Member-only story
The Zen of Nier: Automata — Tasting Reality in the Death of Meaning
What follows is devoid of spoilers for Nier: Automata. Instead, what I offer is an interpretive lens through which those who have yet to play the game, or who may have already done so, may interpret the narrative of Nier: Automata. This is, of course, only one possible reading among many others.
In the year 11,945 AD, Yoko Taro’s Nier: Automata follows two androids, 2B and 9S, and their part in a proxy war between an invading alien force and what remains of humanity. From their bunker on the moon, the surviving humans send orders to their android army, YoRHa, in an attempt to retake the earth from the aliens’ own machines. While the game is certainly playable on its own merits, the overall narrative is intricately interwoven with Yoko’s previous games — namely Drakengard (1 and 3) and Nier. And though the narrative is quite complex, even without this background knowledge, Nier: Automata is tuned to a fascinating theme: the redemptive death of meaning.
Whether one has played Nier: Automata, the theme can be presented quite clearly: each character possesses a “ Big Other,” a term in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan denoting a seeming externality around which one orders their life in unconscious and deep-seated ways. The Big Other, often a personified figure, is to the human person as grammar is…
