Episode Review: NieR:Automata Ver1.1A Episode 19: Path of Vengeance

I will destroy every single machine lifeforms!

After two back-to-back episode focusing on A2 and a recap episode too, we switch our focus to our other deuteragonist – the Scanner type 9S. After witnessing the death of his love – 2B – 9S basically got set on a path of pure aimless vengeance against the machine lifeforms for destroying YoHRa as well as A2 – the one who landed the final blow on 2B. But even though he is still covering his eyes with the blindfold filled with rage, he hasn’t lost everything that made him the jovial 9S that we knew.

Let’s get the “other” sub-plot out of the way – which is A2’s. She’s staying at Pascal village to collect some things that Lily asked her to. But it’s mostly just a ruse to get A2 to familiarize herself with the evolving machine lifeforms. And of course we see more of A2’s cute sides rather than her cold demeanor we saw from ep 1 till around ep 17. But of course good times don’t last, not in the Nier universe (this is probably the 432th time this happen), the hostile machine lifeforms are converging for an attack, and the only one capable of defending the “good” machine lifeforms are Pascal and yours truly, A2.

And then we come to 9S. He found his way to one of those huge constructs that the machine lifeforms erected. There he encountered Operator 21O – or what’s left of her anyway. She has been infected with the virus as well as all the other YoHRa androids with her. Of course, aside from 2B, 21O was one of his best friend at YoHRa because she’s quite a cheerful personality and seems to be supporting his relationship with 2B. Seeing another close one infected and died brought him over the edge – maybe for good this time.

9S is filled with rage and continued to seek out machine lifeforms and destroy them. Even though they were deactivated and posed no hostility at all, he still expended a lot of strength to destroy every single one. His fanatic obsession with killing all the machine lifeforms will only continue, unless the 2B’s memory inside A2 can put a stop to that. But from the game, that has a very low chance of happening.

This episode is a strange combination of light-hearted moments and intense hatred. A complete 180 of two pivotal characters: one who used to be cheerful and joking, one who used to be cold and distant – and now their personalities have switched place completely. And at the core of all of this is the machine lifeforms that ended humanity. And now, ironically, the machine lifeforms is trying to evolve to “co-exist” and “imitate” human society. It’s a very philosophical progression that Yokotaro has presented. The “world history” is one of the most interesting aspect of Nier as well as the multi-ending one. However, one thing that concerns me is the recap episode last week as well as this episode’s runtime being cut shorter and the puppet show being longer. This might indicate some production problem OR that there is not enough plot to cover the remaining episodes. Hopefully it is not a negative reason and the series will continue strong.

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