Happy birthday to Nier Automata. The action game was originally released on this day back in 2017 and five years later it’s still a masterpiece. So much so that Platinum and Square Enix celebrated Nier Automata’s fifth anniversary with a big announcement.
Nier Automata is going to become an anime.
We don’t have a whole lot of details other than Aniplex will be helming the animated adaptation of Nier Automata. There’s an official website where you can check for updates and also a 30-second teaser video posted to an unlisted YouTube channel. It’s in Japanese, but I assume all the important stuff was said at the end.
On both the website and teaser video there’s a still image of 2B along with her AI sidekick Pod 042. We can likely expect 9S and A2 to also make appearances, along with a few cantankerous machines.
For those who haven’t played PlatinumGames and Yoko Taro’s masterpiece, Nier Automata takes place in a far future where machines have taken over Earth and forced humanity to retreat to the moon. Blindfolded androids form unit “Yorha” tasked with reclaiming Earth from the machines and making it suitable for human habitation once again.
Besides the story, music, and incredible action gameplay that’s become synonymous with PlatinumGames, Nier Automata has a number of different endings depending on the player’s actions. It seems unlikely for this feature to make it into a television series, but I’d love to see an attempt.
Speaking of Platinum, the studio behind Astral Chain, Vanquish, Nier, and the upcoming Babylon's Fall has gone on the record saying that it wouldn't be averse to an acquisition if someone were to roll along with jetliners full of money. I'm paraphrasing a statement from Platinum president Atsushi Inaba in the wake of Microsoft's purchase of Activision. And considering how Platinum tried to make a game for Microsoft once before and has been begging for another shot, Inaba's statement certainly sounded like an invitation to a certain Windows-based megacorporation.