▲ If this video is blocked in your region, try this one instead.
The new music video to amazarashi’s NieR:Automata theme song “命にふさわしい” (Inochi ni Fusawashii / Deserving of Life) was just uploaded earlier this afternoon. amazarashi posted a lyrical video of the song to their Web site last week for a 24 hour period only before quickly removing it again. This time, however, you can get a full sense of the scope of this song as it relates to the atmosphere of the story.
The theme of this song is:
What’s so important that’s worth giving up your life for?
■ The Story in the Music Video
- Takes place in the year 11944
- Comparatively, Yoko Taro’s picture book takes place a year earlier in 11943.
- The world has been taken over by Bio-machines
- In a factory largely left in ruins, a single Bio-machine works to destroy a seemingly endless supply of dolls from long ago
- Why must the dolls be destroyed?
- This story will link together with the shock of Yoko Taro’s picture book of the same name, “Inochi ni Fusawashii” aka “Deserving of Life”
■ The Making of the video
- A total of 200 dolls were used in the filming of the music video
- various methods were used to destroy the dolls:
- drilled
- crushed
- burned
- imploded
- severed
- exploded
- etc.
- All of the dolls were designed and created by Yoshida Ryo at Doll Space Pygmalion.
- Yoshida Ryo is also an instructor at Doll Space Pygmalion in Jiyuugaoka in Tokyo, offering free trial lessons throughout the week.
- Supervised by Yoshida, he painted all of the dolls to match the atmosphere of the NieR:Automata world
- A doll of 2B appears at the end of the video
- The dolls used for photography were donated by the “Kotobuki House“
I took a bunch of photos from the video and will continue updating this page with more information as I have time to work on it, but here are just a couple interesting things that I’d like to point out first.
▲ This shot shows multiple scenes that appears to be from the game, but it also lists a bunch of dates including the following:
- August 20, 11944
- August 27, 11944
- August 29, 11944
- August 30, 11944
- September 5, 11944
- September 11, 11944
- September 22, 11944
- September 26, 11944
- September 27, 11944
The year 11944 is the second to last year of the 14th Machine (Automata?) War. Each of these video clips that are stored in the Bio-machine’s Battle Log cache also lists a running time stamp that varies between a couple hours to 20, 30, and even over 40 hours. Could this actually depict the running time within the game itself?
▲ What may be important to note here is that this particular Bio-machine is not a battle type robot but is rather designed to operate the controls and oversee the demolition of (hopefully) dead androids. It also has a “stand alone” type AI, which could be why it began to malfunction through out the video.
Lastly, the Bio-machine’s have cameras for eyes, as you can see in their schematic designs.
You can see in the following image that the boot up system checks the status of each of the eyes separately.
This is also somewhat reminiscent of P-33 aka Beepy from “The Fire of Prometheus” novella where he awakens to find many of this systems down, including the use of his “main cameras” aka eyes.
▲ Assignment: Remove the cause of system error
▶︎ Object: Destroy all dolls
As it was in Drakengard, the term “doll” is often used synonymously with “android”. It’s just so happens that this video actually uses real dolls to further extend the metaphor.
Now, as the Bio-machine Operator is demolishing the dolls in all sorts of manners… a Critical Error begins to flash on the screen: Detected Emotion Matrix
And it’s eyes flash from their normal red to a light green:
▲ This reminds me a lot of the Operators from the YoRHa stage play, where they witness the horrors that the battle type androids have to endure, so much that they begin to question their own superiors. It is only after they undergo a special “check up” that erases part of their memory so they are no longer burdened by such ethical or emotional questions. This shot of the Bio-machine beginning to be plagued by emotion may be similar in this regard. It sees the torture and slaughter being done to so many androids that… it’s beginning to question its programming and/or orders.
And then a familiar figure appears…
▲ It certainly looks like 2B and I’m sure we’re supposed to wonder of fear that it could be her… but if this music video is anything like what they described of the picture book that comes with the special edition CD, then this has no direct connection to the game in terms of characters (for example, the illustration of a similarly looking character to 9S with a hat is not actually 9S).
▲ Here the Bio-machine is being affected by emotion even more…
Until something begins to forcefully install the “PATCH (1728)”, quite possibly against the semi-awakened Bio-machine’s will.
This particular number was shown briefly earlier in the video, too:
▲ There are a lot of interesting things in this image. First of all is the writing on the wall that reads, “REMEMBER THE 1728”. Given the image above, I think we can assume this is the designation of the specific patch that will purge a machine’s system of any errant emotion.
On the back wall on the right side, we see an interesting warning poster that reads:
WARNING
Care for infection of ERROR 1728
Do not love dolls
Dolls have no spirt.
Dolls have no spirt.
It’s very curious that any such poster would be displayed in a facility run by Bio-machines…
So, anyway, this Patch 1728 completes installing, the Bio-machine’s eyes return to their normal red color, it presses a button, and the doll resembling 2B is CRUSHED! ;_;
Here are the lyrics that were used in the Closed Caption in the secondary link above:
“Deserving of Life”
I met someone I liked, If we instinctively choose warmth instead of the cold There are those who snarl that we’re overreaching If you need a reason to push forward For the sun to rise and dry my spilled tears It’s worth destroying the world for the warmth I seek I made a friend, we shared ideals We kept searching for something, to replace what we’d lost It was worth deceiving the world, for what we had To protect what I loved, I broke many things That loss, worth giving your heart for
Romaji by Rekka Alexiel suki na hito ga dekita muishiki ni erabu noga mi no hodo shirazuto mae ni susumu tameni koboreta namida wo jouhatsusaseru sekai wo horobosu ni michisugara nani ga atta? kokoro sae kokoro sae tomodachi ga dekita uragiraretatte ii to nakushita nanika no umeawase wo sagashite bakari iru kedo sekai wo azamuku ni michisugara nani ga atta? kokoro sae kokoro sae aishita mono wo mamoritai yue ni sono hahan wo soko de shindemo ii to kokoro wo nakusu no ni michisugara nani ga atta? kokoro sae kokoro sae hikari to kage hikari to kage |
Sources: amazarashi | Dengeki | Famitsu