DESIGN NOTES

This hypothetical narrative branch occurs at the beginning of route C of NieR: Automata, which supposes that 9S lands on the opposite side of the planet when 2B sends his flight unit away. It also supposes that 10H manages to land within the same area, escaping from the moon without learning much about YoRHa before getting there.

9S: I wanted him in particular to look very scrappy, like he isn’t taking care of himself beyond what’s necessary to survive. His face has the metallic scaling indicating logic virus infection, and I’ve subverted the 2B arm replacement by giving him a machine arm to signify his unhealthy fixation with machines.

10H: I tried to derive her design heavily from trendy 2003 fashion to express her fascination with the humans she has read so much about. Her first design iteration, in particular, is a reference to Yonah from NieR Replicant/Gestalt.

Devola & Popola: I approached them from the outset as a pair with similar designs, so I explored each iteration with the idea of expressing the same basic outfit design differently based on the character. Their final designs are a twist on their Replicant/Gestalt designs, which have been reinterpreted to be more like leather catsuits to feel more edgy and modern. I locked in on the hairstyle I wanted for Popola immediately; it’s my way of integrating Replicant Popola’s gentle waves with Automata Popola’s pin-straight asymmetry. Devola’s hair, meanwhile, is largely the same as her canon iterations, but I have her missing an eye as both a nod to Devola often being pretty doomed & a nod to the franchise’s recurring “three-eyed twins” motif.

Machine Nier: I had to stay pretty on-model with Nier’s design as though this were more of a skin than another character. Still, I wanted to have it read as machine (even if the characters of Adam and Eve look very humanoid), so I took the ball-jointed approach with no artificial skin on top. This also serves to imply this character is much older than Adam and Eve, suggesting that the machines first sought to recreate the proverbial “world-ender” before taking an interest in humans themselves. As for the outfit, all iterations were based around a moth wing motif, which is a reference to the Shadowlord character and to Nier’s unused NieR: Reincarnation costumes.

Props: Generalized exploration into the remains of human civilization, abandoned/retrofitted machine parts and weaponry, and environmental details.