With the release of the YoRHa:Dark Apocalypse alliance raid in Final Fantasy XIV the other day, the appearance of the white 2Pーas she is now canonically knownーhas stirred up continued conversation regarding what exactly that “P” in her name could possibly stand for.
First of all, when 2B was originally added as a playable character in SoulCalibur VI, she was merely called “2B”…including her 2nd player pallet swap white version. There was no specific or official name for the white version since, as we all know about fighting games, the 2nd player color swap is only to help differentiate between same characters on the screen, should both the 1st and 2nd player choose to play the same character. However, fans began calling the white version of 2B by “2P”, the name stuck and SQEX later released the white version Bring Arts figure as just that: 2P.
Yesterday, Twitter user Jason X (@envinyon) revived a snippet from an article by SRK that commented on an interview with Dengeki and NieR:Automata development team for the collaboration with Soul Callibur VI. More specifically, though, we’re talking about Yoko Taro’s comments in this interview.
On a general level, the writer for SRK did a decent job of conveying the message from the lengthy interview, but instead of using the original source from Dengeki, it seems like they used a 3rd party account of the matter originally in Japanese. Suffice it to say, there were a few bumps in the road.
▶︎ Yoko says! The P Stands for Panasonic!
Note: “Ryokutya” is an alternate romanization of “Ryokucha,” which commonly translates to “green tea.” Referring to the owner of this blog as a male individual named “Ryo” is done out of mere convenience and serves no other purpose.
There were a couple issues with the text attachment, which was an excerpt from the SRK article.
- “While seemingly a joke” — This implies that it sounded like a joke but was actually a masked truth.
- “Taro later concludes that the P does stand for that.” — This affirms the previous statement that even though it sounded like a joke, it’s actually true.
- “…he mentions how “Panasonic” means…” — This is using an undefined pronoun. The previous time the pronoun “he” was used it referred to Taro, as shown above in point 2; however, assuming this “he” also refers to Taro would be inaccurate. This portion was actually part of Ryokutya’s personal editorial on his own blog.
Without citing the source of the article clipping, it wasn’t readily known what they were referring. After a quick Google search, there appeared to be only a single hit for this excerpt, which turned out to be an article written by Franz “d3v” Co for shoryuken.com on November 29, 2018, roughly a day after the initial release of the Dengeki article.
So then, what’s the hang up?
The problem arrises from the mischaracterization of Ryokutya’s original blog post, which was essentially a second-hand account after reading the article. Without directly utilizing the original article and instead using a 3rd party’s personal account as fact, SRK’s telephone game clearly went awry somewhere along the line.
So, by now, I think it’s clear that SRK took Ryo’s article as a complete review of the original article even though it also included editorial comments spliced in. Without any regard to this, we’re left with misleading information that the “P” in 2P stands for “Panasonic” as stated by Yoko.
But anyone who knows Yoko on a personal, professional, or even fan level should know how tongue-in-cheek he tends to be. He is a master troll. He loves sarcasm and this can easily be confused with a straight truth. His word is massively important to us fans, but we need to view his comments with a grain of salt.
He, himself, told us not to believe anything he says. A world of contradictions exists within a single man.
▶︎ The Word of Yoko Says…
For a closer look at the segment of the interview where Yoko mentions Panasonic as a joke, here is the actual passage directly from the page on Dengeki Online.
At this point in time, there is no official YoRHa Type P designation; however, I seem to recall Yoko stating that there is a type for every letter of the alphabet even if he hasn’t thought of them all yet (this needs a citation!! I can’t remember where I heard this and I can’t seem to find anything about it, so I may have dreamt it up from this tweet).
Whether this memory is accurate or not, it’s absolutely within the realm of possibility for Yoko to create a new P Type model in retrospect specifically for the YoRHa:Dark Apocalypse story. If that is the case, then what P possibilities can you think of?
▶︎ What do you think the P in “2P” stands for?
If we’re going off of the already known YoRHa model types, it will likely begin with a P and end in an R, no more than 8 letters.
- Pacifier
- Paladin
- Panzer
- Paradox
- Passenger
- Preceptor
- Power <—- Saito mentioned this one!
- Prancer
- Prayer
- Predator
- Programmer
- Protector
- Punisher
So, long story short, there’s a ton of hype whenever Yoko or NieR is involved. There are going to be jokes thrown around from time to time, but we need to be a little careful not to mistake a reported joke for the truth and then spread that misinformation to others, who likewise perceive it as fact.
Maybe in the end, it doesn’t matter either way. As long as there is HYPE, who cares, hm?
