SINoALICE x DOD3: Harmonic Interference Chapter Introduction

There are quite a few interesting things that are included in the chapter introduction for the new SINoALICE x DOD3 chapter “Harmonic Interference*“.

* I have an alternate translation for this below…!


First off we have a couple lines by Zero:

  • “Mikhail, I will save you at all costs!”

There are a couple keywords that we can see in this shot:

  • The Wall of Jericho (エリコの壁) – This is the wall that was built around Shinjuku after the 6.12 incident to keep the White Chlorination Syndrome from spreading.
  • Will of God (神の意志) – If you take the largest kanji bit that covers the majority of the screen here and add these together, it looks like 神 aka “god”. The circle next to it is likely part of the hiragana の needed to complete this keyword phrase: 神の意志 or the “Will of God”.
  • Maso (魔素) – This is the so-called “demonic element” that comes from the Red Dragon’s remains after it is cursed by the Mother Angel aka the Queen Beast.
  • The Origin (始祖) – These jumbled kanji bits had me stumped for awhile, but thanks to a comment on Twitter, I was able to fix this part. This term can be translated as the “founder” or “origin”…It is likely referencing god as the creator of all or it could be talking about Maso and how it’s involved in the very existence of the Utautai.

There’s also a direct connection to NieR:Automata hidden here. See the text wrapped around in a circle?

You can see that it says ポッド042ポッド153デポルポボル (Pod042 Pod153 Devola Popola) listed there. The text wraps in a circle, so it’s unclear what order it’s meant to be. A couple frames after the above images, the text in this circle starts glitching out, replacing legible words with meaningless garbage.

  • Distortion in time… the great Apocalypse

  • The starting point, the Utautai

  • The Will of God

  • Special Weapons Organization (特殊兵器群) – Not sure what this is referring to, either. I don’t believe this term has been used in any of the previous titles of NieR or Drakengard… But, I get really weird vibes from this…such as something from KimiShini perhaps?? The experimental students at the Special Abilities School could be considered a sort of “special weapon” in development.
  • Mikhail
  • Dragon – This could be a stand-alone reference to the race of “noble dragons” that were forcefully transported into the Drakengard world in 856… Or it could be coupled with the aforementioned Special Weapons Organization since a new weapon was designed to support the conflict in the Kingdom of Night in 6230.
  • [A]ccord
  • Gishi[n]
  • [Ki]The letters in brackets line up vertically to spell “Anki”.

  • Falldown – This is probably a figurative reference to nuclear meltdown in terms of the multiple timelines. Or maybe it’s meant to be reversed as in the word “downfall” aka the inevitable failure of something…something like time and all of its various branches.

Here we see a bunch of items from the overall timeline:

  • EID_M0010 – Branch A, Chapter Zero, Verse 1 (March 4, 999)
    Zero and Michael storm the Cathedral City.
  • EID_M231
  • EID_M321
  • EID_M332
  • EID_M431
  • EID_M1510 – Zero, Mikhail, and Octa…
  • EID_M2310 – Branch D, Verse 1 (March 19, 1000)
    Zero and the gang search the Kingdom of Mountains
  • EID_M3210 Branch B, Verse 1 (April 1, 1000) 
    Zero and the gang search the Kingdom of Forests
  • EID_M3320 Branch D, Verse 4 (April 4, 1000)
    Zero kills Five.
  • EID_M4310 Branch D, Verse 5 (April 14, 1000)
    Zero and the gang arrive in the Kingdom of Sands
  • EID_M5320 Branch D, Last Verse (April 22, 1000) 
    Mikhail and Zero battle against the “Flower” and destroy it

More specific dates:

  • 20
  • 99
  • 200
  • 997 – Usubeni (Zero) dies.
  • 998 – Suddenly, contact from each ruling lord is lost.
  • 998 – One creates Brother One
  • 1000 – The Utautai are destroyed.
  • 2003 – A strange being appears above Shinjuku.
  • 2004
  • 2008
  • 2010 – The “origin”…
    The word they use here is “始祖” which appears to be used for the Red Dragon after it had been affected by the curse of the Queen Beast… causing Maso to appear.
  • 2016 – The drug “Luciferase” was completed to delay the progression of the “White Chlorination Syndrome”.
  • 2026 – Experimental Weapon No7 (Emil) is developed.
  • 2033 – Relapsed Gestalts (Shades) are…
  • 2034 – “Project Gestalt”

The next shot of the timeline shows a lot of glitching as much of the lines are nothing but gibberish:

  • The Great Apocalypse
    About 15 years have passed since that battle.

