On Sunday April 8th, Viz Media held a much anticipated panel at the annual Chicago comic book convention called ‘the Chicago Comic Book & Entertainment Expo’, or ‘C2E2’. At the panel, the hosts announced a slew of new products and titles releasing from Viz Media in the near future. In addition to a Junji Ito story collection and a Juni Taisen manga, Viz announced they will be publishing two novels based upon a Square Enix (Publisher) and Cavia (Developer) property called NieR. The two novels will be NieR: Automata: Long Story Short and NieR: Automata: Long Story Long.
These were previously published in Japan; this marks the first time they will be published within the United States. NieR: Automata Long Story (Shōsetsu NieR: Automata Nagai Hanashi ) and NieR: Automata Short Story (Shōsetsu NieR: Automata Mijikai Hanashi) were both released by Square Enix in 2017 by Square Enix. Both of the Japanese books were written by Jun Eishima who is famous for writing the video game story for Final Fantasy: XIII-2, Drakengard / Drag-On Dragoon stories.
The two novels will be released in the spring of 2019. At the panel, Viz briefly described their premise;
“When alien forces invade with an army of Machines, the remnants of humanity must depend on Androids of their own design – the placid 2B and the excitable 9S – to survive.”
The video game series is actually a spin-off of the earlier Drakengard game (2003) which is also known as Drag-On Dragoon. According to an interview with Square Enix producer Takasami Shiba, Drakengard was created with the vision of blending the Ace Combat video game with game Dynasty Warriors 2. Famous for its multiple possible endings, the series spun out of one of those possible endings to become NieR (NieR: Gestalt) and the followup NieR: Automata. The story revolves around YoRHa No.2 Type B, commonly referred to as ‘2B’.
As of March of 2018, Square Enix has sold over 2.5 million copies of the Nier: Automata video game.
