Thoughts on NieR RepliCant
The original NIER (NieR Gestalt) was one of those games on the PlayStation 3 that instantly captivated me. Its world, characters and lore embedded themselves in my brain for months. The game features dozens of side-quests providing story-arcs for minor characters, set across various odd, almost dreamlike environments. Captivating music, haunting sounds, ominous references to events and lore from other games (namely Drakengard / Drag-on Dragoon) and multiple endings that require replaying the game several times to see new content that recontextualises events… the whole experience was something that felt dense, deep and worthwhile exploring and contemplating.
My thoughts on the remake NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 are thus inevitably influenced by my nostalgia. However, it's not only my nostalgia for the game, but the time in my life when I first experienced it. The original and its remake provide two distinct points in my life that I can vividly compare and contrast. Though my life and my understanding of myself has changed a lot since then, I can still clearly recall the thoughts and feelings swirling around in my head back then in 2010. Revisiting the world of NieR is a special experience for me because of how much it feel like seeing old friends, and with them, my old self.
In case it's not obvious, there will be some mild spoilers for NieR below in the form of character discussion. I'm not going to describe the plot too much, but if you want to meet these characters for yourself, I recommend you stop here and go play the game. The original if possible, but Replicant is a worthy remake imo.
The main cast of NieR is a collection of 3 misfit friends. Three flawed, hurt and broken people trying to make things work in a world that seems indifferent at best and hostile at worst. The protagonist and player character is NieR. Either father (NieR Gestalt) or brother (NieR Replicant / Ver 1.22...) to the sickly Yonah, depending on what version of the game you play. He acts as the centre of the group, and its his determination to save Yonah that drives much of the main plot, at least on the ending A route.
Playing the original, Papa Nier seemed too gruff and grown up for me; I couldn’t put myself in his shoes, and I lacked the necessary reference points in my own life to understand or really care that deeply about his parental relationship to Yonah, which left his character feeling a little lacking in depth to me. Brother NieR from the original Japanese release of NieR Replicant and the remake seem to me like a much better fit for the story in game. The fact he doesn’t speak about his past makes more sense for a younger boy who doesn’t remember his parents and only has harsh memories of a struggle to survive. His relationships with Kainé, Weiss, Devola and Popola all make more sense to me for a young man who’s happy to have found friends, family and community in them, rather than the older Papa Nier who lacks the worldliness I’d expect of somebody his age. The change of personality across the time-skip also fits better for the younger Brother Nier, and is better reflected in how much his appearance changes. The time skip takes Papa Nier from 39 to 44, meaning it’s his clothes more than his appearance that change, but even then the most noticeable wardrobe modification is the addition of an eyepatch. Brother Nier goes from 16 to 21, growing from a short and cherub faced teenager into a tall young man with longer hair, a gaunt and frowning face from 5 years of battle, and a much darker, edgier outfit; abandoning his shorts and flowing mantle in favour of dark leathers and fabrics, accentuated by embroidered details, chains and black fur-lined thigh boots (a serve). Both characters become more sombre after the time skip, but the transition from plucky young boy to brooding young adult feels more stark than Papa Nier’s pivot from affable dad to grumpy pop.
I get the impression that Brother Nier was intended to be canon, and Papa Nier was essentially swapped in for the original release of Gestalt (the only version we saw in Europe), when he probably deserved unique dialogue and cutscenes to differentiate him from the young man of Replicant. Papa Nier is an interesting character, but Brother Nier’s naivety and saccharine lines about friendship and family seem hackneyed coming out of Papa Nier's mouth.
Emil on the other hand is a character I instantly identified with even in the original release. Emil is a shy, lonely and effeminate boy, mired in feelings of shame and guilt over who and what he is. Emil's eyes petrify anybody he looks at, choosing to live blindfolded and isolated for the safety of others. After he’s transformed into a living weapon, his body it altered, and his head turned into a moon-like orb with a sinister and unmoving rictus grin — as if painfully forcing himself to hide his feelings. This concept of hiding/concealing theme also reflected in his clothing, covering his body in a shawl that obscures his new skeletal form. His shame and disgust at his body were things that resonated with me in a simultaneously uncomfortable yet familiar way. At the time I first played Nier, I was really quite unhappy with a lot of things about myself. I was carrying a lot of internalised shame over my sexuality, as well as struggling to know how to cope with my feelings about gender. Emil’s feelings towards his own body was one of the first times in my life I’d ever felt truly seen by a game, and even a tiny bit understood. It was as if the game had put its hand on my shoulder and whispered “I know. I can’t help, but I know.” and that was an extremely powerful experience for me, one that I would struggle to communicate to others when talking glowingly about a game that most others thought was an extremely ropey hack and slash JRPG.
