to serve as a theatrical experience that lasted at least an hour or two, we're obviously getting a very condensed CliffNotes version of the story. We get a couple of scenes that speedily establish the character traits of YoRHa members like No. 21 and resistance members like Anenome, but it's only just enough for us to recognize the emotional arcs that each character ostensibly hits by the time they die horribly in the operation's final push against the Machine Army. This is another one of those instances, too, where it is hard for me to gauge how much of my appreciation for Lily's story is inextricably tied to my familiarity with the full version of the narrative. If anyone who is coming into NieR:Automata Ver1.1a fresh wants to let me know in the comments, I'm curious to know if you found yourself intrigued or moved by Lily's story at all this week.

Maybe we'll get to see even more of the YoRHa story once we catch up with that one comrade of Lily's that is a lot more alive than anyone guessed, who we only get to see the briefest glimpse of at the end of the episode. Either way, so far as “melodramatic tragicomedies about sad android girls who have to fight in brutal robot wars while they question whether or not they even possess souls worth mourning” go, “[L]one wolf” is another solid entry into the NieR canon. It's not quite clear how this piece of the puzzle will fit into the larger narrative of this anime, specifically, but it's a moody half-hour that might get you to ask some of the usual questions about whether androids dream of electric PTSD flashbacks, and that's on-brand enough for this franchise to count it as a win.

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Extraneous Code

• This week's puppet show is another treat that plays perfectly to the “Screwing Around with a Bunch of Bullshit For as Long as the Company Will Pay Us to Do It” vibes that have made Yokō Tarō something of an industry folk hero over the years. Is there any reason whatsoever to have the tag for this episode be two minutes of thirsting over Adam and Eve schoolboy fanart, and then ending with a stupid joke about choosing fishing over a life of anime villainy? Absolutely not, and that's what makes it such a necessary addition to NieR lore.

Grimoire of Lore

This is where you'll find my more spoilery observations, so you might want to avoid these bits unless you're already familiar with the NieR games!

• So, with Anenome having officially bit the dust in this iteration of the YoRHa timeline, I'm super curious as to what the long game is concerning Lily's character. Is there a thematic reason for Taro to keep fiddling with the official canon of the Pearl Harbor Descent operation? Is Lily just going to remain a fun signifier of what makes Ver1.1a a different take on the source material, or should we be expecting some dark and sad Lily-related twists to be coming down the line? We'll just have to see!

• It's funny that I was literally just asking for some A2 to spice up the proceedings, only for Ver1.1a to immediately deliver! Plus, even though I wouldn't have minded if the YoRHa story got a full two-parter to cover all its bases, I think telling that story now, instead of cramming into a bunch of optional logs to read after the fact, does a much better job of establishing A2's presence in the present-day story. It also serves to foreshadow the presence of the logic virus as a threat that the Androids have to be prepared to deal with, though I have no idea if or how the anime is going to tackle those plot developments.

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.

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