Key foods
- Pascal teaches children a fear machine and highlights the importance of experiencing both negative and positive emotions.
- A2 emphasizes the fear of being alone and acknowledges the importance of time spent with loved ones.
- The bitter irony is revealed when the fear of loneliness leads to cannibalism and shows the irrational decisions made under stress.
The following contains spoilers for Episode 21 of NieR Automata Ver1.1a, now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Goliath is defeated and the children are saved, but A2 receives an urgent message from the resistance camp. Meanwhile, Lily and her allies quarantine themselves from the resistant members of the Resistance after being exposed to the logic virus of one of the Disturbed Machine Children, becoming zombies in the process.
Although Jackass, Popola, Devola and others come to their rescue, Lily decides to stay behind and kill the infected to ensure the virus spreads. A2 arrives on the scene just as the last survivor, Lily, who is also infected, asks A2 to put her out of her misery. 9S receives the final code and realizes that her feelings for 2B were reciprocated, while Pascal is confronted by the sight of machine babies being cannibalized.
What does it mean to be human?
Most people agree that the experience of negative and positive emotions is vital to the human experience. With that, the ability to grow, adapt, and learn follows suit. Pascal actively distanced himself from other forms of machine life and established his own village in hopes of a more passive and rich lifestyle. Because of this, she had the ability to empathize and connect with other androids, even befriending the resistance and gaining the respect of Lily, who lost her comrades to her own kind. One of the first lessons he taught the machine children of his village was the concept of fear. Fear is what keeps things alive because it acts as a deterrent to pursuing activities that might otherwise be considered dangerous. In episode 18, the machine lifeforms exhibit exactly this behavior in response to A2's rebuke. Strangely, A2 himself teaches them another concept: being alone.
fear of loneliness
While trying to cheer them up, A2 commented how glad he was that he was not alone. And when asked what that means, he explained the importance of appreciating the time one has with loved ones, because they can easily end each day alone. In the next scare, after the surviving machine children are brought to the resistance camp, one of them shows symptoms of the logical virus. It is implied that it was his own mess that contaminated it. In episode 6, the logic virus was very similar to PTSD when 21S looked into Lily's memories while prescribing her treatment for the contamination. After that, he was also the first of the group to be infected. Under stress, people (and even animals) can make irrational or extreme decisions.
bitter humor
When Pascal testifies to what is left of the children in the car, the first to be infected cannibalizes the others, driven by his fear of being alone, thinking the relic music box he was carrying is broken. Ironically, it could be argued that A2 planted this idea in his mind, as with children in real life, they often overreact and take things literally. When he thought he was in danger of losing everything, he ate the others so that they would be “together forever”. To varying degrees, the 9S suffers from this as well. After encountering 2B's old flight unit, he finds a message left for him, confirming that 2B's feelings are mutual. But unlike the machine life forms and the resistance, he is truly alone.
Community and family are prominent aspects of what it means to be human. And with every meeting, a breakup is sure to follow. Suffering from the same virus that A2 had originally saved her from, Lily dies in her hand from the gun A2 protected Lily from.
