Key foods
- Differences in ideology between androids, machine life forms and humans can lead to conflict and war.
- A2 and 9S experience a cycle of hatred and revenge, but A2 learns the importance of hope and companionship.
- Xinya created YoRHa to target androids, but #9's discovery of humanity's extinction led to YoRHa's destruction.
The following contains spoilers for NieR Automata Ver1.1a Episode 23, now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Devola and Popola do their duty and die at the hands of A2 as he enters the final tower. As he is testing, the 9S faces several 2B models. Meanwhile, A2 reveals more YoRHa secrets and the Red Girls are pitted against each other.
Then we get a glimpse of the original 9S model, Zinnia, and some references to the side story. Sons of YoRHa. After he loses an arm, 9S attaches a broken 2B model to replace the missing arm. From then on, he and A2 meet for a final showdown.
Becoming human means losing yourself
Red Girls, like androids and machine life forms, were obsessed with becoming human. But the closer they got, the more the conflict became. What differentiates people from each other is the difference in ideologies – this can lead to debate, compromise or in extreme cases to war.
The Red Girls are at a standstill when one wants to keep fighting, but the other suggests leaving the planet to explore new opportunities. This is a common dilemma between two types of people or the “two wolves within you” parable. On the one hand, some thrive on drama and chaos, on the other hand, some want to explore and improve themselves. This is done to avoid boredom and one of the main things Red Girls talk about is “having fun”. Having a purpose is what gives meaning to life. And boredom is meaningless, empty of anything.
The 9S and A2 are also somewhat affected by this dilemma, in how they react to the same set of conditions. 9S loses 2B and swears revenge, with all sense of rational thought completely gone. And this became the main focus and reason for his life: for revenge. A2 also took revenge on both machine life forms and decided to abandon YoRHa for the death of her found family. But as time passed, he found new companionship and became more open-minded, realizing that there is hope, there is beauty in a cruel world. he listenedAnd when he lost the rest of his allies, he decided to save 9S and break the cycle of hatred.
Inside the YoRHa project
In a flashback sequence, the characters Xinya (founder of YoRHa), No. 9, No. 2, and N. 10 appear. Although this is a glimpse into the anime, the story itself stems from it Sons of YoRHa. Xinya was an android who saw that androids were starting to feel down and needed a morale booster. To do this, he created a vitality that humanity survived and escaped to the moon, and began building specialized models using machine cores.
Xinya ultimately wanted the androids to feel like they were fighting for a cause. Number 9, a curious model, realizes that humanity has become extinct and has gone mad as a result. He killed Zinnia and added a back door to the bunker to ensure it would be destroyed. All of the remaining androids did not know the truth and instead continued to fight. But number 2 killed him shortly after and the cycle of death between them began.
This is probably what 9S witnessed inside the tower. Ironically though, while #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.
