The first NieR game, the brainchild of director Yoko Taro and a spin-off from the final ending of another of his games, Drakengard, was a fascinating if clunky title whose genre-bending RPG ideas in a fantasy world, soundtrack, and insights on the human condition allowed it to endure as a cult classic. The fact such a title loved by only a select few and otherwise a sales dud could spawn a now-15-year-old franchise is the most surprising legacy of a game from a unique creator whose prior titles had never set the world alight. Such success can almost certainly be credited to the collaboration of Yoko Taro, Square Enix and Platinum Games on NieR Automata.
A lot can change when your unlikely sequel generates nine million sales, numerous worldwide concert tours, cafe collaborations, and much more.
Even seven years removed from its initial release, the game’s reputation and ports to new platforms have allowed new players to discover this adventure. With such success, an anime adaptation, particularly one produced at a moment where anime globally is more popular than ever, was an obvious next step. So why was the NieR Automata anime adaptation not the slam dunk success story it perhaps should have been, considering its prior successes?
If anything, NieR Automata 1.1a deserved to be a hit. While it was easy to cynically assume pre-release that an anime adapting one of the few games whose use of interactivity was core to its storytelling and themes would struggle to capture the same magic, the show’s success is in how it attempts to bring the multimedia aspects of this together into a single experience while expanding further on its core ideas.
Similar to the game, the series follows Androids 2B and 9S, each fighting on behalf of YoRHa and a humanity that has abandoned their planet to seek refuge on the moon until the robots sent to Earth by an invading alien force are defeats. Compared to the elegant Androids, these robots are crude mechanical lifeforms assumed to be devoid of the emotions of humans. Yet there’s an air of hopelessness overhanging this fight. After 1000 years, is there even a reason to keep going? What is life for those that remain?
That’s not their decision to make. They must keep fighting, again and again. Particularly for 2B and 9S, not even death is an ending when you can upload your memories to a cloud to be implanted into a new body.
The game’s biggest achievement came in how it explored the differences between Androids and Robots, in doing so questioning what it means to be human. If robots can build their own civilizations, aren’t they just as human as you or I, despite their appearance? The anime, in turn, doesn’t overhaul this core ideal, but instead gives us more opportunities away from our protagonists to explore this divide in a way that extended cutscenes within a video game would feel labored, among other things.
Particularly in our modern anime landscape, first impressions matter, which makes it refreshing that the Masuyama Ryoji-led team at A-1 Pictures producing this anime made the conscious decision to diverge from the source material early on to set audience expectations on the possibilities offered by this retelling. Although the anime’s first episode is a very direct retelling of the game’s opening prologue, episode 2 is a melancholic, entirely-original contained story from the perspective of the robots passively observed by 9S, a throwaway moment expanded into almost a full episode that humanizes the robots almost immediately without requiring the multiple play throughs the game expected in order to explore this perspective.
Expanding NieR’s universe is a core philosophy for this adaptation. Beyond the games are a plethora of short stories and stage plays produced by Yoko Taro and others to expand this universe, and it is the latter YoRHA Boys and YoRHa Girls plays integrated directly that allow audiences to further understand the futility of the fight of the Androids. While these stories were first conceived before NieR Automata was even announced, and have since been amended countless times in subsequent performances, their integration here serve as the series’ biggest justification for its own existence.
Despite being niche performances now locked behind pricy Blu-ray recordings, these side-story perspectives that would feel out of place in a game resonate here, bringing weight to the story that lingers to make its conclusion further devastating thanks to knowledge of these events. What should we as humans hold dear in our final moments? The presence of this question alone is enough to justify what these episodes offer.
There are countless other examples of ways the anime has expanded and experimented with this story, not only to adapt to this new medium but take advantage of new ways this story can be told, that would feel labored in the context of a video game. Coupled with at-times striking animated flair, this is an anime that should please fans while remaining a fun entry point for newcomers.
So why did such an adaptation fall under the radar of even die-hard fans? Momentum.
The success of anime has always been driven by hype, but the increasing global reach of the medium has only accelerated this. A manga with viral online hype can generate enough interest to guarantee a profit for investors from international licensing alone before an episode is even broadcast, never mind the limitless potential for merchandising and the possibility of further word-and-mouth excitement. Dandadan, already a popular Shonen Jump manga, was a perfect example of how global buzz, social media and a weekly viral buzz can take a popular anime and make it stratospheric, and you can see a similar level of anticipation building around Gachiakuta still three months away from broadcast. Anime doesn’t need even close to this level of hype to be a success, either.
No matter the excitement generated before a series premiere, strong availability and reliable production are a must. Dandadan was aided by a production that allowed its talented team at Science Saru the time needed to complete the series to the highest quality, and it was almost certainly helped by being one of the first anime Netflix would globally simulcast in a departure from their outside-Japan binging model for anime releases. By comparison, it took merely three weeks for the series to be forced into hiatus, six months for the final four of the first 12 episodes to broadcast in late July, and almost two years for its 24-episode run to finally conclude after a further year of silence between the first and second cour of the series.
This is ignoring inconsistent animation that took until later streaming and home video releases to be fixed. NieR Automata wasn’t even the only anime produced by Aniplex to suffer delays during the season it premiered, and though each cited COVID-19 as an influence, by the time the series premiered in 2023 the industry had mostly adapted to the impact of the pandemic.
The reality is that the anime industry has always struggled with fraught production cycles, exacerbated in recent years as talent is chased out by low pay and overly-rushed production timelines that stretch those remaining to their limits. While some mitigation has occurred to increase pay in recent years and efforts have been made by unions and studios alike to improve conditions, the reality is that structural issues remain unchanged, challenging even veterans whose pay has increased with experience.
NieR Automata Ver. 1.1a’s momentum was curtailed before it had a chance. An anime based on one of the most beloved games of recent years should’ve been a smash hit, yet production issues smothered any chance of an enduring legacy. Watch the anime now, free from the painful release schedule and with many errors fixed, and you will find a great series whose distinct visual departure from Akihiko Yoshida’s striking game designs and interesting expansion upon the original experience is thrilling.
It’s just a shame mismanagement during its broadcast turned many audiences off the show before it had a chance to display these qualities.
