NieR:Automata Ver1.1a Part 2

As the machine war progresses, YoRHa Command and the Resistance prepare for a final decisive assault against the "Machine Lifeforms," the militarized robots who roam the earth's surface. While preparations are underway, YoRHa 9-gou S-gata "9S" and YoRHa 2-gou B-gata "2B" continue their advanced scouting mission. However, 9S and 2B struggle with their respective roles, their loyalty to each other, and their loyalty toward Command.

Although the nefarious Adam and Eve have been defeated, it appears the machines are not down for the count. An ominous presence in the form of the "Red Girl" continues to observe the androids from afar, waiting for the perfect opportunity to attack them.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

YoRHa 2-gou B-gata Main

Ishikawa, Yui Japanese

YoRHa 9-gou S-gata Main

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

YoRHa A-gata 2-gou Main

Suwa, Ayaka Japanese

Emil Supporting

Kadowaki, Mai Japanese

Pascal Supporting

Yuuki, Aoi Japanese

Devola Supporting

Shiraishi, Ryouko Japanese

Commander White Supporting

Kanou, Chiaki Japanese

Pod 042 Supporting

Yasumoto, Hiroki Japanese

Popola Supporting

Shiraishi, Ryouko Japanese

Adam Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Matsumoto, Miho Producer

Masuyama, Ryouji Director, Series Composition

Nagasaki, Yukio Sound Director

Tomari, Kouki Episode Director

Reviews

Nov 14, 2024

XOArama

Recommended

I'll be honest right off the bat an admit I didn't pay the greatest of attention while watching this anime so yea that might have impacted my opinion somewhat but anyways. The first season just felt a bit underwhelming to me, I feel like going from a 40+ hour game to a short series like this kind of throws of a bit of the balance and attachment we're to feel for some of the characters. Season 2 mostly felt the same way, the animation is up to standard which is good, the main story and even some of the side content is adapted and ... its executed pretty well, but again I feel it just goes by to fast. Maybe I'm just watching this too close to having played the game, which was a couple years ago but idk that's just how it felt watching it. Might give this another watch in a couple years with both parts fully released but for now it was just alright to me.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Nov 13, 2024

Weaver_Inoue

Recommended

Introduction
Going in to NieR: Automata Ver1.1a Part 2, I was expecting more of the world and action sequences defining Part 1. What I eventually got was something way deeper and all introspective in a manner that is just overwhelming. It's just about a shocking about-face for an anime to bury spectacle for the cerebral voyage into what existence means, fighting, or finding meaning.
The whole angle of view completely flipped from just 'watching' the story to being amongst turmoil inside the head of the characters in the second half. The episodes just seemed carved out for your mind with so many question marks, very often causing ... thought processes which had rarely been provoked. This shift of gait, tone, and telling changed everything and came as a refreshingly beautiful surprise beyond every expectation.

Characters
In that vein, it centers around the three central protagonists-2B, 9S, and A2-but part two treads deeper into each of their complex emotions and struggles, very differently so for each. What really struck a chord with me, however, was how their interactions with one another, and even each of their inner turmoils, became an analogy besides character building to explore existential themes.
On the surface, 2B is quiet, but that melancholy cloak overflows from an ocean of bottled-up emotions-of one struggle between duty and desire.
On the other hand, 9S has attachment, loss, and learning about his existence more on the line emotionally. A2 actually personifies the raw interpretation of what that would look like in search of meaning within an apathetic world. It is not hard with each of these characters to sympathize and question what motivates them and drives the actions taken by them.

Plot & Theme
That gives Part 2 its thematic depth and echoes into answers about philosophical questions which continue long after the episodes are over.
The anime isn't just about the war between man and machine; it's deep down in the introspection of free will, the existential dread, and the circle of life. And with each episode unraveling, came a tale of so many questions: "What is living if the choices are set?" and "What is the meaning of suffering?"
These are not easy questions, and NieR: Automata Ver1.1a is unwilling to give an easy answer. A story that involves the apparent endless fight in the world catches the essence of human fights, which are somewhat circular in nature since we, just like the androids, are into the repetition as part of trying to make meaning in routines which may well be essentially futile.

