Thread by @aitaikimochi

The NieR Automata 5th Anniversary Fan Festival 12022 event was amazing! I went to the Day 1 show, and here's my thread of topics they covered, song list, and a short summary of the various drama readings by the voice actors and actresses! 🧵 #NieRAutomata

NieR Fanfest event was separated into three segments:
-dev talk with Yoko Taro, Yosuke Saito, Takahisa Taura (Platinum Games Dev), and Ito Saki (Nier Replicant 1.22 Director)
-seiyuu talk and light-hearted drama reading
-concert + original story for NieR Automata AND Replicant

The event had a lot of stuff to see around the concert hall itself, such as NieR Musical costumes on display as well as flowers sent in from various companies to congratulate NieR Automata on its 5th Anniversary.

dev talk also included Okabe (composer for the series).
The event starts off with a random video of Yoko Taro and co. drinking at an izakaya and getting a bit drunk while talking about the series and what to do for the 5th anniversary event lol

Oh one really cool thing about the event is that all the Emil light sticks that guests bought were controlled by the event hall, so the colors would resonate with the music or the story that was being acted out on stage.

dev talk was mostly yoko taro trolling other staff and yosuke saito saying 'oh would you look at that, we're running out of time! we gotta go to the next segment.' they also showed us pictures from their recent trip to hokkaido where they had 4 people who had to share 2 beds lol

Saito was showing us pictures of the bed and Yoko Taro wanted to elaborate, but Saito said "ohhh darn, we're out of time now! time to go to the next segment!!!" and this gag was done a few times, which was super funny lol

the two announcements they made were about the NieR Automata series surpassing 7million sales and NieR Replicant surpassing 1.7million. After the dev talk, the seiyuu came on and acted out two skits while in character, and the skits were extremely random lol

the first skit was a fairy tale story that included 2B, A2, Brother Nier, Yonah, Grimwoire Weiss, and Pod 042 and 153. Grimwoire Weiss and Pod 153 are voiced by the same actor, so there was some times where he overlapped his lines, which was really funny.

basic premise of the skit is Grimwoire Weiss is the Magic Mirror and Brother Nier and Yonah are a Prince and Princess of some...kingdom. Brother Nier asks Weiss who is the fairest in the land, and Weiss answers Red Riding Hood 2B and the wolf A2. Nier gets furious it's not Yonah

Emil comes to assist them to hunt down 2B and A2, and if they can destroy those two, then Yonah would be the fairest in the land. there's art of all the characters in their respective outfits (Nier and Yonah as royalty, 2B as red riding hood, A2 as a wolf, Emil as a hunter).

Emil ends up shooting down 2B and A2, they "die," but Yonah says she never even wanted to be fairest in the land. Weiss (or Pod, i forgot lol) says the only way to save them is with a kiss. Nier says he doesn't want to do it so Emil kisses both 2B and A2, bringing them to life.

Emil is super embarrassed because that was his first kiss ever, but at least 2B and A2 are alive lol? and they lived happily ever after???

The next segment is a gag reel where all the actors and actresses voice a cutscene but the scenario is Nier forgot the ticket to the event.

It was really funny, I remember one segment where it was a scene with Yonah sharing a cookie with Nier and says "hey if i give you half of my ticket, you can come inside right?" and Brother Nier says "it doesn't work like that T_T" lol

The first half of the dev talk + the Red Riding hood fairy tale thing took I think about an hour, then came intermission. The next segment was the actual concert + the real drama reading about an original story with both Automata and Replicant characters.

Songs were interspersed with narrative for the story. Basically 2B wakes up after the events of Automata in an unknown world. She ends up running into Nier as he also for some reason ends up in this world. A2 runs into Emil and Yonah, and the two groups try to find a way out.

The story and the concert part itself was over 2 hours long, and it was a very long and interesting original story. I guess it's canon? Long story short, the world they ended up in was created by their memories. The whole time 2B is trying to find 9S as he was lost to them.

In the end of the drama reading, 2B sacrifices herself as she finds that the virus that she was infected with did not fully disappear. Her final words were "thank you, Nines..." that appears on the large screen while they play Weight of the World and the audience cries lol.

today's original story will supposedly continue tomorrow through 9S's side of the story as 9S's VA was not present in today's show. I'm very curious as to how this story wraps up because the fact that the Automata crew and Replicant crew worked together was mindblowing lol

Here's a list of the songs that I remember they played. There was also an amazing medley sung by the three singers that ended with all three of them singing Weight of the World. The songs are as follows (not in order):
-City Ruins
-Peaceful Sleep
-Amusement Park
-A Beautiful Song

Songlist continued (not in order):
-A Beautiful Song
-Voice of no Return
-Grandma
-Emil
-Kaine
-Forest Kingdom
-Possessed by Disease
-Mourning
-Crumbling Lies
-Song of the Ancients
-Weight of the World

I may have missed some as there were a few medleys, but this was most of 'em!

I'm not sure if tomorrow's setlist will be different, but all songs were played with a string quartet, percussion, piano, guitar, and bass arrangements. Most songs were rearranged, and they sounded so beautiful- I cried a few times lol.

There was also an encore song for NieR Re[in]carnation that showed a montage of in-game cutscenes as well.

Also, here's a few pictures of the decor around the area that I was able to take! Most of them were huge posters that adorned the entrance of the music hall.

Also, the giant Emil head and Black Box truck was parked outside the concert hall, and the mysterious text that was underneath the black tape ended up being "NieR Automata surpasses 7,000,000 sales" LOL we got trolled 😅

The event was over 3 hours long including intermission, but man, was it a roller coaster of emotion lol. The drama readings in between the concert songs was super interesting- I don't think I've been to any anime or video game event that did that before.

Also, just so everything is in the same place, here's some other tweets I made about the Nier Fan Fest event today:

9S's VA wasn't present today but had a video message where he had some funny stories and pretended to be 9S working at a ramen shop:

some more dev talk lol:

small little omikuji emil fortune you get when entering the concert hall!

Hope you enjoyed reading this thread! The NieR Automata 12022 Fan Festival was amazing, and I'm very excited to see what tomorrow's showing is going to be like!

You can also tune into the concert stream + story (with English subs too!) for 5,000yen here:

Also, if you're interested in the NieR FanFest goods, you can check out our website here (international shipping available): bit.ly/3sHDSxP