    A mysterious disaster occurred on the Iberian Peninsula in the year 856.

  • It is our origin, the harmonizer of the world.

  • Harmonic Interference or… Accord’s Interference

It might be important to mention here that, according to the DOD3 Complete Guide, the name for Accord is taken from French which translates to “harmony”. More specifically, the Japanese that is given is 調和 or 和音. Notice, that 調和 (chouwa) appears in this chapter title. Therefore, it may be better to translate it as Accord… maybe Accord’s Interference.

Lastly, it’s interesting how blood is used in this trailer. First, we see a small drop falling in the darkness from which the first couple of keywords appear. The camera zooms out while spinning a couple times before we’re engulfed in a pool of blood as the keyword “Falldown” appears on the screen. Bright, yellowish petals begin to race to the top of the screen that makes it feel like we are falling. Then, from the top of the screen again, comes a splatter of blood that reaches throughout the timeline. The red blood stains slowly turn black the further we fall until the text of the timeline begin to glitch. Then finally the blood splatter hits the center of the screen where the chapter title “Harmonic Interference” appears.

We know the blood of the Utautai is far reaching and likely has ties to the “Flower” entity that wants to destroy the world. Perhaps this chapter will explore yet another unknown branch in this tangled mess of timelines.

SINoALICE x DOD3 Collaboration

The other day, Square Enix released a preview for the new SINoALICE x DOD3 collaboration. Here are a couple things that we know about the details:

  • Zero, One, Accord will be playable. Upon logging in, all players will receive Zero (Breaker) as a gift.
  • DOD3 character designer Fujisaka Kimihiko has illustrated a new character for the collaboration, but the name is blurred out in the video. That being said, if you pause the video just right, you can clearly see that it says:
    「少年ミハイル」= Boy Mikhail
  • Yoko Taro has penned the story for these collaboration stages, so prepare some tissues…

Lastly, here are some photos from the PV:

 

Zero, One, and Accord will be playable characters!

New original character design by Fujisaka Kimihiko!
This is the young human form for Mikhail!
He is somewhat of a 4th “secret” character in terms of marketing.

If you look closely at the center of the “ribcage” looking part of the dragon design, you can see there’s actually a heart inside of it…!
It looks like the “red lightning” is also originating from the heart.

New original story penned by Yoko Taro!

Voice actors Uchida Maaya and Toyama Mao reprise their respective
roles as Zero and Mikhail.

Um… That’s Five’s glyph…

 

Zero: This world is surely my curse.

Chapter Title: Harmonic Interference
Available on March 26

Lastly on a couple of the screens we can see some of the story text. It’s really difficult to make the second half of it out, but so far this is what I can read. If anyone can help flesh it out some more, please let me know!

Japanese:
最初に感じられたのは痛み。
呼ぼうとする喉からは抜かれた空気だけが、
というか、何がどうなってるんだ?
右手には剣が握りしめられて、
左手を見ると……
金属の甲冑が く 光っていて。
私に私の感情と記憶
していくのを ていた。
そうだ。
僕が、私ーーは  と戦っていたんだ。
ーー友。
なくてはならない、ゼロ
English:
The first thing I could feel was pain.
As I tried to call out, only air escaped my lips.
Besides that, what’s going on?
A sword lies firmly in my right hand,
Whereas when I look at my left hand……
Some metallic armor glistens brilliantly.
My thoughts and feelings,
???
That’s right.I, I was– fighting.
??? friend.
I must… ???
Zero

Old World Connections: The Cathedral City, the Mercurius Gate, and more!

Updated: August 7, 2022

I was just discussing how DOD3 connects to DOD1 through Ending E that’s revealed in the DOD3 Story Side Novel with the publisher of this YouTube video, so I felt another wave of energy to delve back into the lore on the Cathedral City and its connection to the so-called “Old World”.

To do this, I’m largely going to take a closer look at some of the chapters of the Utahime Five prequel manga, so if you haven’t read that yet, please beware of spoilers as you go further down the page.