Pacing & Tone
The pacing in Part 2 is much slower than one would anticipate, with a reflective atmosphere that lends gravity to each character's journey. At first, this choice threw me off, but it quickly made me realize the pacing of each scene and revelation was lasting. This formula, where moments of action are followed by introspective silences, creates a haunting rhythm, further emphasizing the philosophical tone of the anime.
This tempo allows for a balance where the audience can appreciate, if not the story, then at least the reflective themes of the anime without being rushed. It is as if the anime wishes to make us tarry, think about it, feel the weight of every character's emotional arc.

Visual Animation
The visuals in *NieR: Automata Ver1.1a* tell a story unto themselves, just as much as the characters do. The art style brings this post-apocalyptic world to the fore, with a tinge of desolation that at the same time is both beautiful and sad. From desolate landscapes to exquisite fight choreography, every frame stands like a work of art, reflecting the chaos within the characters.
The desaturated color tone and subtlety in details give the place an air of deliberation-a mood deeply emotional, reflecting the themes of the story too, as a matter of fact. This is much more than just aesthetic appeal; it's about creating an immersive atmosphere where the beautiful coexists with despair.

Music & Scoring
The tone of the music this season takes on a whole new range, embedding emotions in the scenes to bear even weightier philosophical depth. Ethereal and haunting is the score, thick with melancholy tones resounding along lines of existential questions battling within the characters. And how many times the music rises during quiet or introspective moments caught my notice-almost, as it were, the voice through which we're taken along in the themes of the story. The tone that it sets for every scene with the music is so perfect; it's almost like it gives the weight of emotion to the music to take the story and invite the viewer into the ups and downs of the characters. It changes it into an experience much similar to the truth it represents-beautiful but haunting.

Conclusion
Part 2 of *NieR: Automata Ver1.1a* stops at nothing in amalgamating those genuinely rare combinations: considerate storytelling and rich philosophy with depth in feeling. It is not mere adaptation but an art which stuns the viewer into the essence of existence, purpose, and the struggle cycle that everyone has to go through. For me, this anime went much beyond entertainment-it was a deep poignant experience which stirred some of the questions and insights which I never thought of. Such a season: it moves a video game story to such an emotional and intellectual odyssey that fully deserves a 9 out of 10 and shall be remembered long after the credits roll.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Oct 10, 2024

Balsamina

Mixed Feelings

Funny

NieR: Automata.

The anime.

I refrained from reviewing Part 1 as the story and presentation of the title was literally unfinished there.

Part 2... I am beginning to see why people who know nothing about philosophy and think little to nothing about most things are impressed with this title. This is the same segment of the audience who will surely click "confusing" to this review, by the way. Even so, I intend to express a different reflection of this title's quality to express than simple awe.

To begin, I make sure to state: this is a review of the ANIME -- ignoring any exclusively source-material merits, as ... an anime should stand on its own, at most relying on its prequels. Even if I have source material knowledge, I will deliberately not factor them in. No, I will not watch 3 or 5 hours long of fan-made explanation or head-canon videos and if someone needs to in order to have any points of dissatisfaction addressed, that's not a work standing on its own, now is it?

Moreover, given we are in 2024 and the sound and visuals are nothing impressive for this year, I'll get it over with and say: there's no bonus points to my rating added from merely meeting industry standards. No, I have no complaints about the female designs, in case anyone asks if that's why I'm not giving bonus points. I'm not about to complain about sexy female designs; in fact, I enjoy them, though they never get a bonus point on just this alone; see my criteria for grading anime for more details.

Here we go:

For those watching this anime as it's being released, a huge impact that hurts this anime is timing -- Part 1 was quite a while ago... but Part 2 took too long to release, which numbed a great deal of any emotional anticipation. Yes, this is common in today's animescape, but that does not diminish the effect. Animators, PLEASE! Just release an anime you WANT people to feel is deep or epic in one go. And not 12 episodes; that's hardly screentime to tell a truly good tale; however many episodes it takes, please! Thankfully, this point is not relevant if you aren't watching as it's coming out. In my case, as a reviewer, it gives me a more unbiased and clear-minded approach to analyze the story when any emotional workup is disrupted and neutralized so I can dissect straight into the meat of the story.

Now for the actual story -- even as someone who rarely touches videogames anymore, I heard the praises sung about this title, the game and source material that is. There's all that about how it's deep, PROFOUND! How it explores nihilism, how it explores existentialism...

As an actual living nihilist, this should excite me. Not so much in an elevation of value in the work, but as something simply stimulating for the mind on a purely biological, neurological and psychological level. After all, even people who live by active nihilism, those who actively deny objective meaning and value to keep their gaze upon the world unclouded, are still motivated by the same hormones in our carbon-based data processors called "brains".

