Key takeaways
- Differences in ideology between androids, machine lifeforms, and humans can lead to conflict and war.
- A2 and 9S experience a cycle of hate and revenge, but A2 learns the importance of hope and friendship.
- Zinnia created YoRHa to give purpose to the androids, but humanity's extinction of Number 9 led to YoRHa's destruction.
The following contains spoilers for Episode 23 of NieR Automata Ver1.1a, which is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Devola and Popola do their duty, dying at the hands of A2, as she enters the last tower. The 9S has faced many 2B models, as it has been put to the test. Meanwhile, A2 uncovers more of YoRHa's secrets and pits the red girls against each other.
We then see a glimpse of the original 9S model, Zinnia, and a reference to the side story, The YoRHa boys. After he loses an arm, 9S joins the missing 2B model to replace it. From then on, he and A2 meet for a final confrontation.
To become human is to lose oneself
The Red Girls, like androids and machine lifeforms, were obsessed with becoming human. But as it got closer, the conflict grew more and more. Differences in ideology are what separate people from each other – these can lead to arguments, compromises, or in extreme cases, war.
The red girls are stopped when one wants to continue fighting, but the other offers to leave the planet to seek new opportunities. This is a common dilemma between two types of people, or the “there are two wolves inside you” metaphor. On the one hand, some thrive on drama and chaos, on the other, others want to explore and do better. This is done to prevent boredom, and one of the primary things red girls talk about is “fun”. Having a purpose gives life meaning; And boredom is meaningless, devoid of anything.
9S and A2 are also somewhat affected by this dilemma, in how they react to similar situations. 9S loses 2B and swears vengeance, all sense of logical thought completely lost. And that became his primary focus, and reason for living: for revenge. A2 swore revenge on both machine lifeforms and chose to leave YoRHa for the deaths of her found family. But as time passes, she finds new friends and becomes more open-minded, realizing that there is hope, beauty in a cruel world. she heardAnd when she lost the rest of her allies, she chose to save the 9S and break the cycle of hatred.
Inside Project YoRHa
In a flashback sequence, the characters, Zinnia (YoRHa's founder), No. 9, No. 2, and N. 10, appear. Although this is a quick glimpse into the anime, the story itself arises The YoRHa boys. Zinnia was an android who noticed that androids were starting to feel down and needed a morale booster. To do this, he created a race where humanity survived and escaped to the moon, and began building special models using machine cores.
Zinnia finally wanted the androids to feel like they were fighting for a cause. Number 9, who is a curious model, discovers that humanity is extinct and goes mad as a result. He killed Zinnia, and added a back door to the bunker, to ensure that it would be destroyed. All the remaining androids will never know the truth, and will continue to fight instead. But no. 2 killed her shortly after and a cycle of death began between them.
Presumably, it was witnessed by 9S while inside the tower. Ironically though, while Number 9 wanted destruction and YoRHa destroyed, so everyone could live in ignorance, 9S didn't want to lose 2B, one of YoRHa's strongest soldiers.