I'm extremely happy that the remake has chosen to include Emi's original dialogue lines at the wedding scene in the 2nd act. When Emil mistakes a remark about marriage as a proposal from Nier, he's quickly told to stop being weird before being left alone to puzzle his way though his unreciprocated feelings alone. This small change makes his sexuality a little more explicit in a way that was cut from the US and European releases. Part of what prompted me to write up my thoughts has been discovering this interview with Yoko Taro for Japanese news site Gadget Tsuushin, where he discusses Emil. Yoko Taro bizarrely suggests that Emil may be transgender.
(translation mine, so open to corrections. I’ve used ‘he’ for Emil because, whilst Japanese doesn’t use pronouns as often as English does, Emil himself uses ‘boku’, a masculine personal pronoun, to refer to himself in game.)
Question Is No 7. (Emil) really gay and in love with Nier?
Yoko Whether gay or not, [Emil] loves Nier. Looking at his words and actions, I think he’s transgender or something like that.
I’m not convinced Yoko Taro has really thought through what he’s saying here, but it does put Emil’s despair at what happens to his body into a more visceral context. This interview somewhat shocked me on first reading, especially given my own gender journey and having considered the possibility of being transgender myself. While I think Emil's envy of Fyra (the bride) at the wedding does fit into that context, personally I think I would hesitate to label Emil as transgender. Feelings of incongruence or dissatisfaction with your body aren’t exclusive to transgender people, and it feels especially strange to make this comment when asked about Emil’s feelings for Nier, as though being attracted to another man makes Emil less of a man. Emil's line about being jealously happy for Fyra is left ambiguous as to whether this is because Fyra is a girl, or because she's getting married to a man. Emil could want either, or both.
The final character in this troupe of misfits is Kainé. Kainé is crass, violent, and an absolute queen. When the player first meets her, she's living in exile (involuntarily, unlike Emil) outside her hometown of the Aerie. At first this is seems like it's because she's possessed by a shade, a ghostly entity that are the main enemies and antagonists for much of the game, however it's actually because Kainé is intersex. The game’s story handles this topic fairly sensitively, making it part of her character and backstory but never foregrounding it in a way that feels overwrought or too pointed. Both her intersex trait, and being possessed by a shade are factors that have led people to fear and distrust her. She lives as an outsider, and it's hard not to see her aggression and coarse language as a coping mechanism to make her abandonment by others seem less painful, as though it were a choice.
I was also born with an intersex condition. No the details aren't important here because mind your own business, but suffice it to say, I believe it's responsible for a great deal of self esteem issues relating to my body that I dealt with growing up. That said, my condition hasn’t really been a major part of how I consciously understand myself or relate to the world for most of my life (even though my mother suspects it might be the reason I’ve got gender feelings, lol), but learning more about my own condition has made me feel closer to Kainé as I've gotten older.
The main theme of Kainé’s story is not what her body is like, but rather the way she was treated because of it: regarded with fear and suspicion by other villagers. The source of that fear and mistrust are her conditions, but they’re not what define her; what defines Kainé is how she survives the world, how she mirrors its hostility back and stubbornly refuses to let it break her. Sadly, Kainé’s identity is only ever a source of pathos, as is the case for many intersex characters.
As I said, NieR handles this theme quite maturely overall. Intersex isn’t just something Kainé is or is allowed to be; she lives in a world where she's othered and discriminated against because of it. It’s a sad but unflinching parallel to the way interphobic discrimination operates in the real world. The real problems with Kainé’s portrayal come from factors surrounding how the developers conceived of her and sadly, how much disrespect she's shown in the remake.
(again translation mine, CW: intersex slurs)
Reporter Why is Kaine a futanari (hermaphrodite) character?
Yoko A female employee on the development team said, “Include a male heroine!”… this is where I ended up after playing around [with the idea].
It’s such a shame that queer and intersex characters end up being just a playground for cis-het creators to ‘play around’ with their own ideas about sex and gender, rather than crafting characters inspired by the thoughts and feelings of actual queer and intersex people.