Yet, one fundamental problem is, this story is like a college essay that throws a lot of big words and names around, but fails to show true comprehension and ability to explore them, often just falling into pessimistic bias in representation and "FeeEeeeLz".

>>Human emotions are somehow forbidden... for... robots.

Read that last sentence again. Yes. Um... Why not program and make bots to not have them? Why not just program them to be a literal goal-oriented and efficiency-driven protocol? Especially combat units.

GPT can explain why it does not have feelings. It might take a little thinking about why an entity can outwardly behave similar to a human or perform otherwise intellect-necessary actions without feelings. It involves knowing and understanding statistics, probability and linear (tensor) algebra to begin. But, it's quite possible. We only did it this entire time in human history. No, the electronic device you hold in your hand does not have feelings, thankfully. Imagine if your smartphone could cry in pain every time you drop it by accident. Or if it had existential angst when you decided it was time for an upgrade to a new iphone or samsung for better memory or features. Who ever would invent such a feature...

Yet the logic behind machines having feelings is never explained in the show. Were YoRHa making imitation family members and substitute friends/lovers for buy or were they manufacturing combat units to decimate invading alien forces? Same question for the tin cans that YoRHa fights against.

>>Philosophers' names are used. Concepts get brought up.

Yet, all coverage of this is shallow.

A robot is named Pascal but does not touch on "The Wager" (which was about believing in or not believing in god and the associated consequences to believe or to not believe) that Blaise Pascal was famous for. The concept of a "Wager", by the way... involves betting something of value at the risk of something else of value. Nihilism... is about the world lacking inherent meaning and value. Right so, put the last two sentences together. Go on.

"2B" teases the line "To be or not to be" as a nice nod to Shakespeare's Hamlet's famous soliloquy about if to live in suffering, or to defy in death. The show certainly tries to show a lot of "suffering"; I mean, there have only been so many times where a robot was RPing as though it was in great grief, but sadly when humanity coined the concept of suffering, it meant only carbon-based lifeforms, not ChatGPT when it gets bombarded with insults for misunderstanding a user's poorly phrased run-on sentence or that poor baseball you keep swinging a bat at when you play baseball with your friends... But yeah, as there are no carbon-based lifeform sentients, suffering-RP is honestly about it.

Religion, cults, beauty and femininity, perception of reality. Ideas like these get a mere 20 minutes with even less of the episode on some allegories that reference the most superficial layer of these ideas. There is no tie-in to how it even should be connected to the supposed central theme of nihilism and there is no dive into any of these topics at length or any direction of where to go with this. It's much like how someone throws ideas around and hope something is seen as relevant, meanwhile nothing new is added to the literature surrounding nihilism; no new ideas regarding nihilism is being added.

Maybe I should write a book or draw a manga where I name every character after a philosopher with barely any relevance to the philosophy they are known for -- like... all the female characters could be named after a feminist, and all leadership role characters could be named after a thinker from the enlightenment. Will I get seen as a DeEp and PrOfOuNd WriTeR too...? EZ ticket to fame and fortune?

>>9S

Much of the juice and bulk of what makes this story "profound" (and that takes the bulk of the episode count of the anime's part 2) is in 9S's portrayal in that ending where he experiences "existential despair". The "not 2 B" ending where 9S is the main character of it, to euphemistically refer to the gist of that ending versus the first episode of Part 2.

...Here's the problem: in terms of psychological realism, which is what actually makes characters in stories interesting and thus, in most people's eyes, worth it to experience, this... is not how most nihilists come to realize that nihilism is very much real and undeniable. And, for most people, the reaction is first, denial. When someone tells you nothing matters in the objective, you deny it because subjectively, you have painted the illusion of value and meaning all over your own eyes. It's like covering your eyes with your hands and pretending the sky does not exist. Of course, some people will deny the truth until they die; gazing into the void isn't something every homo sapiens sapiens has the mental strength and intellectual rigor to brave. Others come to a mature realization that it's the truth. That it's all constructs that construct the world in our minds and thus are just the illusions we painted into our vision. An intangible thought paradigm that was once advantageous for survival but in lieu of imminent danger, serves as nothing more than a constricting relic of thought. An intellectual enlightenment. Then a decision of what to do with that plot twist of life occurs, often calmly.

That's the usual reaction.

