* Image is for illustrative purposes only.NieR:Automata
ニーア オートマタ
A 2017 action RPG developed by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix. Katana-inspired weapons appear, including 2B's "Virtuous Contract," and the work is known for fusing the design of Japanese swords with a near-future science-fiction world.
Description
Overview
NieR:Automata is an action RPG developed by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix, released on February 23, 2017. Its director is Yoko Taro. The setting is the year 11945 AD, a near future in which a proxy war continues between the machine lifeforms that invaded Earth and YoRHa, a squadron of humanoid android soldiers that fights as their proxy. The story unfolds across multiple playthroughs through three protagonists: combat android 2B, scanner android 9S, and A2, who appears later in the story.
Katana-Inspired Weapons
The game's melee weapons fall into four types (small swords, large swords, combat bracers, and spears), and players can freely combine the different types in battle. Among its features is that it offers several uchigatana-type weapons that evoke the Japanese katana, including the slender small sword "Virtuous Contract," which is 2B's default equipment; a large sword with a white blade said to have been carried by a samurai of the East; and the small sword with a black blade, which is 9S's default equipment. The silhouettes of the blades and the designs of the hilts show a form strongly modeled on actual Japanese swords.
Fusion of Japanese Style and the Future
By combining Japanese-style sword designs with a near-future science-fiction setting and an existentialist narrative structure, the work has been highly praised by action game fans and science fiction fans in Japan and abroad, and it was later adapted into an anime. The setting, in which androids that are human in form but not human wield weapons modeled on the swords of humanity's traditional culture, also resonates with the story's theme of inheriting a human culture that has been lost.
Real Swords Featured
Uchigatana
The standard form of Japanese sword worn in the belt with the edge facing up, used by samurai from the Muromachi period onward. It spread widely because its rationale allowed a direct transition from drawing to cutting, and it became the representative form of the Japanese sword thereafter. Many of the swords used by 2B and 9S in NieR:Automata are designed around the slender, straight silhouette of this uchigatana.
Koshirae
A term for the complete set of external fittings attached to a blade, including the hilt, tsuba, and scabbard. Even with the same blade form, the design of the koshirae expresses its owner's individuality, status, and purpose. The way several androids in the game each carry swords with different designs echoes the Japanese sword culture, in which the koshirae has expressed the individuality of each sword.
Shirasaya
A scabbard and hilt made only of unlacquered white wood with no lacquer or decoration. Separate from the koshirae used in combat, it is a simple form for storing and preserving a blade, and its appearance without superfluous ornament symbolizes the beauty of "plainness." The simple, pure design of the white-bladed sword that 2B wields in the work recalls the aesthetic sensibility of this shirasaya.
This page is intended to introduce Japanese sword culture and is not affiliated with any of the works mentioned.