Thoughts on NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139…
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 structure of the game is partly to blame, with dozens of side-quests, characters, environments and multiple endings that see you replaying the game to see new content that recontextualises events… the whole experience was something that felt dense, deep and worthwhile exploring and contemplating.
Replaying it recently, 12 years later in the form of NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… has been a really nostalgic experience, providing 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 has been a special experience for me this time because of how much it let me revisit myself.
Some mild spoilers for NieR below in the form of character discussion. If you want to meet these characters for yourself, I recommend you stop here and go play the game if possible.
Back in 2010, one of the major draws of the game for me was the characters. This collection of flawed and broken people trying to make things work really resonated with me as I saw aspects of myself in them.
That said, for the most part, player character Nier (father) 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 his relationship to and with Yonah (his daughter), which left his character feeling a little lacking in depth to me. My impression is that Nier (brother) from the original Japanese release of NIER (NieR Replicant) is a much better fit for the story. 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 Kaine, Weiss, Devola and Popola all make more sense to me for a young man who’s happy to have found family and community in them, rather than the older Father 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 pure black fur (and those boots are 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 release of Gestalt, 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 saccharine lines about friendship and family coming out of his mouth seem hackneyed.
Kaine was a character I had much more complex feelings about. I loved her bold, brash personality and while her aesthetic design felt a little too fan-servicey, I grew to admire her a lot, even seeing her as something quasi-aspirational by the end of the game. However, her story had a lot going on that I couldn’t quite identify with at the time, and due entirely to my own internalised feelings of shame and disgust at myself, it felt slightly wrong to admire her as much as I did. We’ll get back to that later though.
Emil on the other hand is a character I instantly identified with. Emil is a shy and effeminate boy, mired in feelings of shame and guilt over who and what he is. After he’s transformed into a living weapon, his body takes on a skeletal form with a sinister and unmoving rictus grin — as if painfully forcing himself to hide his feelings. His shame and disgust at his body felt like an echo of my own feelings towards mine. At that time I was really quite unhappy with a lot of things about myself. I carried a lot of internalised shame over my sexuality, as well as my femininity and crossdressing. Emil’s struggles to accept his 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.
Replaying the game now in 2022, I’ve fallen in love with Emil’s character all over again, especially with the inclusion of his original dialogue lines at the wedding. When he mistakes a remark about marriage as a proposal from Nier, he is quickly told to stop being weird before being left alone to puzzle his way though his unreciprocated feelings of romantic attraction. This small change makes his sexuality a little more explicit in a way that was cut from the US and European releases. What’s been interesting for me is that years later - now that I can understand Japanese - I’ve found some very interesting insights on the character from this interview Yoko Taro gave for Japanese news site Gadget Tsuushin. 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 very different context. This interview somewhat shocked me on first reading, especially given my own gender journey and having entertained the possibility of being transgender myself. However, 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.
One thing that really surprised me though, was how much I found myself relating to Kaine this time around. To put it bluntly, Kaine 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. Kaine is also possessed by a shade, a ghostly entity that are the main enemies and antagonists for much of the game. Both of these factors lead people to fear or distrust her, and mean she lives as an outside, never able to fully integrate with others because of what she is.
I was also born with an intersex condition. No I’m not going into the details because mind your own business, but suffice it to say, it may be responsible for a great deal of self esteem issues I felt around my body as a child which stayed with me well into my teenage years and adulthood. 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 knwoing this about myself has changed the way I think about sex and gender — how they mediate my relationship to the world, and its relationship to me.
The main theme of Kaine’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 defines her; what defines Kaine is how she survives the world. Sadly, Kaine’s identity is only ever a source of pathos and never fully reaches pride.
NieR handles this theme quite maturely overall. Intersex isn’t just something Kaine is or is allowed to be; she lives in a world where she is 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 Kaine’s portrayal come from factors surrounding her creation and how she is handled in the game — an issue made specifically worse in the remaster.
According to this interview, the design brief for Kaine was “a male heroine”. Choosing an intersex woman as the manifestation of that is… not great. It feels a little insulting to the character, whilst also projecting binaristic thinking and expectations onto her.
(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 Kaine.
Let’s just say it plainly — Kaine’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 Kaine wanted to emphasise her femininity, owning and being proud of what she feels she is rather than being told by others. It’s better than Kojima’s ‘justification’ for Quiet’s attire (or lack thereof) in MGSV, but let’s be real, it’s excessive.
In addition, Kaine’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. Kaine’s pride in her body and her identity just so happens to be expressed solely through what the audience are likely to find erotic or titillating. Kaine 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 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 it 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 Kaine’s skirt 10 times.
*sigh*
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 Kaine’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: Kaine 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). Kaine 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 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 creator treat Kaine feels exploitative and grotesque (on that note, I strongly recommend avoiding any of the NieR short stories featuring Kaine).
One thing that I’m really glad that the remastered Replicant adds, is Ending E. I won’t spoil it for anybody, and can understand those who prefer the original Ending D, but after 12 years of gaining a deeper appreciation of myself, Ending E feels like a well deserved, albeit still bittersweet conclusion for these characters, the kind that in my most candid moments, I can admit to wanting for myself. One last embrace before the world ends.