Melodramatic despair when you lose your only "purpose"... is really not that relatable or realistic when discussing nihilism or the realization of it, which is often coined the term "existential crisis". Reality is just not very often that angsty.

Don't mistake the above though.

Yes, you will suffer and despair if the person you love the most dies. There is not a single person, nihilist or otherwise, who does not suffer. This is because, even for the most extreme of nihilists who actively deny objective meaning and value, the body still excretes dopamine and oxytocin which is what the "feel" of attachment and love are based on, physically speaking. Even if you actively know none of it matters, that none of it will objectively have intrinsic meaning or value and thus nothing was truly lost in the grand scale, your eyes will still shed tears because cortisol and prolactin are still secreted by your body to make you cry. How you proceed consciously, intellectually speaking, is what differs between a nihilist and someone who isn't one. A normal person will probably mourn, perhaps hold a funeral, perhaps go over good and bad memories and tell themselves what this meant to them. A nihilist may take a much more pragmatic approach. Some might be existentialists or absurdists who try to be passionate anyway, under the cling of subjective value. Some might take a much more mundane approach. Yet importantly, the reason this does not work when portraying 9S... is because he is supposed to be a robot per the very premise of the show. He doesn't secrete dopamine or oxytocin or any other hormone, and I have no reason to believe the combat androids are the bodies humanity were supposed to transfer into and thus need these functions. So then, why is he acting like someone who is governed by hormonal cycles and systems that form the physical foundation of human emotion? Was he a role-play AI who is supposed to generate emotional character text instead? Maybe RPing enemies to "death" was a combat tactic here?

The same thing applies for discovering that what you were doing the whole time did not matter. Biologically and psychologically speaking, there will be a reaction. It will be tailored to what that specific situation is. But again, 9S is a robot. And for an android designed to fight, even in a scout role, I cannot see the advantage of having it secrete and be affected by dopamine, oxytocin or any other hormone let alone engage in what can be observed as role-play behavior when you talk to AI that are programmed and trained to act like fictional characters. The narrative logic here simply does not compute for why combat units need emotion.

This is why 9S's portrayal when he is the focus and in grief is problematic because it is pure theatrical, emo angst. There is no exploration of a realistic realization of nihilism that would be typical of a normal human being who is undergoing an intellectual enlightenment of their view of the world or an exploration of the psychology of loss, even if we ignore the narrative flaw that a robot somehow has the hormone secretion and effect cycle called "emotion" as if he was just a naive boy until the big despair happens.

"Nothing matters" and emo screaming with tears, the trope.

...And that's all there is to it.

So, how does this impact the story?

Well, once you stripped all the "profound" down, this anime boils down to, two robots who take orders from a super powerful organization, they do missions, and then in various ways, things went poof.

This isn't profound.

My reaction to the entire thing was blasé.

9S's emo and angsty portrayal had me laughing at the attempt at illustrating a philosophy I know as well as the taste of bread. The stereotype that "nihilism is despair", is too old and so poorly represents the rare individuals who are truly nihilists in life. I for one find it quite liberating to not be fettered by the prescribed meanings and values of the world around me, by the way. And, I'd choose no other way of life than to abandon definitions and paradigms meant to have me submit.

To its credit,

At least this anime is not another isekai or reverse isekai where the main character, male or female, is effectively god, or the avatar of popularity. It's at least trying to do the thing I loved about some older anime: having a theme, something to think about.

Unfortunately, the lack of depth and the stereotyped portrayal of nihilism as despair, coupled with the fact that the characters themselves are just robots with unrealistic melodramatic reactions to stuff that occurs and say stereotypically emotional lines, the experience of watching this anime is truly closer as an experience of reading to a shallow forum post. It’s akin to an ENTP or INTP debater on a forum who writes the first sentence of every point he wants to make but fails to complete the paragraph for any of the points and then goes on a rant in the middle, ending up with a shallow, scattered post that then loses the debate altogether because it lacks the actual focus and incisiveness their INTJ debate partner can muster. Or, maybe I should consider this public domain philosophy texts, the commercial -- with 2B as the marketting waifu to entice those who would otherwise be too bored to study philosophy.

4/10

Note: There was no reason for me to write this review, nor a reason to not write it. If there is a term you don't know here, look it up by yourself. Oh and, feel free to copypasta this over to Chat GPT and ask for an "unbiased psychological analysis of if or not the writer is truly nihilistic" if you doubt my claim.

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D ay!

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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