Episode Review – NieR:Automata Ver1.1A Episode 22: Guilt and Misery

September 17, 2024Episode Review,  Mecha Discussion,  ,  
The truth about the downfall of humanity revealed…
This episode is pretty much dedicated to exposition, explaining to us the gist of Project Gestalt as well as 9S’ life event (which we have already guessed). There’s not much action but rather just a very touching story about the original twin: Devola and Popola. While it is very emotional, this episode doesn’t push the story forward in any meaningful ways, but rather serve to connect the dots in the history of Nier.

The starting explanation was actually a brief description of Drakengard’s Ending E – where an otherworldly disease descended upon mankind and almost wipe out humanity. They had to separate their soul from their body – and created robotic vessels – replicants that can one day inherit their souls for humanity to be reborn. This was project Gestalt – overseen by the original twin Devola and Popola. However, the project failed when the vessel went out of control. Thus, Devola and Popola was programmed to always possess feelings of guilt, as they will risk anything to help “resurrect” humanity and aid the androids in battle – for eternity.

Even so, they aren’t without feelings. Being treated so horribly by others did affect them. But because they are programmed to be ridden with guilt, they never went against anyone. Even so, Devola knows that they will never be able to atone for their sins, and that they do not deserve to be treated this way forever. Popola – on the other hand – accepted their fate and try to protect her sister. The two’s journey is one of sadness, grief and pain. Being blamed for what was ultimately not their fault and made to atone for eternity must have been very painful. And they only have each other to rely on. After seeing Lily and Pascal and everyone at the Resistance Camp perish, Devola and Popola are basically the only ones left that aren’t 9S and A2. At least, in the end, they are still together.

For 9S, dude once again fell into another mind trick. He’s just basically blind now, jumping into things without restraint even though he’s pretty sure it’s a trap. Lucky for him, this time it’s just his alternate self explaining to him the truth about his “lives”. Although we’ve seen this from 2B perspective, this is the first time 9S has “figured out” what happened. Although we’ve seen him wallowing in misery for a bit too long, so anymore is kinda just despair p*rn to me. We know he’s already at the bottom, and that he’ll just get more and more psychotic from here on out. There’s not much else this episode and we didn’t even see a proper rendition of 2B.

I guess the decisive moment for him will come when he face off against A2. But until then, he’s basically an empty vessel.

This episode is basically just exposition after exposition for Project Gestalt and Devola and Popola’s backstory. I do think they are running out of content to fill the screen time so they are putting more worldbuilding and backstory into it. It’s beginning to lose the steam it has gained from the first few episodes with 2B’s explosiveness and her interaction with 9S played a big part in keeping viewer’s attention. With the shift to A2, viewers were able to connect to another well-written character, but 9S has been a bit of a depression wave that cling onto 2B’s shadow. Let’s hope A-1 pick up the pace because this is running into the 86 lull more emotional drama take up more space than plot progression.

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