I will post several pages from the manga that are related to this topic here so we can get a better look at what lore revelations are revealed therein.

Continue reading

NieR Display at Tower Records in Shinjuku

Just a couple days ago, the official Twitter account for the Tower Records store in Shinjuku posted a photo of their nice display featuring many of the NieR soundtracks and more to strike up interest in the release of NieR:Automata. They even made an awesome Emil cardboard mask for people to take selfies with!

Pretty cool, right? So, of course, I had to go check it out for myself! Here’s what the display looked like:

Here’s a closer look at the items that were featured in this display:

NieR Tribute Album -echo-

Piano Collections – NieR Gestalt & Replicant

NieR Gestalt & Replicant – 15 Nightmare & Arrange Tracks

NieR Music Concert & Talk Live Blu-ray

Drag-on Dragoon 3 Original Soundtrack

NieR:Automata new theme song collaboration with the band amazarashi (Akita Hiromu) includes an illustration book specifically designed by Yoko Taro. Reservations for this release scheduled for February 22nd are currently open!

And just like the image that was uploaded to the Tower Records Twitter account, they left a really nice Emil mask next to the display for people to us in their own selfies. xD

Here’s a few pics of insane me using it:


NieR Tribute Album -echo-
Piano Collections – NieR Gestalt & Replicant
NieR Gestalt & Replicant – 15 Nightmare & Arrange Tracks
NieR Music Concert & Talk Live Blu-ray
Drag-on Dragoon 3 Original Soundtrack
Tower Records Shinjuku – Twitter

Speculation: The Signs are in the Eye

Sometime after SQEX posted the first of five blog posts sharing more information on the NieR:Automata Black Box Edition, Yoko Taro posted something interesting on Twitter regarding the emblem printed on the front of the box.

“Our PR rep really fussed over the NieR limited edition box. Actually, the designer has a hidden design somewhere in the emblem printed here, and that, we’ll discuss some other time……” ーYoko Taro

 

So, that got me thinking some more and imagining what could be “hidden” in this design. When I first saw the emblem or glyph, I thought it resembled an eye that possibly has a tear streaming down from it. I also thought it resembled a lot like a blooming flower, reminiscent of the Flower entity from DOD3, and we all know that damn thing could still be lurking out there somewhere, clinging onto dear life.

Another thing I wondered about was whether or not this particular design was borrowed from or maybe merged some of the glyphs from the previous games. So for that purpose, let’s take another look at the main glyphs.

glyphs

Here, we can see that Zero’s glyph was clearly made in retrospect to resemble Caim’s own: a blossoming flower with Caim’s dragon-esque glyph emerging from within. As for the other Utautai glyphs from DOD3, they all have a uniform circular structor to the design with varying aspects setting them apart from each other. The one the intrigues me the most in relation to the new NieR:Automata glyph is One’s. It shares almost the same, exact spikes as Nowe’s glyph with a total of 6 protruding “wing” spikes (Nowe’s seems to have an additional 3 on the “tail”).

dod3-glyph

I also thought that, overall, the emblem resembled the flower “dash” that was used in the DOD3 logo, as seen above. If you rotate the image 90 degrees to the right and imagine an eye sprouting from the center of the flower, I think that depicts the basics of the design.

dod3-glyph-flower

This particular head-on look of an eye reminded me of the graphics from DOD3 that represented each Utautai:

glyph-eyesglyph-nier-automata

Stepping a little further from the graphical design, there are 5 prongs at the top of the “eye” to create apparent eye lashes. The number 5… there were 5 additional Utautai born from the flower due to Zero’s offensive action.

Oh, and the YoRHa Bunker also displays a nice emblem, too:

bunker-glyph

This glyph also shares the same five prongs that appear in the “eye” glyph above, but this one has three swords, standing tall and straight. I don’t have anything much to say on this yet, but… the number three brings to mind the original 3 YoRHa from the beginning days of the YoRHa endeavor in connection with MONACA and DearStage. It was these three vocalists that sang the boss battle themes on the DOD3 soundtrack. You can find more information on this here.

So what do you think? Could this be a clue that actively connects both game series? We know they exist in the same world at different points in the overall timeline, but… could they be more entangled than that? More related in each other’s future–and past–than we were initially lead to believe?

Or is it all yet more smoke and mirrors…?