In an interview published in Grimoire Nier, Yoko Taro stated that Kaine’s intersex condition was purposefully not dwelt upon. Reading from the fan translation of Grimoire Nier:
Did you intentionally not emphasise the hermaphrodite issue in the game? What were the reasons behind that?
Yoko To me, Kaine being a hermaphrodite wasn’t really a point of importance. Since people like that do exist in reality, we just don’t know about them.
As much as I admire Yoko Taro’s intention here, I just don’t think this approach works. Yoko avoids explicit commentary in his games, and while I appreciate that attitude to some extent, I just can’t say that it fully absolves any of the team from criticism. Especially given how the game treats Kainé.
Let’s just say it plainly — Kainé’s clothing is hypersexualised.
The justification given for such a gratuitously sexualised design is that, in response to being bullied for possessing masculine features as a child, adult Kainé wanted to emphasise her femininity, owning and being proud of what she feels she is rather than being told by others. Her clothing is her confrontationally flaunting her feminine features, as if daring the world to find a 'monster' like her sexually attractive. It’s better than Kojima’s ‘justification’ for Quiet’s attire (or lack thereof) in MGSV, but let’s be real, it’s excessive, and will hardly make anybody feel "ashamed of their words and deeds".
In addition, Kainé’s character model in-game has a bulge in her crotch. Coupled with her skimpy costume, it feels gross — largely because of the context that this character is being written and created by cishet and endosex people for a mostly cishet male audience. Kainé’s pride in her body and her identity just so happens to be expressed through what the audience are coincidentally most likely to find erotic or titillating. Kainé isn’t a real person, she’s a product of a design team, and every aspect of her has on some level been crafted by or for the male gaze, which means her hypersexual presentation feels like audience pandering rather than authentic self expression of a strong character. That’s why when I first played the original game, part of me felt guilty for admiring her as much as I did — it seemed like it wasn’t possible to see the woman underneath, only an objectified and exotic novelty.
I want to love her design because I feel the energy of wanting to take pride in your body, even flaunt it, despite the world telling you it’s something wrong, disgusting or broken, but the context stops any of this from feeling triumphant or liberating, and ends up just feeling leering and exploitative.
And on top of that, the remaster of NieR Replicant introduces a new trophy for looking up Kainé’s skirt 10 times.
They already did this in NieR Automata with 2B. It was juvenile and objectifying then, and it’s no different here.
These problematic aspects of Kainé’s design and the process that produced her as a character wouldn’t be so much of a problem if not for the the fact that she’s carrying a lot of weight: Kainé is a full 25% of intersex representation in games according to LGBTQ game archive. The other 3 are all from Elder Scrolls and are all demons. (Yeah, come at me Elder Strolls nerds, I called the daedra demons). Kainé herself can also be seen as ‘demonic’ owing to her shade possession.
Stories that use queerness or intersex traits as sources of pathos for characters, or assign intersex characteristics to demons/monsters don’t have to bad or harmful in and of themselves (many queer people find identifying with monsters to be cathartic, taking pride in the ways we are othered), but it’s a shame when those are the only stories that get told. The answer to this problem isn’t necessarily better representation, it’s more representation.
If there are more characters representing diverse or minoritised communities, then it doesn’t matter if individual portrayals end up awkward or problematic, because they won’t be shouldering the burden of representing an entire community. When there are only a few characters representing a whole demographic in media, then there’s a greater risk that those portrayals end up forming the entirety of an audience member’s presumptions and expectations of those types of people/characters.
Yoko Taro has put a lot of problematic stuff in his games… hell, there’s a lot more to cover in NieR alone… but I’ve been thinking a lot about Kaine as I play the remaster and feeling very conflicted about her. I want to love her. I admire the way she refused to be shamed into a corner, but instead meets the world punch for punch, mirroring its hostility back towards it. She’s a model of anger, strength and determination to survive that feels powerful and raw, and I think the fundamentals of her visual design are pretty good aside from being overly gratuitous.
I do have love for Yoko Taro’s storytelling and characters, and appreciate his attitude to inclusion, but the way both the game and its creators treat Kainé feels exploitative and grotesque (on that note, I strongly recommend avoiding any of the NieR short stories featuring Kainé).
One thing that I admire about the remaster is Ending E. I won’t spoil it for anybody, and can understand those who prefer the original Ending D, but in spite of myself after 12 years of gaining a deeper appreciation of myself, Ending E feels like less dour yet still bittersweet conclusion for these characters, the kind that in my most candid moments, I can admit to wanting for myself. One last embrace with friends before the world ends.
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